Byron George Noel Gordon

Byron, George Noel Gordon, Lord Byron of Rochdale, Lancashire, a famous poet, author of Childe Harold, Don Juan, and other well-known works, was born in Holles Street, London, January 22nd, 1788. He was grandson of Admiral Byron and son of Captain John Byron, an officer in the Guards. His mother, Catherine Gordon, of Gight in Aberdeenshire, was the second wife of Captain Byron, who had previously been married to the divorced Countess of Caermarthen, by whom he had a daughter, the Hon. Augusta Byron, who afterwards married Colonel Leigh. Between this lady and her young half-brother, Lord Byron, there was a constant and sincere affection, even when the latter, deserted by many of his friends and abused by his enemies, lived almost in solitude, and eventually left England to take up the cause of political freedom, first in Italy and afterwards in Greece.

Captain John Byron died in France after squandering nearly all the fortune of his second wife, who was left with her infant son in comparative poverty, the estate of the Byrons at Newstead Abbey having been greatly reduced by the extravagance of the grandfather, and by a lawsuit on the part of the uncle, from whom the young lord inherited it. The widow, whose income was little more than £150 a year, had taken her boy to Aberdeen, where, when he was about five years old, he was sent to a day school for a year, and afterwards to a school kept by a Mr. Ross. From there he went to the Aberdeen grammar school, where, in spite of his lameness, he joined successfully in sports that required great activity. He was born with a contracted foot, such as is known as club foot, and one of his intimate friends declared that both feet were deformed. In 1796 Mrs. Byron took her son to the Highlands, where the scenery made a great impression on the boy's imagination and excited in his mind that love for the wild and grand aspects of Nature which is expressed in some of his poems.

Even at an early age the intensity of his sentiments was manifested, his affections and his dislikes were strong and influenced all his actions. When he was only eight years old he cherished a boyish love for his cousin, Mary Duff, and he long afterwards declared that his misery and his love for the girl were so violent that he doubted whether he had afterwards experienced any other real attachment. A nature like his needed great maternal care; but his mother, though she indulged and petted him, was a woman of violent temper, and often not only flew into a passion with him, but in the paroxysm of temper would fling at him whatever came to hand, and would speak of him as "a lame brat." In 1799 Mrs. Byron took her son to London, and in the following year sent him to Harrow, where he soon entered into the life and recreations of the school. In 1803 he spent his holidays in Nottinghamshire, where he met Mary Chaworth, the daughter of Mr. Chaworth, of Annesley, and became violently in love with her, a passion which the young lady neither encouraged nor returned. Two years afterwards he went to Cambridge University, where he made many friends and wrote several poems, which were printed in a volume for private circulation. One of his friends expostulated with him because of the immorality of one of these poems, and he immediately cancelled the whole edition and published another, which was sold to the public and achieved marked success. He spent a vacation in London, where he indulged in the dissipation that was customary among a certain class of young men of fashion at that time; but he was keenly susceptible of the real loneliness of his position amidst exaggerated praise for his brilliant abilities and equally exaggerated blame for what were supposed to be his licentious opinions. He had no friend or relations to whom he could appeal for guidance even had he wished to seek it, and his mother's violent temper had led to estrangement. A criticism on his poems, Hours of Idleness, in the Edinburgh Review, led to his publishing, in 1809, his satire called English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, which made a great sensation, though he afterwards retracted much that he had said because of its injustice. Early in 1809 his coming of age was celebrated at Newstead Abbey, and he took his seat in the House of Lords, but his loneliness, the neglect which be experienced, and his narrow pecuniary means, led to his leaving England. Passionate, but capable of deep affection and ardent friendship, and generous to all who sought his aid, Byron was too sensitive to bear the monotony of mere fashionable life without those deeper interests which engage the heart and the sentiments. For nearly two years he travelled in Portugal, Spain, Greece, and Turkey, and during his journey wrote the first and second cantos of his great poem, Childe Harold. He returned to England in 1811, when he heard that his mother was seriously ill at Newstead Abbey, whither he went too late to see her alive. In the following year the first part of Childe Harold was published, and he at once rose to fame and popularity. The payment for this and other work was handed to a friend, and for some years, until his own pressing needs compelled him to make personal use of the money, he would not accept any pecuniary advantage from his poems. In 1813 The Giaour, The Bride of Abydos, and the Corsair were published, and in 1814 Lara appeared. In the latter year, acting on the advice of friends, he proposed to marry Miss Milbank, who accepted him, and the wedding took place in January, 1815. His daughter Ada was born in the following December, and in January, 1816, Lady Byron left London on a visit to her father in Lancashire. Husband and wife seem to have parted in affection and regard, but immediately after her arrival her father wrote to tell Lord Byron that she would not return. The reason for this determination has never been known. Byron himself seems to have declared that he was unacquainted with any just grounds for it, and at a time when he was surrounded by pecuniary difficulties, and was almost overwhelmed - "standing alone on his hearth with all his household gods shivered round him" - he received the message that his wife, of whom he continued to speak with affection and respect, had parted from him for ever.

Then a storm of abuse and expressions of hatred and scorn burst around him. The number of those who accused him of all kinds of infamy was greater than that of his admirers. He had strongly satirised the vices of society, which he had attacked with the weapons of scorn and sarcasm, and now society turned on him. Strongly influenced by intense sympathy with oppressed peoples and nationalities struggling for freedom, he determined to leave England. In 1816 he departed on a journey to Switzerland, and on the way composed a further instalment of Childe Harold, and completed several other poems. From Geneva he went to Venice, where he continued to work and commenced Don Juan. From a course of degrading dissipation he was aroused by a sudden passion for the Countess Guiccioli, with whom he afterwards lived for some years; and he became a member of the Italian democratic revolutionary society, called the Carbonari. At the failure of the Italian revolution in 1821 he went to Pisa and afterwards to Genoa, where he threw himself with burning zeal into the Greek revolution. His money, his time, his talents, were devoted to the cause of Greek Independence. He went to Missolonghi, where he was appointed commander-in-chief of a proposed expedition against Lepanto. This was in January, 1824. On the 22nd he wrote the Lines On Completing his 36th year. The climate was such as to sap all his vital force, and on the 18th of February he was seized with a fit, from which he never really recovered. He died on the 19th of April, his last utterances being those of the names of his sister "Augusta," his daughter "Ada," and "Greece." Three weeks of general mourning were observed at Missolonghi with funeral services in all the churches before his body was conveyed to England, where, after a funeral ceremony in London, it was placed near the tomb of his mother in the ancestral vault of Hucknall Torkard church, Notts, where his beloved sister placed a tablet over his grave.