The archetypal contentious celebrity, Lord Byron can be seen as the birth of cultural iconicism. Renowned for his sexual, political and literary exploits throughout early 19th century Europe, Byron cultivated a type of notoriety that can be compared to the decadence of modern anti-heroes...
However, more than just a short-tempered alcoholic with bad hair and a natural gift, Byron participated in societal revolution at every level. A man full of clashing ideals and passions, the trajectory of his mood swings were chronicled from a young age. This manic depression was characterised by his diet, emaciating himself for weeks on end and then immediately returning to gluttony. His physical embodiment of the arrogant dandy created within his own poetry defined romanticism, dousing the intellectual institutions of the time with a vitality and passion reminiscent of the pop celebrity-fueled narcotic revolution of the 1960s. Rest assured, if the 19th century possessed a tabloid media as self-righteous and morbidly curious as the modern day, Byron would have been its poster boy.
Born to parents of class, yet parents who shared and perhaps seeded his later disregard for matrimony, George Byron’s upbringing was extremely privileged and rife with formative experiences. The spoilt yet precocious young man attained his peerage at the ripe old age of 10, inheriting it due to the death of his notoriously psychopathic great-uncle, ‘Wicked Lord’ Byron. His mother raised him alone, Byron’s father - John ‘Mad Jack’ Byron - visiting infrequently and solely to gain money to satisfy his enormous debts. Amusingly, it seems that nicknames were something of a Byronic tradition, his grandfather John “Foulweather Jack” Byron presumably a victim of ‘Crowded-House Syndrome’, the melancholy condition of always bringing the weather with you.
This inconsistent parenting, a tempestuous relationship with his mother and early advances made on him by a scotch nanny, combined to create a man of extreme passion bridled by confused sexuality. Despite this, Byron’s formal education was first-class. Attending a grammar school in Aberdeen for the first 10 years of his tutelage, Byron was suspicious of its deeply entrenched religion. Having been born with a ‘club foot’, a malformed appendage that gave him a limp, and violent mood changes bordering on the psychotic, Byron considered himself a social outcast perhaps damned by the Devil himself. This oddity, present from an extremely young age, instilled him with a sense of unconformity that perhaps contributed to his later misdemeanors and celebrity.
Enrolled subsequently at the renowned all-boys Harrow school in north-west London, Byron made great use of the opportunity to develop relationships, some extremely intimate, with the abundance of young men present during his board. These relationships differed to the extreme fixations that had bloomed with young women from a notoriously young age. Byron did not discriminate his affection on gender, and by most modern accounts he would be considered bisexual. (Though this is still a matter of much discussion.) A Victorian account would not be so generously defined or forgiving. Infact such acts of ‘indecency’ were punished in the extreme, with some offenders being publicly hanged.
A statue of Lord Byron in Athens, Greece
In virtue of this potential castigation, Byron’s life was a poem of persistent escapism. Inspired, and in some ways forced, by his hero Napoleon and the traditional ‘grand tour’, Byron jaunted through the relatively peaceful area of southern Europe. Making his way through the mediterranean, a region that generally had a liberal attitude to homosexuality at the time, Byron found himself deeply attracted to its culture and language, particularly the Armenians and their heritage.
After his two year euro-trip, Byron returned to England and found a publisher. Extracting the satire from some of his poetry to achieve a wider audience, he found himself famous overnight. Much like the modern rockstar whose celebrity is not confined to his field, or the modern actress whose private life is a matter of worldwide interest, Byron’s enigmatic persona and affairs with aristocratic women dominated his celebrity. One such affair, with Elizabeth, the countess of Oxford, ignited a comically short-lived passion for politics. Utilising his peerage, Byron made 3 witty, poignant yet ineffective speeches in the House of Lords. The first, and arguably the most memorable, was a speech defending constituents of his local nottinghamshire, known as Luddites, who destroyed machines that had replaced them in local fabric-working factories.
Subsequent to the end of an ill-advised marriage and the birth of his (disputably) one and only child, Byron, now extremely famous worldwide, left England for a self-imposed exile that lasted until his death. In this final period of his tragically short life, Byron mainly inhabited Switzerland, Italy and his beloved Greece. Befriending several poets and visionaries that would become his counterparts in the romantic movement, including Mary Shelley (who famously conceived of Frankenstein at Byron’s estate by Lake Geneva), Byron also went on to have even more affairs with several nubile women of high repute. These adventures solidified and perpetuated his legend, contributing to his global celebrity. (Arguably the first of its kind.)
Byron, always one for brevity, reignited his political career for the role of revolutionary hero in the year preceding his death. Greece at the time was a part of the Ottoman empire, dominated by a turkish ruling class and possessed by a mutual class loathing. Having been a patron of Greek hospitality for a great length of time either side of returning to England, Byron believed in their right to independence and brought a great deal of publicity to their cause. He went on to fund the renovation of the Greek naval fleet, donating a fortune that by today’s terms would be the sort of fiscal stimulus needed to save the greek ship. Sadly, Byron’s tenure as the figurehead of Greek resistance came to a tragically early end, developing sepsis from excessive bloodletting after a particularly bad cold. It seems only fitting that Byron’s end was met due to excess, the impact of his notoriety and early death being a precursor to the byronic condition. Such is the morbid and capricious nature of human interest, a dignified end cannot be reserved for those who seek the attention and approval of all.
No comments:
Post a Comment