User talk:Ottava Rima/Byron

Books - (incomplete Bibliography)

Byron, Life and Legend - Fiona MacCarthy The Making of the Poets: Byron & Shelley in Their Time - Ian Gilmour Byron: Child of Passion, Fool of Fame - Benita Eisler Byron - E. C. Mayne (old but really important biography, also PD) Lord Byron's Strength - Christensen Byron's Daughter - Turney Critical Essays on Lord Byron - G. K. Hall & Co. publishers The Uninhibited Byron - Grebanier Lord Byron - Knight Byron - Joseph Byron: A Critical Study - Rutherford The Life of Byron - John Drink Water Byron - Longford Lord Byron - Harold Bloom Romanticism and Consciousness - Harold Bloom The Visionary Company - Harold Bloom

And some others. I will update this list later to finish it with the details. Ottava Rima (talk) 14:24, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Notes

Byron and Shelley in Their Time

p. 12 "Scotland's greatest poet was 'hatched', as he called it, on 22 January 1788. The anniversary is not widely observed. No annual suppers are held in Scotland or in faraway countries; no haggis is ceremonially speared before being eaten with discomfort or relish; no emotional speeches are delivered to evoke the 'immortal memory'. There are not even any toasts to 'the lassies'. Scottish celebrations take place three days later on the birthday of Robert Burns.

Admittedly Byron was born in England and wrote in English, yet his mother as a Gordon of Gight, his father took his mother's name to ease his intended inroads on her fortune, and Byron himself (who spent his early childhood in Aberdeen) insisted as a boy on being called George Byron Gordon. He was, he told Sir Walter Scott, 'bred a canny Scot till ten years old'.... When one of Byron's least favourite mistresses told him that he had a little of a Scotch accent, he replied: 'Good God, I hope not. I'm sure I haven't. I would rather the whole d...d country was sunk in the sea - I the Scotch accent!'""

Argument for him being Scottish follows onto the next page. Pages 14–20 about his ancestors.

pp. 73 and 74 have analysis of homosexuality and heterosexual promiscuity among school boys at Harrow.

p. 76 Bullying of Byron at Harrow p. 77 Byron and Robert Peel at Harrow (Byron comments on Peel's abilities as a scholar) p. 79 Byron read - histories, Lives of the English Poets, philosophers like Hobbes ("whom he 'detest(ed'"), poetry, the divinity works ("Blair, Porteus, Tillotson, Hooker, - all very tiresome. I abhor books of religion, though I reverence and love my God, without the blasphemous notions of sectaries or belief in their absurd and damnable heresies, mysteries and thirty-nine articles"), novels ("also read (to my regret at present) above four thousand novels), and Burton's Anatomy of MElancholy ("the most amusing and instructive medly of quotations & Classical anecdotes I ever perused").

"Indeed Ruskin considered Byron's early powers to have been founded on reading, which he thought 'utterly unparalleled in any other young life'.

p. 82 Byron described as spoiled by Gordon's neighbor. p. 83 at fifteen Byron was "small and fat with his hair plastered down on his forehead, he was both shy and disdainful of his neighbours, a combination which made him reluctant to mix with them." (1803) Byron visits Annesley to see Ann and William Clarke. Ann's daughter (William a step-father) was Mary Chaworth, descended of William Chaworth who the previous Lord Byron killed in 1764. Mary wanted to match Byron with her daughter. p. 84 However, Mary wanted another (Jack Musters) and Byron did not appeal to her. Byron would read to Mary and her cousin (Ann Radford). Byron fell in love with her and didn't want to return to Harrow. p. 85 Byron was dissuaded from his love (and angry) when he heard that Mary said "Do you think I could care anything for that lame boy?" He never stopped thinking about her - wrote about her in "For ever I'll think upon you" and in "The Dream". He stayed at Newstead (didn't go to his mother in Southwell) to hunt with Lord Grey (who was 23) p. 86 Grey and Byron stopped being friends - "The cause of their quarrel was clearly some sexual advance to the younger boy, and the incident is made perplexing only by the comment Hobhouse wrote in his copy of Moore's biography: 'A circumstance occurred during this intimacy which clearly had much effect on his future morals.' But since Byron plainly rejected Grey's advance, it can scarcely have affected his future morality. Hobhouse may have been suggesting that Grey and Byron were having a sexual relationship, but if they were why did Byron end it so abruptly and decisively? Probably Hobhouse's comment was muddled and appears to suggest something he did not intend." He then returned to Harrow. He became popular and no longer bullied at the school. He beat up bullies. Fought Lord Calthorpe "for writing 'D....d Atheist' under his name". p. 85 In the summer of 1804 became friends with his half-sister Augusta. He wrote her many letters (about oratory and life at Harrow).

p. 88 "Hence the question arises whether Byron's sentimental friendships with younger boys were just that or whether in at least some of them the sentimentality took physical expression. Homosexuality, as was seen earlier, was common in the public schools of the time with no fuss being made about it; later in Greece when parting from a boy Byron used the phrase 'as many kisses as would have sufficed for a boarding school'. Moreover during some stages of his later life Byron was strongly attracted to boys or young men. There is also more particular evidence. Faced with his friendship with younger boys at Harrow, his chief biographer, Thomas Moore, wrote an orotund paragraph explaining that they were merely the natural result of the English public school system. Against the paragraph in his copy of Moore's book Hobhouse wrote: 'M. knows nothing, or will tell nothing of the principal cause and motive for all these boyish friendships.' And the fact that Moore does seem to have had some knowledge and worries about them confirms what Hobhouse was implying about Byron.

Three other pieces of evidence do the same. At Cambridge Byron fell in love with a choirboy, John Edleston. In always stressing that this love was 'pure', he was evidently contrasting it with other loves or relationships; he never claimed that his relationships at Harrow were 'pure'."

(Note - the evidence of homosexuality in public schools was scant and based on easily to misunderstand expressions. The quote "sufficed for a boarding school" is talking about the amount (i.e. many people at a school to kiss goodbye) instead of saying that individual boys kiss each other a lot. It should also be pointed out that kissing does not equal relationship or sexual feelings. The last sentence also assumes that not saying "pure" acknowledges an impure relationship, which is not evident based on logic. Also, the above quote is a minority opinion, with most not speculating on the relationships based on lack of evidence.)

pp. 88–89 (cont. from above) "Secondly, early in 1807, he wrote a short autobiographical poem 'Damaetas' (whose suppressed title was 'My Character') which began, 'In law an infant, and in years a boy,/ In mind a slave to every vicious joy'. Admittedly Byron could conceivably have been referring solely to the period since leaving Harrow eighteen months before, but that is improbably. Admittedly, too, as his young Harrow friend William Harness later wrote, echoing Bolingbroke on Swift, Byron had a 'tendency to malign himself - this hypocrisy reversed'..... Finally, according to Lady Byron, Lady Caroline Lamb told her in 1816 that Byron had confessed to her that 'from his boyhood he had been in the practice of unnatural crime... he mentioned three schoolfellows whom he had thus perverted'. Caroline Lamb, who once defined truth to be what one thinks at the moment, was an untrustworthy witness, especially where Byron was concerned; yet even she can hardly have invented the whole conversation, though she no doubt exaggerated it and recounted it as luridly as she could.

The overwhelming probability then is that some at least of Byron's 'school friendship' were, as he said, 'passions', and were the most important of his 'ways and means' of amusing himself 'very pleasantly' at Harrow."

(Note - following this is claims that most boys are homosexual without any references, proofs, or the rest. Also, the "ways and means" were from a letter to Augusta and refer to keeping busy, and are added for exaggeration because this is a popular biography and not an academic publication.)

p. 91 At Southwell Byron (while Byron lived at Burgage Manor) became fond of Elizabeth Pigot but lost contact with her in 1807. He wrote poetry for her. p. 93 Byron lampooned Butler in "On a Change of Masters at a Great Public School". Cricket Match vs Eton in 1805 at old Lord's Grounds (Dorset Square) and Byron scored many runs (then a joke about him scoring at night).

p. 146 Befriends Edward Noel Long at Cambridge, wrote a poem to him in 1807. p. 147 Befriended William Bankes. p. 148 Byron tutored by Thomas Jones. p. 149 Didn't like metaphysics and avoided it. "He did not believe in heaven or hell and thought that 'men without religion [were] priests,' and that there were 'fools in all sects and impostors in most.'

(Note - the above is a major exaggeration when it comes to Byron and religion)

p. 150 Byron kept two servants and three horses at Cambridge. Spent more money than he had. p. 151 Homosexual activity at Cambridge with John Edleston.

Notes from Byron & Shelley in Their Time by Ian Gilmour, a popular biography. Ottava Rima (talk) 22:52, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Byron Child of Passion

p. 88 Arrived in Cambridge 24 October 1805. "When I went up to Trinity, in 1805, at the age of seventeen and a half, I was miserable and untoward to a degree. I was wretched at leaving Harrow, to which I had become attached during the last two years of my stay there; wretched at going to Cambridge instead of Oxford, wretched from some private domestic circumstances of different kinds, and consequently as unsocial as a wolf taken from the troop." p. 91 Spending a lot of money at Cambridge. p. 93 Frequenting brothels. p. 93-94 "I took my gradations in the vices - with great promptitude - but they were not to my taste - for my early passions though violent in the extreme - were concentrated - and hated divisions or spreading abroad. - I could have left or lost the world with or for that which I loved - but though untemperament was naturally burning - I could not share in the common place libertinism of the place and time - without disgust. - And yet this very disgust and my heart thrown back upon itself - threw me into excesses perhaps more fatal than those from which I shrunk - as fixing upon one (at a time) the passions which spread amongst many would have hurt only myself." p. 94 Eldeston ("pure passion") was his "protege". Described as a "homoerotic attachment". (background on Edleston and continues onto next page) p. 95 Claim - "Having a boyfriend in the choir seems to have been a tradition among certain Trinity undergraduates."

(Note - no evidence to support claim provided)

p. 96 Claim - "But surely his most treasured memories of Eldeston's ravishing voice would have been private ones, of songs sung for his pleasure alone."

(Note - no evidence to support claim provided)

p. 103 Favorite poet was Alexander Pope. p. 104 Poem used by Gilmour as evidence of Byron having a homosexual affair at Harrow used here to talk about debauchery of Byron in London ("neither youth nor affliction is summoned to excuse the horrors of which he has been guilty"). p. 105 "Vice may indeed have begun to pall. But he had also run out of money; London's pleasures did not come cheap." Returned to college and "he resumed his extravagant style with a vengeance." p. 106 Forced to return to his mother in poverty. p. 107 From Byron to Lord Clare - "My time has lately been much occupied with very different pursuits. I have been transporting a servant, who cheated me, - rather a disagreeable event: performing in private theatricals; - publishing a volume of poems (at the request of my friends, for their perusal); - making love - and taking physic. The last two amusements have not had the best effect in the world; for my attentions have been divided amongst so many fair damsels, and the drugs I swallow are of such variety in their composition, that between Venus and Aesculapius I am harassed to death." (6 Feb 1807)

Notes from Byron: Child of Passion, Fool of Fame by Benita Eisler, a popular biography.