Mr. Beard's Regency Tour Day 9: Lord Byron--Luddite lover and Greek Insurgent

Welcome to my ninth post on late Georgian/Regency England. If you haven't a clue what I'm talking about, please check out this post.

This is the last part of a three part series on Lord Bryon. I've already discussed Lord Byron's scandalous personal life along with his contributions to English literature and poetry in preceding posts.

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Poet. Lover. Baron. That last one in particular had implications back in the Regency. In a future post I'll delve a bit deeper into what it fully meant to be a hereditary peer, but I think most people have at least a general handle on the concept of titled nobility.

For Lord Byron, one artifact of his birthright was a seat on the House of Lords--a fortunate convenience for a man very critical of the status quo. Byron's poetry was often full of scathing critique and satire of both domestic and international political issues, and he made many impassioned speeches in Parliament to champion the causes he felt just. His first period in Parliament (March to June 1809) was brought to an end by a trip to Europe. He would later return to Parliament in 1812 though his permanent departure from England in 1816 that I discussed in part one of this series would take with him any further chance of direct political work.

During his time in Parliament, Lord Byron would champion many causes that would set him firmly in a reform, or by some people's reckoning,  a  revolutionary camp. For example, he supported Irish independence both in poetry and political speeches:

"Thus has Great Britain swallowed up the Parliament—the constitution—the independence of Ireland, and refuses to disgorge even a single privilege, although for the relief of her swollen and distempered body politic."

He later would even pen poetry suggesting some support for the independence of India. 

He also supported the Luddites. Though I'll be discussing them in a full entry in the future, they were mostly an anti-industrialization movement centered around textile workers whose jobs were being eliminated by new technologies. Protests turned to a campaign against mills in the north of England.  The destruction of mills combined with attacks on magistrates lead to the deployment of thousands of troops against the Luddites. 

As one can surmise, they was not some genteel opposition movement. They were a near revolutionary force that conservative aristocrats viewed with disgust and trepidation. In contrast, Lord Byron, who viewed the Luddite cause as arising from social justice concerns by people being harmed and destroyed by dubious automation that benefited others more than the workers, supported the movement both in Parliament and in his poetry. Whether one thinks him a fool or praises him for that, it is important to realize this was a very radical position for him to take at the time.

Even after leaving England, he would continue to contribute to political newspapers and discussions, generally supporting causes that placed him firmly in opposition to many landed, aristocratic interests. A lot of this was heavily influenced by his Romantic worldview.

Now, skipping ahead a bit, Byron became involved with the Greek independence movement. At the time, the Greeks were under the heel of the Ottoman Empire. He'd spoken and written of his belief in Greek independence for some time, but the start of open insurgency in 1821 further crystallized his support. While some of this support was just part of his natural tendency to support many independence movements, it's important to realize that Greece held a special place in the hearts of many Western intellectuals of the period due to its ancient contributions to Western thought.

Generous financial and literary support gave way to more direct military aid in 1823 including his formation, using his own wealth, of the Byron Brigade (including refitting warships). Besides his equipment, he ended up in command of Greek rebel soldiers.

 I should note that whatever his literary talents, he had no military experience at all, but I'm doubtful the Greeks were going to risk offending a man who was giving them a considerable amount of money and for whom they had a great deal of respect anyway. He was to take part in a major assault on a Turkish fortress, Lepanto, but before the force could depart toward the objective, he fell ill. Over the next few months he fought disease, incompetent period doctors, and infection until finally succumbing to his aliments at Missolonghi, Greece on April 19, 1824 at the age of 36.

Despite his very minimal involvement in the actual fighting, years of financial, political, and literary support garnered him a large amount of Greek respect where many still consider him, despite his non-Greek background, a hero of the Greek War of Independence. There was a three day period of mourning following his death. There is even a city northeast of Athens still named after him, Vyronas (Βύρωνας). His death in Greece helped focus even more international attention on the conflict and arguably helped to contribute to the entry of other Western powers on the Greek side. 

Thank you for joining me these last three weeks as I discussed the life of Lord Byron. Whatever one thinks of him or whatever strange rumors one choose to believe, it's hard to deny he's a fascinating historical character. I've only barely scratched the surface of the details defining his life, but I don't want this to become Mr. Beard's Byron Tour instead of Mr. Beard's Regency Tour. Due to Thanksgiving and my trip to visit family, there will be no Regency entry next Friday, but I will return the following week with a more in-depth discussion of the Luddites.

Mr. Beard's Regency Tour Day 8: Bad Boy, Super Poet, and Greek Patriot, Lord Byron: Part II: Brooding Poetic Heroes and Dissing Your Contemporaries

Welcome to my eighth  post on late Georgian/Regency England. If you haven't a clue what I'm talking about, please check out this post.

This is the second part of a three part series on Lord Bryon. If you want an overview of his life, please see this post.

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There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep Sea, and music in its roar;
I love not Man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne’er express, yet cannot all conceal.

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Stanza 178, Lord Byron.

Last week, I discussed Lord Byron's scandalous life and his many confirmed and rumored affairs. Though his behavior undoubtedly fueled some of his early scandalous allure for his contemporaries, we primarily remember him today not for his attempt to the Wilt Chamberlain of the Regency but instead for his literary accomplishments.

It is important to remember that Bryon worked and created in the backdrop of the Romantic movement, a movement that started roughly in the mid-18th century. In order to avoid spiraling off to another length sub-series, I'll just summarize the Romantic movement by noting it was a general reaction to unease over a number of cultural factors that had gained strength during the Enlightenment, in particular the ideas the scientists/natural philosophers had advanced that were starting to demystify nature and placed a premium on intellectual engagement with the world over emotional engagement. It was also linked in with the spread of the Industrial Revolution and related sociological factors. Distilled to its essence, the Romantic movement was about appreciating nature and existence in an allegedly more natural, and therefore, to their line of thinking, more authentic way. Although this philosophy influenced many spheres of existence in Europe and England, it was particularly pronounced in the arts. Also embodied in Romanticism was a sort of staunch idealism.

So how does Lord Byron fit into all of this? Well, he was a Romantic poet (he did try his hand at writing plays, but his success was firmly in the real of poetry) He showed talent from a young age and published his book of poetry, Hours of Idleness, in 1807 at the age of 19. He would follow that up with the critically acclaimed Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. This four-part narrative poem basically recounts the travels of an intelligent young man inflicted with ennui through the exotic lands. Considering that Lord Byron spent several years traveling abroad prior to publishing Pilgrimage, it is likely at least partially autobiographical. After his success with Pilgrimage, he published a number of other works, many of which focused on aristocratic Bryonic Heroes who traveled the world.


Though Pilgrimage is full of pathos, explorations of the meaning of freedom and existence, plus assorted other thematic meat that is nutritious to various English majors, it also helped to strengthen and fully define a literary archetype: what we now refer to as the Byronic Hero. Now, to be fair, it isn't as if Lord Byron was the first writer to ever use the archetype in English literature or poetry, but he did a considerable amount to popularize it.

Typically, a Bryonic Hero is fiercely intelligent, handsome, passionate, and idealistic, yet also flawed in some fundamental way such as given to intense brooding, being overly self-involved, cynical, arrogant, self-destructive, or a number of other such similar traits--much like Byron himself. 

The influence of the Bryonic Hero extends throughout literature from poetry to modern horror fiction. Besides hosting the literary circle that led to the creation of the first modern vampire story, the influence of the Bryonic Hero helped ensure that the vampire in that story lead to an aristocratic, but obviously very flawed being, even though to be clear, the vampire in that story is not the protagonist. Though, amusingly enough, the name of the vampire was used in another work by one of Byron's ex-lover as a thinly veiled, and rather negatively portrayed, version of Byron himself (now that's getting even with your ex). Skip forward to the 20th-century, and you also start getting the aristocratic, intelligent brooding vampires of authors like Anne Rice. So, arguably, a early 19th-century poet helped set the stage for Interview with the Vampire.


This is not to say that all his works necessarily included a Byronic Hero (or Bryonic-influenced antagonists). The short poem, She Walks In Beauty, published in 1815 and very well received, focuses on the beauty of a woman and does little to explore or define the poem's narrator:


She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o’er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express,
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

Just to link this back to some of the things I discussed last week, though Byron claimed his inspiration was a beautiful cousin he saw at a party, some tried to claim the poem was about half-sister, Augusta, whom some had tried to suggest he had a sexual relationship with (just to reiterate, I find the evidence unpersuasive on the particular point).

Though many of his works were well received, his arguable magnum opus would be the lengthy epic poem, Don Juan published over the period of 1819 to 1824 (he would die before finishing the last section). Now, just to be clear. Byron was adapting from an existing story that preceded him by at least two centuries. He did invert the expectations a bit though by portraying Don Juan as a man who more easily ensnared by women than the inverse and Byron himself described it as satire. Though many found the poetry worthy of praise, there was some concern over some of the content, which, by the standards of the time was somewhat controversial both for the behavior of the poem's main character and the mutli-layered critiques of many aspect of then current life offered by Byron. Indeed, despite the respect many people paid to Lord Bryon's work, in his native England, his tendency toward challenging certain aspects of conventional mores, views, and the inclusion of sexually charged themes in some of his work left many disturbed by his work.


In Don Juan, he even has the 19th-century equivalent of a modern Rap "diss" song, in which an entire subsection (a canto) is basically devoted to him trashing other poets such as in the following example stanza:


All are not moralists, like Southey, when
He prated to the world of "Pantisocracy;"
Or Wordsworth unexcised, unhired, who then
Season'd his pedlar poems with democracy;
Or Coleridge, long before his flighty pen
Let to the Morning Post its aristocracy;
When he and Southey, following the same path,
Espoused two partners (milliners of Bath).
  
Stanza 93, Third Canto, Don Juan

Unlike the modern rappers, to the best of my knowledge Lord Byron didn't start any West Coast/East Coast conflicts with his insults (though some satirical responses to critics for earlier work did score him a few dueling challenges).


Though I've only highlighted these three works, he wrote large numbers of long- and short-form poetry. His "superstar" status at the time both from the acceptance of his work and his own self-promotion would lead to his work having a tremendous influence on other poets, other authors, and artists across Europe (including even Russia). Ironically, despite his obvious influence in England on many on contemporaries and later English authors both positive and negative (positive, Charlotte Bronte and Jane Eyre; negative, Emily Bronte and Wuthering Heights; and, yes, I'm making a subjective literary judgment), his greater legacy may have arguably have been outside of Europe. This may partially have been because his scandalous life in England that I talked about last week ended up damaging some of his influence in England (though it was still quite extensive) and, arguably, also the more culturally reserved English just were always going to be somewhat more scandalized by the boldness (at least at the time) of some of themes he explored in his poetry.

Mr. Beard's Regency Tour Day 7: Bad Boy, Super Poet, and Greek Patriot, Lord Byron: Part I: A Scandalous Life

Welcome to my seventh post on late Georgian/Regency England. If you haven't a clue what I'm talking about, please check out this post.

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'Tis strange -- but true; for truth is always strange;
Stranger than fiction.

-- Lord Byron, Don Juan

For the first time, I'm going to do a direct back-to-back multi-part series. Lord Byron is a bit too larger-than-life to summarize in just one entry, so this week I'll do an overview of his personal life. If you have absolutely no clue at all who Lord Byron was at all, it's a bit insufficient for me to describe him merely as a highly influential poet whose influence is felt to this day (particularly in the form of the brooding hero, the so-called Byronic hero). In addition, he's fascinating in that he was an artist who crafted a public persona that made his every action resonate throughout society. In the modern, over-saturated media age where the most insipid of individuals is granted celebrity through reality programming such a reputation may seem quaint, but back in the late Georgian and Regency era, someone like Lord Byron was an unusual force of nature. Next week, I'll focus on his contributions to literature and the following week his political contributions and world adventures. There are not many English poets, after all, who are also considered national heroes in Greece.

Despite what many assume, the late Georgian era and the Regency were often times of aristocratic excess. The strict morality of the Victorian era was partly a response to some of the behavior of the high classes in the Georgian era (it was also partially an attempt by upwardly mobile middle class elements to set up their status hierarchy via contrast of their own self-perceived superior moral values, but this is a late Georgian-era series, so we'll let that drop for now). The Prince Regent set the tone. He loved a good party and spending money. While there were plenty of fine people who were proper in their behavior, more than a few gentlemen liked to drink and gamble. If one could basically keep one's behavior relatively in check, though, no one was going to blackball you from high society merely for a bit too much fun at a men's club or something.

The Regency folk, though not the Victorians, still had their limits. Blowing off a little steam was one thing, flaunting your behavior quite another. There were some individuals who shocked the sensibilities of these people but who could not be so easily be dismissed. Some individuals sent shock waves throughout English society for both their blatant disregard for proper behavior and their sheer genius--individuals like Lord Byron, George Gordon Byron, the 6th Baron Bryon of Rochdale.

So, Byron was not just any random rabble-rouser, but a peer. Although his father is somewhat colorful character in of himself (a social climbing army captain), we're going to skip his early life other to note a few major facts that people would later attribute some of his later behavior. I'm dubious of that kind of retroactive psychoanalysis, particularly in regard to his sexual behavior, but many others think they can sum him up far more easily.

He had a foot deformity that gave him a life-long limp that shamed him, and he believed that an early painful treatment may exacerbated his problem. While specially design shows minimize some o his gait problems, it would never be totally managed.

His early life, even as a young child, included a noted propensity for developing intense emotional attentions toward girls and woman, perhaps a foreshadowing of his intense sexual activity as an adult. As a child, he was allegedly the recipient of sexual attention from a governess and a lord who was renting Byron's mansion prior to his inheritance (this lord would also be a suitor of his mother). He would go onto a fine education capped with a stint at Trinity College. Various letters penned during his time in school strongly hinted at least some homosexual leanings (very dangerous given the laws of the time period), though given his love of women, it might be more accurate to just declare them bisexual leanings. Lord Byron definitely liked the ladies.

Throughout his life he scandalized English society with his numerous rather well-known affairs with a variety of women, married and otherwise. Various rumors also circulated about affairs with men as well. Though it's hard to distinguish how much truth there are in many of these rumors given that some of them were  associated with a scorned ex-lovers, as noted above he himself wrote statements in poems and letters about that seemed to indicate bisexual interests, particularly in his later life. Though he liked his alcohol and laudanum (alcohol solution with morphine), that sort of thing was well in-line with the "acceptable" bounds of behavior. It was his sexual misadventures that really started the finger wagging of proper society.

He was have alleged to have slept with hundreds of women. Now even if that's not true, he did sleep with enough women that a reputation as a "rake" was still well deserved. So, both in his potential choice of partners and sheer breadth, let alone his blatant public affairs with "respectable" women he completely blew past whatever "boys will be boys"-style acceptable sexual liaisons aristocratic society at the time might have otherwise tolerated. Indeed, on top of the accusations over his homosexual behavior there were also allegations of incest. The evidence seems much stronger to suggest the former versus the latter, which is likely people just misinterpreting his close relationship with half-sister and further jealously related rumor mongering. Some have gone so far as to claim he fathered a child with his sister. I personally find the evidence incredibly thin in that regard.

Now, one may ask why people were paying such close attention to one random aristocrat. He was far from the richest man in England or the most influential. He did, though, seek out attention and fame. In that sense, he's somewhat equivalent to a modern movie star: an artist thriving on the adoration and attention of the public. Of course this would end up eventually backfiring given that his every misstep alleged misstep was amplified in the public consciousness--again just like a modern movie star (though there's no record of Lord Byron jumping on a couch to declare his adoration for his love of the day).

He'd go on to father two confirmed children (one legitimate during his unhappy single year marriage and one illegitimate), though it's of course difficult to ignore the possibility he fathered a few more given his propensity toward sleeping around. Ironically, before I started studying the Regency in earnest, I already knew one of Lord Byron' children, Ada, who would later become the Countess Ada Lovelace, the so-called "Enchantress of Numbers". She worked with Charles Baggage, the grand master of mechanical computers, and developed what amounted to the first recorded computer algorithm.

Stepping back to Lord Byron, the various accusations and rumors floating about him basically forced his exit from England in 1816. There also was the small matter of his not insignificant debt. Live like a rock star, pay like a rock star, I suppose.

His departure year would be the infamous "Year Without A Summer" and a Byron-led vacation in Switzerland that lead to both Frankenstein and the The Vampyre. Lord Byron would never make it back to England. I'll discuss the circumstances around his early death (he died at the age of 36, 1788-1824) in week 3 of this mini-series.