Lord Byron: Mad, Bad & Dangerous To Know | Part 1

hello and welcome to the rest is history today mad bad and dangerous to know it's the story of arguably history's first true celebrity one of the most extraordinary and colorful men who've ever lived Lord Byron we're in Regency England we in a time when people were murdering their wives shooting their Coachmen um there's all kinds of weird uh depraved Affairs there's terrible behavior on every side but amid it all the emergence of this extraordinary literary cultural and political star in Lord Byron don't miss it this is one of the most exciting episodes of the restus history we've ever [Music] done I was 14 when I heard of his death it seemed an awful Calamity I remember I rushed out of doors sat down by myself shouted aloud and wrote on the sandstone Byron is dead so that was Alfred Lord Tennison the author of The Charge of the Light Brigade poet laurate of the United Kingdom in the 19th century and Tennison is remembering the moment when one of his great Heroes Lord Byron died at mongi on the 19th of April 1824 200 years ago Tom a 200 years ago this is coming Friday if you're listening to this episode in the week it goes out KY and you and this is a very poignant moment for you because you love Lord Byron don't you let's be honest let's just put it out there yeah he was always he was my favorite poet um because we should add that Mr longi is in Greece and Byron D is a Marty for Greek Freedom he wrote a lot about Greece uh I was very into Greece I was very romantic he he spoke for me uh and he um is a figure who is not just a it but uh a kind of Legend really um and so the news of his death a Marty for Greek Freedom um only 36 years old it kind of sent shock waves not just across Britain but across the whole of Europe because he I think there's a case for saying that he is the first great International Celebrity um and by far the most famous British person of his day more famous than Nelson Tom surely not I guess Nelson Nelson is dead by the time that that that Byron has his Apache um but yes I mean I because I think that that Nelson is a national hero yeah but Byron is a focus for international agulation um I I mean I have to say that when I was I coming coming back to his poetry and to his life to work out the structure for these episodes one thing that struck me was that in many ways of all the people that we have done episodes on so far uh including even John Lennon I I cannot imagine anyone who is more calculated to infuriate you than Byron yeah I think he's so he's the kind of anti- Dominic zambre well so for people who don't like uh one of the presenters of the rest's history these this will be a dream series um yes Tom he has so I'll be I'll be honest I I approach this in a spirit of of Byron phobia uh but I'm prepared to be converted if you you know I'm open-minded that said irrespective of my own personal views about Byron it is an extraordinary Story I mean this series will take in as you said the origins of kind of celebrity culture kind of merchandising of a personality uh there's a lot of sex there's a lot of so much sex a lot of travel I mean it's like a Bond film you know each each every 10 minutes we're at a different location Albania Greece Constantinople you know he's going all over the Mediterranean and then back to Britain and all kinds of jumping in and out of people's beds and stuff but it's a brilliant window isn't it into the world of the kind of I guess it's the Regency it's it's what we think of as Regency it is the Regency yeah yeah and I and I think also what's fascinating about it is that he stands on the cusp of the Regency moving into the Victorian period and he is a focus for all kinds of moral indignation and that also is a part of the story why he it it's a part of his appeel but it's also why he is so feared and uh and troduced um so I'll just before we start the the kind of you know the account of his life probably worth just for those who don't really know very much about him just going through why he become so famous so above all he I mean he is a great poet um and he is successful in a way that no poet before or more particularly since has ever been I mean poets today tend not to be rock stars Byron was in a way the kind of the Prototype of the rock star and so he has this he he he writes his poem child Harold's pilgrimage which is basically a kind of a travelog it's an account of his Gap year basically but it's so romantic it situates him as this kind of dark charismatic Hero at the center of it and the whole of Regency London swoons over it and Byron's famous comment on it is that I I awoke one morning and found myself famous and he's kind of like the Beatles you know having released she loves you or something the hits just keep coming so uh he he he releases this poem called the Corsair which again is all about a dramatic doomed heroic hero um out in the aan and that sells 10 10,000 copies on its on publication day which is a record that still stands I mean no ever no rush by 10,000 copies of any Po and the woman that he ends up marrying and it's a disastrous marriage but she is as obsessed by him as everyone else and she coins this term by Romania so um I that is the prototype for every kind of cultural Mania that has followed and I think it's worth emphasizing that he he's a a genuinely great poet I mean his his best poem Don Jan is incredibly Darkly funny Byron is very funny as very as well as very romantic I I would say the most readable long poem in English but he's it's not just his literary talent that makes him famous because he is incredibly good-looking he is the embodiment of kind of uh the Romantic rake um and there's just a succession of aristocratic women who are are swooning over him so there's account of lady rosebery who almost faints when she see him lady Mild May said that when he spoke to her her heart beats so violently that she could hardly answer him and the um the aristocratic lady who who becomes most notoriously obsessed by him Caroline lamb um she is kind of the the the the Prototype of the groupy really the woman who becomes completely obsessed by AAR gry right the Posh groupy but but it's not I mean it's not just Posh groupy so feminists also feel his so Mary shell the wife of Percy shell of course Mary shell writes Frankenstein um after spending time with Byron in the year without a summer of 1816 she said of Byron I mean she was obsessed by him as well there was something in chanting in his manner his voice his smile a Fascination in them so um I mean absolutely the glamour of the rockar as well as the great pure Charisma I mean often quite dangerous Charisma dark charisma I mean he's not no one would say he was a good man but he's an exciting man right he's an exciting man and his Charisma is not just that of a poet of course but also that of a freedom fighter so you know as we' said he dies a mar for Greece um taking part in in uh the Greek war of independence that had begun in 1821 and was still raging when he dies in 1824 and although he he doesn't really cont to the campaign he dies of fever without ever having fought a battle his death kind of fires up Europe to support the Greeks um it it's kind of as I I don't know as though Taylor Swift were to die a mar for Ukraine or something like that it's kind of on that level okay it it it transfigures the the sense of what is at stake and Byron to this day is probably the most celebrated Foreigner in Greece there are statues of him everywhere squares that are named after him streets I mean he he remains much much admired and loved but he also has an impact on um on repressive regimes across Europe as well in his own time so hugely popular in Greece but also do I mean he he becomes an inspirational figure to people um throughout the 19th century doesn't he yeah he he so within within a year of death in Russia the S Alexander I first dies there's um a kind of an attempted liberal Uprising um before his his Heir Nicholas the first comes to power so the the The Decemberists it's called they all get rounded up and executed and Byron a volume of Byron's poetry is in the hands of one of the poets who is executed and the French painter Ain dequa so he painted the famous picture of Liberty on the barricades that people are from identify with the French Revolution he said uh just remember passages from Byron when you wish to rekindle the flame yeah yeah and so so um big inspiration in the the Revolutions of 1848 uh I mean he's the chavara really I mean he's a kind of you know an icon of of cool and Liberty but you mentioned that he's also quite a bad man so mad bad and dangerous to know lady Caroline lamb famous is famous description of him um and Tennyson when he is an adult repudiates his childhood so this is the guy at the beginning who when he was 14 shouted Byron is dead or wrote it or whatever and was so upset and he says actually do you know what I've thought about it and Byron's a terrible person and actually that in that story you have the transition from Regent immorality to Victorian morality don't you because the victorians basically thought Byron's s was a terrible man complete well he I mean he is a rake he he is a libertine um his his marriage I think beating even Ted Hughes and Sylvia PL into second place is the most notorious in literary history um he the kind of charges of sodomy and incest floating around you don't really want Char of incest hanging over you do you well particularly not not in the Heyday of of the Victorian period um but I think the reason why in a way that just adds to his aure is because it kind of fuses with the the element of self-portrayal in his his poetry so I mentioned the the Corsair this poem that that you know the record-breaking poem has this this um uh couplet he left a corsair's name to other times linked with one virtue and a thousand crimes but there's a sense in which actually the image of the the the byonic hero is actually rather the other way around that the ironic hero is a man of incredible power potency quality but is shadowed by a single terrible crime and there was a very funny feature about this by Sam leth you know great writer um recently marking the anniversary in unheard Dominic um so I'll just read what Sam said to be byonic is to be willful Ardent brooding super humanly attractive and to have a thrilling disregard for boura convention it is to be an existential hero it is admittedly usually to have a FLW but the floor is of the ennobling tragic floor sort like being too tempestuous and passionate the floor in a bonic hero is the sort of humble braggy flaw that makes him it's always him more interesting you'll never catch a bonic hero having the sort of flaws the rest of us deal with such as being a bit thick or suffering from athletes foot byonic Heroes may be cruel and self-involved but chicks dig them so this is the so Byron I mean you mentioned at the beginning you said we've done lots of episodes and other disreputable and unpleasant characters and you mentioned um John Lennon and this is obviously the same thing that people would say John Lennon isn't it oh yes he's flawed but he's so interesting and difficult and dangerous and glamorous and artistic and and his flaws in a weird way to his admirers actually accentuate his appeal rather than diminish it and that's true of Byron too right yeah I but but I think that um Byron foregrounds the sense of danger and kind of moral danger more obviously than John lenon I mean John Lennon would always say that he was on the side of angels just give a piece a chance by Byron is more I mean he's self-consciously Sympathy for the Devil Sympathy for the Devil yeah so so um yes and mck I mean it's Mick Jagger rather than John Lennon who identifies with the Romantic Poets and and particularly Shel and Byron um and Byron in particular is hugely influence influential I would say on the whole course of popular culture from his lifetime right the way up to the present day so very very obviously in in he's he's a big influence on the brones so uh Rochester or or Heath Heff obviously yeah big influence on big big coat standing on Ms all that kind of stuff absolutely um so so and from them of course comes that the the the the the matina hero right the way into through Hollywood and everything um but also um a big influence on kind of the way that gay heroes are presented so Dorian Gray is hugely influenced by Byron um and of course the the figure of the vampire because Byron is the model for the first aristocratic vampire right so Count Dracula would be Unthinkable without him so just on that vampire wouldn't it be a brilliant thing if somebody had written a series of novels about vampires with Lord Byron in them is there such a person involved with the rest of History possibly very possibly my first ever literary offering just Google I mean Tom Holland vampire and you'll see open a World open a door to a corn copia of delights uh but it's also I think a reason for for doing a series on Byron um it's his anniversary he's a very interesting cultural figure but also I mean he does hold a as you said at the start kind of a mirror up to really fascinating period so it is the Napoleonic era Byron and Napoleon are often compared not least by Byron himself yeah um amazing quot not just Byron from McCauley Lord McCauley great historian historian two men have died within our recollection who at a time of life in which few people have completed their education had raised themselves each in his own Department to the height of Glory one of them died at Longwood the other at longi so Longwood is where um Napoleon died on St Helena and mongi is where byon died and the point there is actually both are Exiles but also both were young that's a really important part of Byron's Legend isn't it he he doesn't get old he he achieves extraordinary success at a very young age and that there's your kind of rock star because rock stars tend to or film stars they tend to breakthrough very young and often their age is part of their Charisma isn't it yes and because he's the icon both of of Greek nationalism and of Romanticism both of them I think over the course of the 19th century come to be associated with youth and again that's something that you very much see in the 18 1848 revolutions MH where where Byron's ghost is stalking all the episodes of that extraordinary year um so I think I think he is a really really fascinating historical figure I mean his story is incredible and he he he he he sheds light on you know this this really really significant moment in European history Napoleonic Wars and the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars the repression uh which Byron is very opposed to but also this this shift from the Regency Era the Georgian era the era of you know roystering and deying and Jacko Mao and all that kind of thing um into the Victorian period and the ambivalences that he created I think are not completely gone because I think the where there's a temptation to think oh the victorians are so stuffy haha honestly why can't they get down with it but actually there are reasons I think right the way into the present day why people would look at Byron in a slightly morally condemnatory way and we'll we'll touch on yeah some of them so uh the thing about Byron is that basically everything about him is insanely melodramatic and this is true of his ancestry because he's not just Byron he is Lord Byron he is a peer of the realm and that also I think is an incredibly important part of his glamour um and Byron even as he affected the pose of a rebel was also very very insistent on his rank um so and that rank derives from the fact that his ancestors had come over with William the Conqueror um and had been given lands by William in the Midlands um and they they settle there and then like so many other uh members of the of the Gentry in the in the Reformation they take advantage of the dissolution of the monaster propheter from Henry VII's attack on the Catholic Church they do so um so they're in the Midlands and there is an Abbey there at a place called newad which in fact was not an Abbey it was an augustinian prior that had been founded by Henry II but it gets dissolved and it gets sold by Henry VII's agents uh um in 1540 to S John the Byron um and the Byron settle in newad Abbey and they leave a large section of the Abbey basically just a Decay so they build the their house in the middle of it but there are whole sections and so in time this will make it everything that the romantics adore the sense of you know bar ruined choirs all that kind of I have to say to it's not in a Terri romantic part of the country so it's near Mansfield isn't it sort of not him sh mining country and not a place that you would normally identify with um romance and glamour I don't want to offend our listeners from not well but but as we will see M mining actually plays quite an important part in the story because it comes with the lands on which there are quite a lot of coal mines um so that's a source of his wealth um so the the first Lord Byron is is um created in 1643 MH which of course is when the Civil War is being fought um Lord the guy who becomes s John Byron who becomes Lord Byron um he's he's fighting on the side of the king um and he's given his purage as a reward for his Valor at the first battle of nuur and he then commands the right wing at Mar and mo um not to any great effect of course the royalists lose Mar and more and um when the king is defeated he goes into Exile so prefiguring what will happen to his descendant um and he dies in Paris in 1652 um so it's kind of a a heroism but kind of faintly hapless heroism and and that's a tradition that that continues because um Lord Byron's grandfather the poet's grandfather um is probably after Byron the most famous of his family um he's a very entertaining person I think he is so he's the Second Son of the fourth Lord Byron um and he joins the Navy this is we're now in the 18th century so the Heyday of the rise of the Navy Global heart of Oak people eating roast beef on chips all that so he he joins as a midshipman Rises up through the ranks um and he has a slightly unfortunate name of um foul weather Jack well that's his nickname not his name to you wouldn't name somebody foul weather as name yeah so the ship that he joins as a midshipman HMS wager uh it's been the subject recently of a very a book by David Gran who um also wrote uh what is it Killers thing that insir the film American very very successful American non-fiction writer yeah so so um the the guy who will be come to be nicknamed fouweather Jack joins it in in 1740 and the HMS waiter is going around the world and in 1741 it is Shipwrecked off on an island off Patagonia and um far weather Jack is one of 19 men who get into a Lifeboat and they're cast a drift and he has taken with him his little pet dog and the pet dog gets eaten by the starving men um and Byron adapts this as an episode in his his great poem Don Jan um on the sixth day they fed upon his hide and Jan who had still refused because the creature was his father's dog that died now feeling all the vulture in his jaws with some remorse received they first denied as a great favor one of the four pores which he divided with pedo who devoured longing for the other two and pedo is Jan's tutor who in due course will be eaten by the men and Dominic this is also the inspiration for Patrick O'Brien's novel The Unknown Shaw so it's a precursor isn't it of the auban matchin uh Master and Commander Series so some people say that the relationship in that book anticipates Russell Crow and uh who's mat in Paul betony anyway that's by the by um right but but but the the whole um Patrick O'Brien Royal Navy all that kind of thing I mean this is very much the world that um that fouweather Jack is part of and he I mean he does tremendously well he sees does heroic service in the Seven Years War um ends up commanding the uh the British Navy in American Waters during the war of independence has nine children uh and dies in 1786 before his father so he never actually becomes Lord Byron and instead the person who becomes the new Lord Byron um the fifth Lord Byron is his younger brother William who also goes to sea but then gives it up when he inherits the title and he is known as the wicked Lord and the wicked Lord and so just to get this into context the wicked Lord is your Lord Byron's great uncle is that right that's right okay yes so the wicked Lord why the wicked lord well because he kills a neighbor in a brawl okay in a in a Tavern on palmal in London okay uh he said to have organized orgies at newad Abbey um to have shot his Coachman dead to have murdered his wife by throwing her into the lake none of which I think is actually true it's kind of reflective of his reputation but you thought we'd throw it in there anyway just to just to muddy the his name he he runs badly out of money chops down all the wood um in the in the the woods around um used at Abby for Timber flogs off everything in the property from kind of paintings to toothpicks and he leases 20,000 Acres of coal mines in Rochdale in Lancashire for £60 annual rent which is obviously a terrible deal and this will again money worries will be a shadow over the poet's life um because obviously you know the fact that he is burning through the inheritance is not good news for whoever's going to succeed him now what of um what of foulweather Jack's eldest son who is the father of the poet so he he also has a nickname it's Mad Jack Mad Jack we've got a Mad Jack a wicked Lord and foul weather Jack yeah so this want to Mad Jack and he is basically a real life Mr Wickham so in Pride and Prejudice the cad who runs off with Lydia and he's and Mad Jack I mean he's worse than a cad I'd say he's a Bounder is a Bounder worse than a rer okay a rer right he's a rter so he goes to Westminster um hopeless uh gets sent to military school in Paris where he has a lovely time kind of swagging around in his uniform being heartless and getting off with people and you know seducing them and dumping them um he's a great one for gambling debts um his parents end up cutting him off because he um he's burnt through so much money and so he becomes a jigo say becomes a jig like a professional looks around for a professional jig yeah Money Changes hands yeah wow okay but all the time he's looking around for an airs yeah and in 1778 he meets with a very distant ancestor of George Osborne the uh former chancell of the exer yeah and pod show host yeah um who's called AIA Osborne who is the wife of the Marquis of Karan and um Mad Jack and Amelia Osborn alope and they settle in France and they have three children two of them die but one of them a girl called austa survives to adulthood but Amelia Osborne dies very soon afterwards she in 1784 it is rumored of ill usage from her husband but Byron it is fair to say always defended his father um commented it is not by brutality that a young officer in the guard seduces and Carries off a Martian and marries two AES it is true that he was a very handsome man which goes a long way that's a terrible excuse I mean so what do you make of that I think that's a pathetic excuse I mean it's perfectly possible he could have abused his wife and yet been very handsome I mean those two things sticking up for his dad he is but okay fine now so his dad uh what is it Mad Mad Jack Mad Jack has got one girl called Augusta and his son's a wife and Lord Byron has yet to enter the story so I'm going to assume that he marries again right so Barron in that comment said that he'd married two irses so the second airs is um someone who he meets in bath so the moment that his first wife is dead he comes back to England goes to Bath which as of Jane Austin will know that is where you the marriage Market yeah and there he meets with a young Scottish aess Catherine Gordon who is aess to the Estates of Gite which is near abedine right and she it is fair to say is considerably less glamorous I mean I'm reading the words I can see the words staring back out at me from the notes frumpish wadling plane that's harsh is and provincial and socially awkward but is it true so what was it attracted Mad Jack to the oh yes the estate gu the wealthy a of gu so so he marries this woman purely for her money purely for her money yes and the moment they've got married and they get married in bath uh she immediately starts selling off her inheritance to pay off her husband's debts oh this is all very and I mean this is so familiar from anyone who's ever read a 19th century novel yeah you know the the the go hapless provincial girl who gets seduced by the cad and then he squanders all her money I feel sorry for her and he you know he he blows her money so quickly that by the time you know she gets pregnant very quickly even before she's given birth her husband is is having to borrow money from his tailor I mean come on incredibly humiliating and flee to France and Katherine has to move I mean shocking she has to move into a flat above a shop which she does in cish square in in maret bone and that is where on the 22nd of January 1988 George Gordon Byron is born her son so Gordon comes from her family obviously Scottish name uh quick question about Byron does he ever think of himself as Scottish we'll come to that okay oh ex yeah we'll come to that it's a very interesting question so the the he is born with a club foot and they can't really afford the treatment for it so he he and he later in life he'll be very resentful of this he will feel that his mother it was his mother's fault that this club foot wasn't wasn't cured um and he sees it he comes to see it as a kind of a marker of what sets him apart it's it's a kind of a satanic stamp The Mark of Cain kind of thing would you say The Mark of Cain but he he kind of feels even as he is tortured by it he also feels that it kind of elevates him above the common run um it's it's something that he can you know that marks him as being something different um and the reason that that there is no possibility of of kind of getting proper medical treatment for it the moment he's born is because obviously daddy isn't there because daddy is off dodging the P it's very harsh to blame his mother and not his father for it frankly I know it it is very harsh um I I guess it's because basically daddy is barely there so Byron doesn't know him where he has lots of scope to blame his mother because his mother is is there anyway they they move from London to abedine because that's in Scotland and so therefore under Scottish law he can't jack can't be arrested for debts aced in England um and it's obviously a complete nightmare Jack Byron comes and joins his wife there but again they have so little money that they have to again live in a flat above a shop and just to add to the fun they have a sternly calvinist nursaid called Agnes gray who just makes it terrible that endlessly rowing Byron's mother is kind of always losing her temper with him calling him a damned lame brat and then smothering him in kisses Jack is leeching her out of every last penny he then vanishes to France where Dominic he embarks on an affair with his sister okay stop right there Tom there in more incest will feature in this podcast what is it about the byrons and inest why is he sleeping with his sister I think I don't know I mean she she has lots of of money he knows her that's not a reason well it is because he has so little money yeah I mean he's whoever you get the money off but it's that's fine but I mean it seems weird for his sister to say listen there a condition of me bailing you out I agree I agree it's very much not the kind of behavior that you get in chipping Norton I entirely accept that but it's the kind of thing that if you're a mad rake that's what you do but anyway the sister goes off the bath leaves uh Jack there and he's so skin he starts coughing up blood probably dies of TB Byron thinks that he'd slit his throat but but probably not and he is dead or by 1791 I mean you know he's in France at the Heyday of the of the terror and everything but he obviously has other things on his mind um and the consequence of all this is with his club foot his father going off sleeping with his sister coughing up blood possibly killing himself Byron feels that he has a cursed inheritance and this will be a crucial part I I think it's fair to say he hasn't had the ideal start in life is it Tom and um things actually get worse excitingly so we'll return after the break to see how things could possibly get worse for [Music] him welcome back to the rest's history we are talking about the life of uh George Gordon Byron Lord Byron great rake great poet great uh character an International Celebrity of the early 19 Century Tom his childhood so far has had something of the Victorian novel about it and actually becomes even more victoriia novel after his father's death doesn't it yeah because they're stranded in abedine uh you know there's little boy growing up there uh with his his um his mother who's been fleeced by his father and this Stern calvinist nursaid um Agnes gray and it's awful basically um you know they're very poor he has very kind of rudimentary schooling uh it all looks awful but then then Great Expectations okay because what happens is that the the wicked Law's Heir his only surviving grandson that's his great uncle's grandson which would be Byron's cousin I'm guessing second cousin or something with it I don't know it's all very confusing but basically he is he as it stands Byron is not going to is not going to succeed because um the wicked Lord has a grandson mhm M but then this grandson gets killed at the siege of calie in 1794 which is the the same one that Nelson loses his eye at hit by spins in his eye shrapnel so this is on Corsica the British trying to capture Corsica they're trying to get a Mediterranean base in 1794 they fighting the French Revolutionary forces um they actually do capture Calvi but this guy is killed and Byron is now in Prime position to inherit the whole well what is left of the estate he is the heir and so immediately you know his his prospects have massively brightened he's moved to the grammar school um gets much better education and because he now knows that he's going to become a lord I think he starts kind of chafing against what he sees as the provincialism of abedine um and he escapes it in basically in two ways one by uh he you know he comes to love the the the grander of the mountains around him he comes to he sees rugged terrain as an escape from you know the shop and the nursery maid and all that which is very 1790s isn't it I mean the love of great Vistas and brooding thoughts out on the sort of the the craggy Hills and all that stuff all that kind of thing yes but but also very 1790s is losing yourself in books because this is what exactly what Napoleon did so like Napoleon byon is obsessed by Roman history but also by Oriental history so he loves travel accounts of of people going to the Ottoman Empire say or to Greece or wherever and he loves the Arabian Knights and this is a Fascination that will will be with him for t for the Exotic I guess it's fair to say absolutely and then comes the moment they've all been waiting for 19th of May 1798 the death of the wicked Lord and um he leaves so little money that actually it's a bit of a an effort for um Byron's mother Katherine to scrape the money together but they get it get into a stage coach head head down to Nottinghamshire move to newad Abbey and it's basically a ruin the uh the wicked Lord has not been he's not been a daband at the DIY it's fair to say but to to to you know to the newly elevated Lord Byron it's absolutely thrilling um you know he's 10 years old he's inherited this this kind of broken down ruin I mean un unbelievably exciting he got a bit of a couplet here new nice nice poem through thy battlements newstead the hollow winds whistle thou the Hall of my fathers art gone to Decay so this is the kind of poetry he he writes to begin with it's very kind of melodramatic but you can see why slightly goth it's a Gothic scene I mean this is the age of the gothic isn't it and yeah sort of be R choirs memories of the past the wind howling all that business yes but it but um his Affairs are are in an absolute mess and he he has this lawyer John Hansen who in in time will show himself to be rather Sinister but he kind of you know he's trying to get it all in order um try and raise some money which he does pretty effectively um and Byron's mother stays at newstead but he is sent to Nottingham to live with Agnes gray the uh the Bible thumping murmaid who nevertheless turns out to be very badly behaved so despite her Stern Calvinism she she's actually spending all her time getting drunk uh and having fling with Coachmen and then she starts sexually abusing the young Byron okay um you can't throw that away like it's nothing what's going on there what's what on Earth is going on there he's 10 when you say she's sexually abusing him I mean I don't want to get she she starts manipulating him messing around with him yeah and he's and he's very dis does this is this he doesn't want this to happen it's against his will well it it I mean it has a seismic influence on him I mean so firstly he comes to associate Christianity with hypocrisy and can't not unreasonably in her case absolutely because you know she's speaking the Bible while she's fiddling around with him yes but I think it also leaves him with um kind of tortured ambivalent attitudes to women yeah of course feeling that they can't really be trusted yeah um and he so he WR he write I mean he reflects about the the impact of it on him shortly before he dies so you know years later and he says my passions were developed very early so early that few would believe me if I were to State the period and the facts which accompanied it perhaps this was one of the reasons which caused the anticipated Melancholy of my thoughts having anticipated life so he's probably why 11 12 when this is happening yeah and he's I mean he's he's very much not byonic at this point he's kind of fat he's bashful he's shy and his neighbors so they're in provincial England they see him as provincial so he's in a bad way really so Tom I have to say having having dis Lord Byron earlier on I feel sorry for him that because this is a terrible thing to have happened to him well but also Dominic the other thing that you'd like about what what happens next is that Hansen's solution is to send him to a private school I applaud that yeah you applaud that yeah I think that's probably so so Byron gets sent to to Harrow okay in April 1801 so he's going up in the world yeah um and obviously he hates it at first because he has a club foot I was about to say if you got a club foot going to a Regency Era boarding school is probably not ideal it's not yeah it's not ideal and so he gets horribly bullied but he stands up for himself and rather like Tom Brown Dominic he stands up for all the other boys as well he's you know he's but he doesn't do the praying and stuff that Tom Brown does he doesn't do that he doesn't do that and then age 15 very UNT Tom Brown he develops a massive a for an 11y old a I can't believe you Tom you're the first person in about 40 years to use the it just seems the appropriate word um for for for an 11-year-old boy who Lord CLA and the memory of their stays with Byron for the rest of his life and in fact in 1821 while they're in Italy their coaches pass each other and and Byron is absolutely unsettled by it they kind of meet and talk for five minutes and he rushes back and and and writes in his journal I never hear the word CLA without a beating of the heart even now so does anything happen between him and this Lord CLA I don't think so it's just kind of he he has a crush on him basically yeah I don't think so but but I mean I think there are all kinds of school boyish crushes going on and and Byron will remember Harrow as a home a world a paradise to me in the way that Ro lots of romantic private school boys do um you know they they remember it as the kind of Eden from which they they they get exiled um and I think that a further reason why Byron remembers it as a paradise is that once he has left Harrow and gone out into the the the wide world he he keeps his tastes for boys um but of course this is now much more dangerous uh and it's something that that in the kind of the traditional biographies of Byron was always suppressed it was part of what his friends wanted to to kind of edit out of the story um but I think it's pretty fundamental and all kinds of texts over the course of the past few hundred years have been found that demonstrate pretty conclusively that that Byron's tastes were definitely um homosexual and there was a a groundbreaking book that came out in the 70s Byron and Greek love which really I mean it emphasizes this but also emphasizes how dangerous it was because the backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars has led the British very strongly to identify homosexuality with jacobinism Napoleon all kinds of filthy rot like that and and so um basically if you you know if you're caught uh having a gay Affair no matter how upper class you are you risk being put in the Piller kind of you know uh beaten up or or hanged and this is a kind of shadow that hangs over Byron from the moment he leaves school but it's not all bad because of course Cambridge awaits and the Byron go to Trinity College so Byron goes off to Trinity College and basically he loves that as well I mean he's loved Harrow he loves he loves Cambridge he gets to wear a fancy robe covered in Gold because he's a peer so he loves that they have different gowns if they peers is that it yeah special one I don't know whether that's still the case may have any You' noticed it Cambridge you didn't wear a special undergraduate members of the perid be love to know that um he um he I mean he cuts a tremendous Dash he turns up for Fresh's week and is writes to Hansen dear sir I will be obliged to you to order me down four dozen of wine Port Sherry Clarett and madira one dozen of each so Hansen is the guy running his estate yes so he's still dependent on Hansen is he or is Hansen well Hanson is his lawyer he's the guy who's responsible for for fixing things um Byron by now he's a peer he's getting a taste for hard living you know he's not going to obey college rules he's told that he can't have a dog so he famously brings in a bear installs a bear in the college um and he in the kind of the very heady romantic way of young men in this period and right the way you know through the next two centuries who go to Oxford Cambridge he develops very very close friends friendships and these are friends who will be a part of his life for a long time the the the most important of his these friends is a man called John cam hobhouse who is actually very serious very sober um from a radical dissenting background so not the kind of person who would kind of obviously hang out with a a hard living peer and to begin with they hate each other but they end up I mean hob house will be Byron's closest friends his life guess because they're both Outsiders they're both conscious of being Outsiders so yeah I think so yes but I think also they kind of they sh they come to share so many experiences um and the other one is a man called Charles Skinner Matthews who has two very telling nicknames one of them is citizen which is a bit it's kind of you know the regeny equivalent of comrade yes course Matthews is is's an atheist he's uh uh he's a republican you know and this is a time where expressing atheist or republican views could really get you in trouble but so also you know as we've said um sodomy can get you in trouble as well and Matthew's nickn other nickname is the Methodist and the Methodist is kind of code in Byron's Circle for um for being gay is that so so okay you know they're Skating On The Edge there and they and his um homosexuality so Charles Skinner Matthews that would be well known to his friends it wouldn't be hidden from them yeah be well known to his friends kind of you know a bit like Sebastian flight in Brides head Revisited it's that kind of if you know the code if you're part of the group you know the code exactly do you fancy a bit of methodism that kind of absolutely and it's it's pretty clear I think that I mentioned Sebastian flight um Byron in his second year comes back and he is transformed into an unbelievably handsome figure so before that he'd been a bit overweight um and he he becomes obsessed by losing it so he sets up in a gym with um gentleman John Jackson who had been champion of all England from 1798 to 1803 um and he also goes on an absolute starvation diet and I think he basically becomes Bic so he will oh really um yeah he's he's very very obsessed by diet he has all kinds of weird phobias about it he can't bear to for instance he can't bear to watch a woman eat it's kind of very weird weird um but over the course of his time at Cambridge he loses almost four stone um and yeah clearly his I think at this point his his gay identity is incredibly important to him and so he he has this great love affair and it's with a a choir boy called John edelston who is two years younger than Byron at this point so 16 so so Byron is 18 and this guyy is 16 yeah okay and it it said that Byron rescued him from drowning in the cam um whether that's true or not we don't know but Byron is completely devoted to him he he he claims later in life that it was a violent though pure love and passion we don't know whether it was uh but what is certainly the case is that when edelson's voice breaks um Byron's passion slightly Fades and he goes and finds him a a job in the city as a as a an apprentice clar okay so so that is a um so it's a thing for boys not for men is that right I think yeah okay absolutely I'm not going to say anything I mean lists can draw their own conclusions um no so so that is an aspect that would remain you know would raise eyebrows in the in the 21st century yeah absolutely um and you can see why Byron is is nervous about it um and I think that that that because of that when he leaves Cambridge he he kind of becomes aggressively heterosexual so he he um he he tell you know he writes to Matthew saying I've plunged into an abyss of sensuality MH and he's talking about women not boys at that point yeah but it's it's absolutely typical that he has a particular affair with a young prostitute called Caroline um he he he installs her in his rooms in London but when she goes goes with him to Brighton which of course is the most fashionable place in in England at the time made famous by the prince Regent he um he he dresses her up as a a boy and passes her off as his brother Gordon that's pretty peculiar Behavior again there's the kind of hint of incest there yeah I mean let's be honest at this point um he is somebody who if if you were describing that personality and that upbringing today I mean I know it's a silly thing to do but if you did if if you did you would say of him he's somebody who's completely messed up he's had the most terrible upbringing that has really messed him up and he is now reproducing the to some degree reprod of behavior yeah the patterns of behavior the abuse that he has suffered I mean that guy edelston by the way was an orphan wasn't he yeah um so I mean there's no way I think of dressing that up and it looking anything other than very very dodgy and this stuff well I suppose you could say in Byron's defense he's very generous I mean edon's an orphan he doesn't haveone to look after him Byron is very you know gives him lots of money sets him up with a job we had this conversation about Oscar wild didn't we about the how do you where do you stand when you look at those kind of relationships do you say this is exploitative and it's somebody there was a massive power dynamic or do you say actually you know there's generosity here there is genuine affection and the other person is gaining Lots from it I mean hard know where to stand and I think that as as with wild so with Byron the the aspects of his life that appall the victorians are not necessarily what to pull us but there are aspects that you know are morally troubling to to both the victorians and to people in the 21st century um and which you know continues to give him this kind of sulfurous quality so you say he's messed up I mean he's he's also massively in debt so he's been renting out newad all this time to to try and raise cash and he's been renting it to a guy who who seems to have come on to Byron um they they they have a massive falling out um he he he kicks this guy out goes back to newstead and and kind of has a a brilliantly Gothic time he invites all his friends they drink white madira out of cups that are made out of the monk skulls they practice their shooting in the the main hall of the of of newstead um but you know he's running so so badly out of money that he thinks I'm going to have to sell it um and the other thing that's worrying him which of course is is something that worries everybody when they leave universities what what are you going to do with your life you know he he is he's been a big name on campus uh great things are expected of him but but what so the obvious thing would be politics um he's a peer so he can sit in the House of Lords so he's automatically a politician if he wants to be yeah yeah so he takes his seat in in in March 1809 and I guess that his you know he by Instinct he he would incline to the wigs so um Britain at this time is governed by the Tories they're fighting a war uh it's a pretty repressive um form of government uh you know lots of civil liberties have been suspended um Byron strongly identifies with the more radical wing of the of of the wigs the the kind of wigs who actually you know they love pretty much support nap they love the French Revolution and they love Napoleon there kind of Charles James Fox you know let's all worship at the alar of France that kind of thing yeah but but Byron although he kind of sides with them he doesn't want to identify with them basically because he's too too egocentric too too lordly too independent you know he doesn't want to have his his individuality subsumed within a being a party man can you I mean no he's he's absolutely not and so you know he he he delays giving his Maiden speech um the other career perhaps um is that as a poet so he's been writing poetry throughout his time at Cambridge and he he publishes a collection of these poems in 1807 when he's 19 calls it hours of idleness and he he publishes this at the head of it he he kind of writes this introduction where he he basically says um you know I must plead my minority I'm just a young man have these Trifles and everyone is very polite about them because you know he's a peer and he's very young but the Edinburgh review which is a wig publication and so Byron would have expected it to be supportive I mean just tears into him gives him one of the the alltime terrible reviews in the history of English literature Tom Byron is in good company there because I mean there are other people in history who have had disobliging reviews from Scottish newspapers um and uh you will recall that there was a brilliant production of the play Becket in Scot in the 1990s that received a onear review from the Scotsman and I was playing the lead would you believe right and that that that the impact of that devastating review on you yeah um well actually that Byron comparison which has often been made between the two of us so so Byron's response was to um drink three bottles of clarot and then to dash off um a vituperative satire on the literary scene which he called English BS and Scotch reviewers and so he's not just attacking the the the the people at the Edinburgh rev viw he's also basically attacking every famous poet in uh in in Britain which Fiona McCarthy and her her great biography of Byron Byron Life and Legend describes as an almost manic Act of Courage because he's basically taking on the entire literary establishment so so basically you know his liter career isn't going well and adding to the problem is that he kind of despises poets you know he you know they're not they're not people getting out there and doing things they're not shaping the fate of Nations you know they just scribble away because he's like so many people Tom does he live in the shadow of Napoleon because lots of people do in this period they think Napoleon is selfmade man he's the kind of person who didn't exist before he's the ultimate romantic hero and I I mean you see there so much in I don't know the red and the Black by stal um great French no ST meets Byron oh really yeah I can imagine they would they would be great they would get on very well so um this sort of sense of which I don't think people have massively had before a sense of inade inadequacy CU they're not Napoleon does Byron have this I I mean in in Britain by now Napoleon is the well literally the bogey um but he's Byron is unusual in the degree of hero worship that he chose so as a boy at Harrow he had had a bust of Napoleon and had defended it against people who'd been trying to smash it cor and he always kind of has a soft spot for Byron I clearly kind of does identify with him and think that this is all part of the the churn that means that you know by 1809 he's 19 he doesn't really know what to do with himself he's har he's harried by debts he's worried that he's going to get arrested and either hanged or put in the Piller for his um sexuality um he doesn't really you know he doesn't really want to go into politics doesn't really want to kind of hang around and be a Scribbler and so he decides to go abroad um you know Escape his career anxieties his money worries Escape his his sense of the oppressive character of of of of English morality and the moment he decides to do this he immediately becomes more cheerful and he decides that he will go to the place that has always haunted his imaginings which is the Orient and so on the 2nd of July 1809 Byron heads down to the Southwest to Falmouth he takes ship to Portugal and this will be the first step on his Eastern Adventure well brilliant what a cliffhanger Tom and if people want to join Lord Byron on that Adventure right away just to give you a taste of what is coming he's going to uh Portugal in the middle of the peninsula War sarur Welsley the future Duke of Wellington fighting against Napoleon's forces he's going to Malta to Albania to Greece to Constantinople he'll meet the sultan weren't you Tom is that right he means the sultan so lots of drama lots of color to come you can of course listen to that right now uh all you have to do is join the restus history club with all the glittering benefits and bobles that that brings you um yeah that's a kind of uh it's an exotic fantasy in its own right isn't it the rest is history club and you can join that by going to uh the rest is history.com if not if you're a petty fogging poish Victorian kind of person and you just want to wait for the next episode with all the ads fair enough be my guest you'll just have to wait till next time but what Delights and treats are in store for us hey Tom we'll see you next time bye-bye bye-bye [Music]

Channel: The Rest is History

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Id: 8C-Zwsfe8K0

Length: 57min 58sec (3478 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 16 2024