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Savings may vary by state. Restrictions

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apply. Seasight for details. This

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episode is brought to you by FX's

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The Veil, starring Elizabeth Moss. FX's

1:19

The Veil is an international spy thriller

1:21

that follows two women as they play

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a deadly game of truth and lies

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on the road from Istanbul to Paris

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reveal it before thousands of lives are

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lost. FX's The Veil premieres

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April 30th, only on Hulu. Hello,

1:42

Tom Holland here. This is just

1:44

to warn you that this episode

1:46

contains sexually sensitive

1:49

content. So please do be

1:51

warned, but don't necessarily be put off

1:53

listening to it for that reason. The

2:05

subject of conversation, of

2:08

curiosity, of enthusiasm almost

2:10

one might say, of the

2:12

moment, is not Spain

2:14

or Portugal, warriors or patriots,

2:17

but Lord Byron. His

2:20

poem is on every table,

2:22

and himself courted, visited, flattered

2:24

and praised wherever he appears.

2:27

He has a pale, sickly

2:29

but handsome countenance, a

2:31

bad figure, animated but amusing

2:33

conversation, and in short, he is

2:36

really the only topic almost of

2:38

every conversation, the men

2:40

jealous of him, the women of

2:42

each other. So Tom Holland,

2:44

that was the Duchess of Devonshire, and she was

2:46

writing the spring of 1812 to her

2:49

son. So her son at the

2:51

time was Britain's ambassador to the United States.

2:53

He'd soon be coming home after the outbreak

2:55

of war between Britain and the US. So

2:58

we're in the middle of the Napoleonite wars. And

3:01

last week, you took us brilliantly

3:03

through the story of Lord Byron,

3:05

his very, very turbulent childhood, his

3:08

travels in the Balkans and the

3:10

Mediterranean. And he has returned home, his

3:13

published Child Harold's Pilgrimage, and

3:16

it has become this unbelievable overnight

3:18

hit, arguably the first such hit

3:20

in literary history. Yeah, I think

3:22

so. And he's become this new

3:24

phenomenon of celebrity. So sales of

3:26

this poem are going through the

3:28

roof, just like with the Beatles,

3:30

all the producers who turned the

3:32

Beatles down are kicking themselves. So

3:34

publishers are kicking themselves as they

3:36

watch John Murray, the guy who

3:38

had taken a punt on Child

3:40

Harold moving, flush with the proceeds

3:42

into splendid new quarters on Arbemarle

3:44

Street off Piccadilly where John Murray is still

3:46

going, it's still a going concern, they still have those rooms.

3:49

And Byron, I think, is a celebrity

3:51

in the way that we would recognize

3:53

a celebrity, not least because he's absolutely

3:56

brilliant at manipulating and controlling his image.

3:58

So in that bit, you read. the

4:01

description of him being pale, sickly, but handsome.

4:03

I mean, that's very much the vibe that

4:05

he's going for. So he avoids

4:08

appearing in the morning because he feels that that doesn't

4:10

show him off to best light. So

4:12

it's kind of quite a vampiric sense

4:14

of himself as a creature of the

4:16

night. And he is obsessively concerned with

4:18

his dress. So kind of very distinctive

4:20

look, you know, the open shirt, the

4:22

black cloak. He's spending a lot of

4:25

money on his tailoring, which I think

4:27

is very commendable. Also

4:29

great enthusiasm for white quilted waistcoats and

4:31

white trousers of the finest cotton or

4:34

silk. And he'll buy a dozen, two

4:36

dozen of these to go. And

4:39

just like a celebrity today, you know,

4:41

controlling how they look, their appearance, photographs,

4:43

and things, I mean, Byron is doing

4:45

this with paintings, with details of him.

4:48

Plates of him will appear in his volumes

4:50

of poetry. You know, he's studying it very,

4:52

very closely. He is, again,

4:55

like a celebrity, obsessive about his

4:57

weight. We talked in the previous

4:59

episode how basically, I mean, he's the

5:01

limic, and he's got this new

5:03

thing where he started to chew gum as

5:05

an appetite repressant. Oh my word. So

5:08

he's probably the first celebrity to have chewing gum.

5:10

First gum chewing celebrity. You

5:12

describe him as a celebrity. Now you're probably not

5:14

aware of this guy, but there's a guy who's

5:16

written a history of celebrity. Oh, Greg Jenner. Called

5:19

Greg Jenner. Have you ever heard of him, Tom?

5:21

I believe he runs a podcast, doesn't he? So

5:23

he doesn't quite agree that Byron is the first

5:25

celebrity. He actually says that Dr. Sir Cheverill, from

5:28

the early 18th century, the disputatious

5:31

Anglican clergyman is the first celebrity. Capel

5:33

Loft is a big fan of his,

5:35

isn't he? Our intemperate listener. Yes, our

5:37

intemperate listener. So celebrity is something that

5:39

is driven by print culture, obviously. Yeah.

5:42

And I think that's the key thing, but also

5:44

by commercial culture. If you remember, we did the

5:46

episode on fashion in Jane Austen. Yeah. And

5:49

it's in exactly this period that fashion starts

5:51

changing every year because there were enough people

5:53

with money to do that. Right. But

5:56

that is the key. And so Byron is fashionable in

5:58

that sense. This is my question because

6:01

you compared a couple of times the emergence of

6:03

Byron with the emergence of the Beatles, who of

6:05

course also celebrities of a new kind when

6:07

they break through in between 1962 and 1964. But

6:11

with the Beatles, you could say the

6:13

market, the industry already exists. Had the

6:15

Beatles not existed, someone would have needed

6:17

to invent them. Is that also

6:19

the case with Lord Byron? Yeah, I think so.

6:21

And I think you can be very materialist about

6:23

it, that it's about the

6:25

infrastructure of publishing that enables it

6:27

to happen. It's not like

6:30

the Beatles, and the Beatles are a

6:32

mass phenomenon. This is obviously restricted to

6:34

people who can afford books. And it's

6:36

particularly centered, I think, of course, on

6:38

the aristocracy. But because

6:40

there are the equivalent of, I

6:42

guess, of Vogue magazines that are

6:44

reporting the doings of the aristocracy,

6:46

Byron's fame ripples outwards from that.

6:49

And as with celebrities today, you get

6:51

a fan culture. And

6:54

as with Beatlemania, it is hugely driven

6:56

by women. So you

6:58

get obsessive Byron fans. They are

7:01

writing him letters detailing all their

7:03

fantasies about him. They're writing

7:05

asking him for locks of hair. They

7:07

are stalking him. And

7:09

Byron is incredibly disconcerted by this, because

7:12

I don't think anyone has ever experienced

7:14

anything quite like this. So he pretends

7:16

to be dismissive of it. But secretly,

7:18

I mean, we know about these fan

7:21

letters because he keeps them. Right. You

7:24

know, he keeps them kind of locked away. And the

7:26

other thing, of course, that is also familiar

7:28

from the recent history

7:30

of celebrity, and I guess maybe

7:33

even more in Hollywood, perhaps, than

7:35

anywhere else, is that Byron has

7:37

very deep gay monsoons desires. And

7:40

this has to be repressed, because his female fan

7:42

base will not appreciate it. So

7:44

again, there is that sense of celebrity

7:47

being accompanied by a kind of

7:49

an erotic self-repression,

7:52

which is also a part of certainly

7:54

20th century celebrity. The tremendous pressure of

7:56

being subject to the fan culture. I

7:58

mean, the object of

8:00

every gaze, I guess, which is something a modern

8:02

celebrity would be completely familiar with. Byron

8:05

has this, even though most people, you said that it's

8:07

an aristocratic thing, and obviously that makes sense, because most

8:09

people aren't, but I mean, ultimately you said 10,000 copies

8:12

of the poetry book. That's tiny in

8:14

a country of millions. But is

8:16

Byron conscious when he leaves London, that people

8:18

know who he is, that he's a name

8:21

to be conjured with? Is his name spreading,

8:23

would you say? Yes, I think so, because

8:25

he's not going to remote villages to hang

8:27

out, but he is going to Bath, he's

8:29

going to places where the fashionable hang out,

8:31

and where the fashionable will be reported on,

8:34

and he is the person who's reported on.

8:36

And I think that you get a measure,

8:38

perhaps, of his fame by the way

8:41

in which elements of the Byronic, for

8:43

instance, start to appear in Jane Austen's novels. So

8:46

Pride and Prejudice will come out the year

8:48

after Byron turns famous, and I think there

8:50

are elements of Byron in Mr. Darcy, and

8:52

he is name-checked in Persuasion,

8:55

Jane Austen's last novel. And I

8:57

think the sense of what it

8:59

is to be an attractive, charismatic,

9:01

aristocratic figure, Byron is having a

9:03

huge influence on this. And

9:06

as you say, it generates huge

9:08

emotional pressure on him. And

9:11

I think that that explains why from the

9:13

beginning, his celebrity is shadowed by scandal. And

9:16

there are three relationships in particular

9:19

that, I mean, it's kind of

9:21

like Pride and Prejudice on hard

9:23

drugs. I mean, it's an amazing,

9:25

extraordinary, authentically scandalous story.

9:28

And that's basically the subject of

9:30

today's episode. Yes. So

9:33

if you like bad behavior, particularly

9:35

bad behavior, sexual conduct, this

9:37

is the episode for you. And if

9:39

you don't, other episodes are available. Yeah,

9:41

they're absolutely are. So the first of

9:44

these three affairs, three relationships,

9:46

it involves a woman who Fiona

9:48

McCarthy in her brilliant biography of

9:50

Byron describes as the fan to

9:52

end all fans. And

9:55

this is Lady Caroline Lamb, who

9:57

is the wife of William Lamb.

10:00

who on the death of his father in 1828 will become Lord

10:02

Melbourne. Queen

10:04

Victoria's first Prime Minister. So Rufus Sewell.

10:07

Yeah, Rufus Sewell, if you've seen the

10:09

TV series about Queen Victoria. So he

10:11

is actually quite a

10:13

distant husband, quite an austere husband.

10:15

The marriage isn't entirely happy. Caroline

10:17

has two miscarriages and then she

10:20

has a son who survives, but

10:22

she's not really suited to a

10:24

kind of slightly chill, ironic figure

10:27

like her husband because she is

10:29

very restless, wild,

10:32

ferouche. And her mother-in-law, Lady Melbourne,

10:34

who doesn't like her at all,

10:37

calls her the little beast. And it's

10:40

not just in her manners that she's

10:42

eccentric, but in her appearance. This is

10:44

Fiona McCarthy, Tom, very amusing. No, so

10:46

this is Benita Eisler, who has also

10:48

written a great biography. Yes, so description

10:51

of Lady Caroline Lamb. She was small,

10:53

unfashionably slender and flat-chested in an age

10:55

that admired opulent female attributes, splendid snowy

10:57

breasts, buttocks and bellies. Daringly, she had

10:59

cut her hair and her short flaxen

11:02

curls framed a thin face that large

11:04

dark eyes caused to seem even thinner.

11:06

So in other words, she looks like

11:08

a boy. Right. And not only that,

11:10

Dominic, but she actually enjoys dressing up

11:12

as a page boy. So she's kind

11:15

of gamine, I guess. Yes, we know

11:17

that Byron has the things for page

11:19

boys. Yeah. So all the ingredients are

11:21

there and Caroline is very romantic. And

11:23

so she, of course, reads Charles Harold's

11:25

pilgrimage, is swept away by it. She

11:28

writes him a fan letter. But then when they meet

11:31

at a ball, she cuts him dead. You

11:33

know, their eyes meet and she just moves away,

11:35

which of course is calculated to pique

11:37

his interest. Oh my God. Yeah, textbook.

11:39

Yeah. And then Byron is at Holland

11:42

House. So this wig, strangely named, centre

11:44

of wig salons. Yes. And the Melbourne's

11:46

also a wigs. So they're very kind

11:48

of intimate, close. And so Byron is

11:50

there. Caroline knows he's there.

11:53

The Melbourne's have a house, Dover House, which

11:55

is on Whitehall. And today in fact, is

11:57

the Scotland office. She has galloped from

11:59

there all the time. the way over to Holland

12:01

House in Kensington. And so she arrives

12:03

in her very masculine cut writing

12:06

habit, glowing, throws

12:09

herself down flamboyantly on a sofa.

12:11

She's all sweaty and stuff. It's

12:15

all absolutely calculated. So Byron goes to

12:17

Dover House the next morning and Caroline

12:20

has hosts these kind of, they're kind

12:22

of morning waltzes, maybe 40, 50

12:25

people are invited, they dance and then

12:27

they have a restorative cold dinner. It's

12:29

all very grand. It's the invitation

12:32

everyone wants to have. Byron comes,

12:34

of course, he can't dance because of his

12:36

club foot. So he just stands there posing,

12:38

looking kind of fately superior. I mean, he's

12:40

very shy and very nervous because he can't

12:43

dance at a dance. So it's awful. But

12:45

this just makes him all the more glamorous.

12:47

And again, I think one of the ways

12:50

in which he's massively influential is that he

12:52

kind of establishes the template of cool, of

12:54

not joining in, of being aloof. Yeah, standing

12:56

apart. So all eyes are on him. And

12:59

I think it's fair to say that the eyes

13:01

of two particular members of Caroline's extended family are

13:03

on him. So the first of these were already

13:05

mentioned, Lady Melbourne, who is Caroline's

13:07

mother-in-law. And she's a

13:10

terrible person. She's cynical. She's

13:12

manipulative. She's amoral. It's said of her that

13:15

she only has to see a happy marriage

13:17

and she works to destroy it. So

13:20

she's Madame de Merthoye. Is she in dangerous

13:22

liaisons, that kind of character? Absolutely.

13:24

So she loves writing letters

13:26

bitching about people, trying

13:29

to kind of cause mischief. And of course, the

13:31

Madame de Merthoye has the V comp de Valmois.

13:33

Anyone who's seen the film Dangerous Liaisons will remember

13:36

that. And she's thinking,

13:38

maybe Byron can be my Valmois. Who

13:41

knows? And she can use him to

13:43

basically ruin other people's lives and amuse

13:45

herself. She's intrigued by him. She knows

13:47

that Byron is great friends with Lady

13:49

Holland, who is quite like her. So

13:52

she knows that Byron has a kind

13:54

of thing for classy, sophisticated, middle-aged hostesses

13:56

of salons. So she is going to

13:58

put out the film. fearless to him.

14:00

But there is also another woman there

14:03

who is much younger and that is

14:05

Lady Melbourne's niece, Caroline Lam's cousin-in-law. And

14:08

she's from the northeast, so Dan

14:10

Jackson land. In fact, Jonathan Wilson

14:12

land. So they're two of our previous guests for people

14:15

who don't know what you're talking about. Yes.

14:17

So she is from a place called Seam, just

14:20

down the coast from Sunderland on the

14:22

North Umbrian coast. And she is called

14:24

Annabella Millbank. And she is

14:26

up for her second London season. And

14:29

I think it's fair to say that she's the opposite of

14:31

Caroline in almost every way. So she

14:33

is rounded, she's kind of buxom. Right. So

14:35

she fits the standard of beauty of the

14:38

time. She does much more. She has a

14:40

kind of round apple-shaped face. It's often described

14:42

as being. And her character,

14:44

she is very pious. She's

14:47

precociously good at maths. Maths?

14:49

I mean, what a weird fact that

14:51

is. She loves maths, loves maths. Big

14:53

fan of Jane Austen. And

14:56

she sits there rather primly. And in her

14:58

journal later that night, she affects contempt for

15:00

all the women who'd been fluttering around Byron.

15:02

She says rather precishly, I made no offering

15:04

at the shrine of child Harold. But then

15:07

she adds, though I shall not refuse

15:09

the acquaintance if it comes my way. Oh my

15:11

word. So there you've got the three characters. So

15:13

you've got the Lady Melbourne. She's nicknamed the spider.

15:15

Did you say that? She's nicknamed the spider. Yeah.

15:17

Spider. You've got Caroline Lamb, her

15:20

daughter-in-law, who looks like Audrey

15:22

Hepburn, in my mind. And then you've

15:24

got the other woman who's more sort

15:27

of buxom, Annabella, who's young and brilliant

15:29

at maths. Yeah. I mean, what

15:31

havoc. I can well imagine what havoc

15:33

lies in the store. Right. So

15:35

what happens immediately is that Caroline completely

15:37

monopolizes Byron. She recognizes he doesn't want

15:40

to dance. And so she leads him

15:42

up to her private quarters. She's

15:44

had ropes put a lot up the staircase so

15:46

that he can hold onto it and won't stumble

15:48

with his club foot. What goes on, we don't

15:50

know. But Three days later, he's back and he

15:53

brings a rose and a carnation and he hands

15:55

them over. And He says, your ladyship, I am

15:57

told, likes all that is new and rare for

15:59

the moment. In fact she will hold

16:01

that they'd rose to the rest of

16:03

her life. Okay, our obsession with Byron

16:05

is something that she will never ever

16:08

lose and buyer likewise is enraptured by

16:10

her. He writes he finds have a

16:12

voice very very erotic. He says it's

16:14

soft low caressing that was much of

16:16

beauty and a charm and he notes

16:18

that it reminds him of Charm Edelstein.

16:21

His voice is that the bloke the

16:23

he's safe from drowning vs the choir

16:25

boy who are then subsequently had died.

16:27

But what barren also likes his had

16:29

complete. Lack of as kind of

16:31

can't in his pants hypocrisy, down

16:34

posing morality bird hate soul that

16:36

an. Airline has nothing of

16:38

it and so rather injudicious. least he

16:40

starts to tell her or his secrets,

16:42

He tells all about her money problems

16:44

and Caroline rather sweetly rise since has

16:47

to have got my tools are seldom

16:49

like if you will the money and

16:51

he also start talking to her about

16:53

his homoerotic yearnings. And. In

16:55

response to that, See puts on her

16:58

page outfit actually the livery that she

17:00

had designed for her own pages. She

17:02

starts wearing that she saw addresses a

17:04

Boise Basically, yes, but not just. a

17:07

boy is seven and she renames one

17:09

of her own pages, Rust, who has

17:11

been the pageboy. You've gone with Byron

17:14

on his on his travels. Okay, went

17:16

to Portugal Vs. so there's a kind

17:18

of weird minuet going on there. one

17:21

hundred taboos and gender differences and class

17:23

differences. and they're all being played. To

17:25

his and it's all had a very

17:27

titillating but also obviously incredibly dangerous because

17:29

adding spice to the mixture is the

17:31

fact that it's an adult. Assess Assess

17:34

William Melbourne is a very, very distinguished

17:36

figure, but also I mean he's He's

17:38

like it's not just the having a

17:40

family be by affairs and reads as

17:42

London is the family cheese dressing up

17:44

as a page boy. he has if

17:46

you've been generous in reducing and you

17:48

would say these eccentric tastes, if you're

17:50

big on generous she would say they

17:52

were terrible taste, they were criminal. They

17:54

are. Byron. Is embarrassed by

17:56

some and. I. think essentially

17:59

is able imply that this is

18:01

Caroline's doing. So he

18:03

is not saying these are my tastes. The implication

18:05

is Caroline is doing this because she's a bit

18:07

mad, she's a bit cracked and the more the

18:10

scandal of it builds, the more

18:12

anxious about it it becomes, the more

18:14

desperate he becomes actually to kind of

18:16

try and break it off. So that's

18:19

counterintuitive? Not really because he is the

18:21

hero of the hour. He's the great

18:23

object of female erotic obsession. I

18:25

don't think it would cross anyone's mind

18:28

that he's anything other than a breaker

18:30

of women's hearts and Caroline is already

18:32

notorious as an eccentric. The blame for

18:34

it, and also this reflects the imbalance

18:36

of power between men and women, that

18:39

it's usually women who get blamed in

18:41

an adulterous relationship. And

18:43

I think also Byron is genuinely more

18:45

conventional in his social attitudes than Caroline

18:47

is. She's of higher rank and

18:49

the higher rank you are the

18:52

easier it becomes. He's more insecure about his

18:54

social position I suppose. Exactly. And

18:56

also Caroline is starting to behave

18:58

in an alarming way because basically she is

19:00

stalking him. And that Byron

19:03

has a lot of women who are stalking him

19:05

but Caroline is pushing it to extremes. So in

19:07

her disguise as a page boy, she breaks into

19:09

his rooms and starts rifling through his drawers, probably

19:12

looking for evidence that he's having a relationship with

19:14

other women. A few weeks later she disguises herself

19:16

not as a boy but as a man, breaks

19:19

into Byron's bedroom, Byron says please

19:21

leave, she refuses, manages to

19:23

persuade Byron to elope with her. And Byron I

19:25

think is quite passive in his relationship with women,

19:28

oddly. And Byron kind of says okay

19:30

I'll do that and he's only stopped from doing it

19:32

by Hobhouse who turns up and Hobhouse is very much

19:35

not the kind of person to be impressed by someone

19:37

like Caroline Lamb. Yeah, she sounds frankly Tom a bit

19:39

of a crap-bot and actually the next bit of behaviour

19:41

may confirm

19:44

this in people's minds. So now it's August 1812

19:47

and she sends Byron a cutting of her pubic hair

19:50

and what is

19:52

alarming For Byron is

19:54

that with them there is a knowing illusion

19:56

to John Edelstyn. Does This remind you of

19:58

John Edelstyn, Byron? That once say no

20:01

say Byron had written poems to donate Austin

20:03

under the name of see I saw the

20:05

So with a girl's name by and Caroline

20:07

Lan says this is from the person you

20:10

love as much as Css so it's bar

20:12

is causing him as safe with of blackmail

20:14

here right? and three days later see fantasies

20:16

from days a house and of runs out

20:19

yelling as a husband that she's running off

20:21

with Byron William Lamb completely loses it and

20:23

says go and be damned he won't have

20:25

you and is right Byron. Doesn't.

20:28

He manages sweet Caroline to go back to

20:30

Melbourne house than he sits down. He was

20:32

set up breaking of this. I mean he's

20:34

kind, but he's absolutely fab Said some how

20:36

long has been going on for the suffer

20:38

About five months. Five months as a reason

20:40

be sorts. When. Standards such things yeah

20:43

it is short and the it's about

20:45

the average like Separate has is a

20:47

says okay he seems to feel claustrophobic

20:49

if he has a relationship the last

20:51

longer than that and what are also

20:53

has until Caroline is that he has

20:55

been writing about her behind her back

20:57

to her to tested mother in law.

20:59

The some either Lady Melbourne device say

21:01

this is a twists as basically he's

21:03

been asking Lady Melbourne for help in

21:05

breaking up the affair and Lady Mouth

21:07

and decides that the only way that

21:09

the faq and probably be breaking up.

21:12

Is expired, gets married, Yeah,

21:14

I lady Melbourne suggests a nice.

21:17

And Abella Milbank Arcade say lady

21:19

my open army So dangerous liaisons

21:21

and it's unbelievable. Actually, I'm is

21:24

likely going to reenactments of it

21:26

as she's basically pimping outs her

21:28

nice the Apple Tft Max enthusiastic

21:31

in order to break up. Byron.

21:33

With her daughter know yeah she absolutely

21:36

is and a bit life Alma it

21:38

is beyond my control yeah he i

21:40

think is quite specific an idea open

21:42

he basically fancy very difficult to oppose

21:44

what see suggests and it's fair to

21:46

say that he is intrigued by Annabella.

21:48

He recognizes the role that he is

21:50

playing in her imagination so he he

21:52

writes said Lady Melbourne Miss Milbank is

21:54

too good for fallen spirit to know

21:56

always to know I should like a

21:58

more if she were less perfect. So

22:01

I think that that basically sums up the relationship

22:03

right? Just too good for him. Yeah, But also

22:05

the Annabel or is attracted to him precisely because

22:07

he seems to be a fall and spirit and

22:10

a fantasy in the long run will be to

22:12

try and redeem him and he doesn't want to

22:14

be redeemed. presumably. Kind

22:16

of. But I think. Also, he is aware

22:18

that it's slightly ridiculous as well i'm a

22:20

poses as a fool and spirit, but he's

22:23

also aware that it's funny. Yeah, and Annabella.

22:25

Nasa gets this. Annabella has no sense of

22:27

humor whatsoever. So he persuaded by Lady Melbourne

22:29

to make. America pencil and he does

22:31

this not paper and twelve. Carolina

22:34

still kind of hovering around like a

22:36

slight beating up the window. so he

22:38

sends on a ballot the offer Annabel

22:40

upon does it seem very very soberly,

22:42

rights and a list of all his

22:44

pluses and minuses. Yeah and then three

22:46

days a to right back and say

22:48

no I don't think that were seated

22:50

a good for her, she's made the

22:52

right choice, made him open up seed

22:54

furious if a who is this little

22:56

prick threats to turn down this tremendous

22:58

office, but Byron it seemed relieved and

23:01

he memorably describes Annabella as my Princess

23:03

of parallelogram. And astutely comments

23:05

we are two parallel lines prolonged

23:07

to infinity side by side but

23:09

never to meet would appeal to

23:11

a mess and Ccs as of

23:13

completely. But of course as airlines snubbing

23:15

him at the ball had peaked

23:17

his interest. So Annabella turning down his

23:20

marriage proposal also pizzas interest I

23:22

mean kind of makes him more interested

23:24

in how I think than he

23:26

would otherwise have been. Rights and definitely,

23:28

Annabella remains fascinated by him and

23:30

she starts racing team him. Despite.

23:33

The fact that she's turned him down. And

23:35

she justify cysts as a christian duty. in

23:37

a he is for spirit, he has a

23:39

duty to redeem him. Byron finds is hilarious

23:41

for with all her letters. To.

23:43

less is have preferred august even as he's

23:46

also keeping lady melbourne abreast with all his

23:48

other affairs so is gets off the say

23:50

long buses up rights in upset eighty mobile

23:52

i'm is very very dangerous liaisons and yet

23:55

all the while in his private channel which

23:57

is not say to lady melbourne he is

24:00

very complimentary about Annabella. He calls her a

24:02

very superior woman and you could think that's

24:04

both a criticism perhaps as well as a

24:06

compliment. But he's respectful of her.

24:09

And I think his sense of her appeal is

24:11

enhanced for him by two factors. The first of

24:13

these is that Caroline is still

24:15

very much on the scene and she's getting worse and

24:17

worse. So still stalking him? Stalking him, bombarding him with

24:19

letters, July 1813. So this is a year on from

24:21

their first

24:24

relationship. She goes to a ball, Byron is

24:26

there, she gashes herself with a piece of

24:28

broken glass, then stabs herself with a pair

24:31

of scissors, a massive, massive

24:33

scandal, blood everywhere. Although as Lady Melbourne

24:35

who leads her home notes writing about

24:37

it to Byron, she'd made sure that

24:40

none of the wounds were very severe.

24:42

Implication being that it's all done for show.

24:44

But it's reported in all the newspapers. And

24:47

so the scandal of it now is very,

24:49

very public. It's kind of reaching those provincial

24:51

towns that you were talking about, asking,

24:53

do they know about Byron? I mean, yes,

24:55

everybody in the country knows about it. So

24:57

Byron is feeling very persecuted by this. There

25:00

is simultaneously a second crisis brewing.

25:02

And this is the second of the relationships

25:04

that we talked about, the second of the

25:06

three relationships that we talked about. So Caroline's

25:09

the first and now the second.

25:11

Because even as all this is going on, Byron

25:13

reports to his friend Thomas Moore, the poet who will

25:15

be the first to write his biography. I

25:18

am at this moment in a far

25:20

more serious and entirely new scrape than

25:22

any of the last 12 months. And

25:24

that is saying a good deal. I

25:26

think to describe this as a scrape.

25:28

A scrape is when you're

25:31

at public school and you've climbed out

25:33

of the windows to get some apples from a

25:35

neighbouring orchard. What will follow is

25:37

not this. I don't want to give the

25:39

game away, Tom. Right. So listeners

25:42

may remember that in the first episode,

25:44

we talked about Mad Jack, Byron's father,

25:46

and he ends up marrying Byron's mother,

25:48

Catherine Gordon. But before that he had

25:50

eloped with the Marchioness of Camarthen, distant

25:53

relative of George Osborne. So Mad

25:55

Jack and the Marchioness of Camarthen have three

25:57

children. Two of them die, but one a

26:00

daughter Augusta survives.

26:03

And she is still very much on

26:05

the scene. She has married a gambler

26:07

and an absolute reprobate, so very

26:10

much running in the family, called

26:12

Colonel Lee. And

26:14

she lives near Newmarket, so very brilliant

26:16

for horse racing and everything, at a

26:18

place called Six Mile Bottom, which

26:20

is a very comic place for her

26:22

to live. And

26:25

her husband is massively in debt to bookies,

26:27

and so she comes up in the summer

26:29

of 1813 to ask

26:31

her brother for help with the

26:33

bailiffs. And she is very shy,

26:36

she's not fashionable, bit provincial. From

26:39

childhood she has adored Byron, Byron has adored

26:41

her. And physically Byron

26:43

finds her very attractive. She's actually

26:45

the opposite of Caroline. So Byron

26:47

later, in Don Dewan, he gives

26:49

a portrait of Augusta as a

26:52

slave girl in the Harrim and Constantinople called

26:54

a doo-doo. And he

26:56

describes her as a kind of sleepy

26:58

Venus, somewhat large and languishing and lazy,

27:00

yet of a beauty that would drive

27:02

you crazy. So

27:05

there's a physical attraction, but there's also, Byron

27:07

feels a kind of mystic bond. That

27:09

they share a cursed blood. And

27:13

the truth is that Augusta understands Byron and what makes

27:15

him tick in a way that no one else does.

27:18

She can make him laugh, she's good at kind of

27:20

getting him out of his melodramatic pits

27:22

of depression. She makes him feel

27:24

secure enough in a way that no one else

27:26

does. There are no scenes, there are no jealousy,

27:29

there's no stabbing herself with scissors or balls or

27:31

any of that kind of thing. And

27:33

so he's feeling insecure, he's feeling unhappy,

27:35

he ends up in bed with her.

27:38

Oh, I mean Tom. So

27:40

as you say, a scrape. A scrape. So

27:43

I mean half brother and half sister,

27:46

it's poor form. It is the definition of poor

27:48

form. And of course, both of them are aware

27:50

that their father had had an affair with his

27:52

sister. So again, there's this sense

27:54

it's a very byronic thing to do.

27:56

What's going on with this family? And

27:58

his father had eloped with... Augusta's mother, so

28:00

all that August 1813, Byron

28:03

and Augusta are discussing, well, we should elope. And

28:05

Lady Melbourne has kind of picked up on this

28:07

because of course, Byron can't resist telling her and

28:09

she's like, no, don't. Because obviously,

28:11

I mean, eloping with

28:14

your sister, how, why have you told her?

28:17

Why would you tell somebody whose nickname was

28:19

the spider that you were having an affair

28:21

with your own sister? I know. I mean,

28:24

just thank God he wasn't

28:26

on social media. I mean, imagine him

28:28

on Instagram or... Oh, bunkers. Terrible. So

28:30

anyway, Augusta and Byron, by the end

28:32

of August, have decided better of it.

28:35

So no elopement, but they do continue

28:37

their affair. So that's that kind of

28:39

Christmas of 1813, new year, and

28:41

then they go off together to Newstead. So

28:44

the baronial pile is Byron's inheritance,

28:46

as well Byron. And it's very, very

28:48

cold and wintry, deep snow, difficult for

28:51

them to get there. And when they

28:53

arrive there, it's as though they are

28:56

walled in by the snow. So the

28:58

great fires are blazing, torches, candles, and

29:00

they're there for weeks. And from

29:02

what both of them write, it seems to have been the happiest period

29:05

in both their lives. They're clearly

29:08

ecstatically happy. And

29:10

the atmospherics of being in this ancestral

29:12

pile, I mean, incredibly romantic in every

29:14

way. You know, the snow melts. It's

29:17

February. He has to go back to

29:19

London. And he's aware that he's kind

29:21

of teetering on the edge of massive,

29:24

massive scandal. And

29:26

he takes kind of very, very flashy

29:28

rooms, Dominic, and he takes them in

29:31

the Albany, which was

29:33

originally called Melbourne House. And Lady

29:35

Melbourne had spent her first years

29:37

as a bride there with Lord

29:39

Melbourne. They then sold it up

29:41

and moved to Dover House. But

29:43

of course, a similarly bironic figure, in the

29:46

long run, will move in and live there

29:48

in the same block. And that, of course,

29:50

is Edward Heath. Edward Heath, great star of

29:52

our 1974 series. And probably, is it fair

29:54

to say the least bironic person who's

29:57

ever lived? I think it

29:59

is. Yeah, so Byron settles

30:01

in there. He has the best set

30:03

of rooms in the Albany He writes

30:05

to Melbourne I've split up with Augusta,

30:07

but he then commits a terrible. I

30:09

mean unbelievable mistake He tells Caroline

30:12

lamb. It's like he can't help

30:14

but talk about it. He's so obsessed by

30:16

it Wow, he wants to share it

30:18

with Caroline. So the very person who's stalking him.

30:21

Oh, by the way, I'm sleeping with my sister Yeah,

30:23

and so Caroline writes back. I love that Augusta with

30:25

my heart because she is yours and is dear to

30:27

you Caroline then tells

30:29

Lady Melbourne Wow Byron's having an affair with his

30:32

sister I let you know that hits the

30:34

roof and he says what are you doing telling Caroline? I

30:36

mean, are you mad so Lady Melbourne's

30:38

not crossed that it's happening. She's crossed that he's

30:40

told Caroline She is crossed that it's happening, but

30:42

she's particularly furious that he's told Caroline partly

30:45

I think because she knows you know, don't tell

30:47

Caroline she'll tell everyone but also

30:49

because it's her confidence So she feels offended

30:51

and so they agree, you know, there's nothing

30:53

for it he's got to get married and

30:56

Lady Melbourne says well, what about Annabella pimping

30:58

her out again and Byron

31:01

knows that this is possible because

31:03

Annabella has invited him to see him

31:06

in the Northeast Yeah, and this has

31:08

been done with her parents permission and

31:10

Byron writes back and says yeah, okay

31:12

But then having done that he prevaricates

31:14

he's obviously thinking. Oh Yeah,

31:17

I can see why it would work from

31:19

one point of view but from another they

31:21

really think she's my kind I don't think

31:23

it will really work out and

31:25

so they're endlessly writing and Annabella

31:27

writes to him you do not appear to

31:29

be the person whom I ought to select

31:31

as my guide my support My

31:33

example on earth with a view still

31:35

to immortality. So they've been discussing Should

31:39

they marry and she's writing and saying I think

31:41

you'll be bad for my soul and as soon

31:43

as soon as she says this He's like great.

31:45

I'm in as soon as she says I don't

31:47

think we should marry he writes and says yeah

31:50

Let's get married and Annabella immediately is so happy

31:52

to get that that she writes the same letter

31:54

both to Albany and to Newstead Because

31:56

she's not sure where he's going to be and in

31:58

fact the letter his Byron

32:00

at Newstead on the

32:03

17th September and he is there with

32:05

Augusta and he opens the letter, he

32:07

reads it and Annabella has written, this

32:09

is a moment of joy which I

32:12

have too much despaired of ever experiencing.

32:14

I dared not believe it possible. Byron

32:16

reads it and then he hands over

32:19

the letter to Augusta and he had

32:21

shown Augusta his proposal of marriage before

32:23

he had posted it. So Augusta knows

32:26

exactly what's going on and approves it.

32:29

Augusta takes

32:31

the letter, glances at it, looks

32:33

up at Byron, sees that Byron

32:36

is deathly pale and Byron's comment

32:38

on it, it

32:40

never rains but it pours. What

32:43

a bizarre story. I don't think I'm giving

32:45

anything away when I say that things will

32:47

get more complicated, weirder in the second half

32:49

and they won't end happily for everybody ever

32:51

after will they Tom? No. Come back after

32:54

the break to find just how weird things

32:56

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34:03

He had been expected for the two preceding

34:05

days. My mother was impatient, which had not

34:07

suffered any interruption since the time that I

34:09

accepted the offer of marriage. I

34:12

was sitting in my own room, reading, when

34:14

I heard the carriage. I

34:16

put out the candles, deliberated what should be

34:18

done, resolved to meet him

34:20

first alone. It was

34:22

so arranged. He was in

34:24

the drawing room, standing by the side of the

34:27

chimney-piece. He did not move forwards

34:29

as I approached towards the fireplace. There

34:32

was a silence. He

34:34

broke it. It is a

34:36

long time since we have met, in

34:38

an undertone. My

34:41

reply was hardly articulate.

34:44

So that was Annabelle and Milbank, remembering the

34:46

moment that Lord Byron arrived at Siam on

34:49

the evening of the 1st of November, 1814.

34:53

He has finally accepted

34:55

his proposal of marriage.

34:58

And Tom, the happy lovebird.

35:01

Yes. Yeah. Surprise

35:04

me. Tell me that it all ends really happily.

35:06

Well, the stay is a bit of a disaster.

35:08

Actually Byron gets on all right with Annabelle. They seem to

35:11

have been quite happy. They go for kind of walks on

35:13

the coast and hold hands and

35:15

all that kind of thing. But he

35:17

doesn't really get on with his mother-in-law,

35:19

Lady Milbank. Although that said, again, he

35:21

quite likes his father-in-law, Sir Ralph Milbank,

35:23

who's a wig like Byron, very opposed

35:25

to the slave trade. He's a kind

35:27

of bluff industrialist as well. So he's

35:29

using Stevenson's rockets to

35:31

take coal from the

35:34

coal mines that he owns up to Sunderland. So

35:36

that's very exciting. And Dominic, he's

35:38

a lover of all things English and

35:40

hates the French. Oh, yeah. Byron

35:42

wouldn't like that, but you would have liked that.

35:45

So if I married Annabelle and Milbank, it would

35:47

all be suspended. Basically, the problem is

35:49

that Byron finds him incredibly dull. And I

35:51

think it reminds him of his childhood in

35:53

Aberdeen. He hates the

35:55

kind of northerly provincialism. And

35:58

so he, as well as going for walks, we're going to do that. with Annabella,

36:00

he starts exploring her in

36:02

more intimate ways. And

36:04

of course, he gives a graphic account

36:06

of this to Lady Melbourne. Oh, for

36:08

God's sake. Why would you tell Lady

36:11

Melbourne that? Reports that her

36:13

passions are stronger than we supposed. So

36:15

they've obviously been discussing it in some

36:17

detail. But Annabella stops

36:19

Byron from going too far, which annoys

36:21

Byron a lot. And so

36:24

he stays two weeks there. And then he

36:26

heads back. And where do you think he

36:28

heads? Straight for

36:30

six mile, bottom and Augusta. Is that physical

36:32

relationship still continuing, do we know? Unclear,

36:35

but I think probably. Right. So

36:37

I mean, you may well wonder why does the

36:39

marriage go ahead when it's clearly going to be a disaster?

36:42

And I think that on Byron's side,

36:44

he does have feelings for

36:46

Annabella. I think he admires her. I

36:49

think there's kind of elements of love there. There's also

36:52

the fact that all the marriage contracts have been drawn

36:54

up. So Byron's lawyer, Hanson, has gone and done all

36:56

that. So difficult to break it.

36:58

It's been announced in the press. I

37:00

mean, it would be very embarrassing. And

37:02

I think that, you know, we talked

37:04

about how Byron is quite passive in

37:06

the face of particularly relationships with women.

37:08

Yeah, I think there's a kind of

37:10

mixture of fatalism about it. And

37:13

of course, a dread of basically what will

37:15

Caroline do? Oh, yeah. He's kind of anxious

37:17

about that as well. Because Caroline's

37:19

message to him on learning of the

37:21

engagement is to say, I

37:23

love you as a sister field, as your

37:25

Augusta feels for you. So that's Caroline saying

37:28

I know about you and Augusta as well.

37:30

Yeah. So basically, I think Byron feels, well,

37:32

if I marry Annabella, then it will just

37:34

look like Caroline's mad. Yeah. I mean, but

37:36

she's by now got this colossal dossier on

37:38

him. She has. She's got all

37:40

the stuff for the bloke in Cambridge. She's got the stuff for

37:42

the sister. That's a terrible thing to have hanging

37:45

over you. Right. So if you marry a kind

37:47

of pious mathematician, I mean, you know, she's a

37:49

kind of beard, I mean,

37:52

I think she is seduced by his

37:54

beauty and fame. I mean, she denies

37:56

it, but she clearly is. She's clearly

37:58

very, very... by him and

38:01

by an undue course after the failure

38:03

of their marriage, spoiler alert, he writes

38:05

cruelly but I think very accurately that

38:07

she married me from vanity and the

38:09

hope of reforming and fixing me. Gully,

38:12

that's very modern, isn't it? He

38:15

can see that she wanted to fix him, to reform

38:17

him and he knows it's not going to work.

38:20

And again, that's the kind of thing you get in

38:22

Jane Eyre, that kind of the mills and boon. I

38:25

mean, it kind of establishes the template. So

38:28

the marriage is fixed for early

38:30

1815. So Byron

38:32

and Hobhouse set off from London

38:34

on Christmas Eve 1814. Byron

38:37

spends Christmas at Six Mile Bottom with

38:39

his sister and then they set off

38:41

again. And Hobhouse says of this

38:43

journey, never was a lover in less haste. They

38:46

arrived very late on the 30th of

38:49

December. Hobhouse inspects

38:51

Annabella, records in his journal

38:53

that evening rather dowdy looking and wears a long

38:55

and high dress so she has excellent feet and

38:58

ankles. Don't disregard feet and ankles, Tom. I mean,

39:00

you can't. But over the next

39:02

few days, he comes to admire her,

39:04

thinks that she's a very impressive woman,

39:06

describes her as very sensible. And his

39:08

judgment is actually that Byron and Annabella

39:11

are in love. He finds their relationship

39:13

quite affecting. And the marriage

39:15

takes place by special dispensation that's been issued

39:17

by the Archbishop of Canterbury in the living

39:19

room of Seam House overlooking the North Sea.

39:22

And this happens on New Year's Day, 1st

39:24

of January 1815. And

39:27

the moment the wedding is done, Annabella bursts

39:29

into tears. I mean, maybe that's kind of

39:31

high emotion. I mean, who knows? And

39:34

then after the wedding, anyone

39:37

who's listened to our episode with Dan Jackson

39:39

on the North Sands Divide will recognize this

39:41

as a very, very Dan moment. Before

39:44

they leave, before Byron and Annabella leave the

39:46

house, some coal miners, ten

39:48

of them arrive fantastically thrust and they

39:50

do a sword dance. Which is the

39:52

kind of custom that seems to have

39:55

gone into abeyance since then. Yeah, that

39:57

doesn't happen in the North of England.

40:00

that with more with Albania, frankly, with Byron's

40:02

own stamping grounds. Yeah. So that's great. I

40:04

mean, it's, you know, wonderfully Northumbrian.

40:06

Yeah. And then they set off

40:09

the happy couple set off to another

40:11

Milbank property, which is Halnaby Hall near

40:13

Darlington. So how does honeymoon go?

40:15

Oh, Tom, I'm dreading this. So Byron writes,

40:18

Sadie Bellman says, well, great, fabulous.

40:21

However, there are other

40:23

accounts, Lady Byron's own account.

40:25

So Lady Byron is Annabella. So Annabella is

40:27

now Lady Byron. And all

40:29

the comments that Byron makes to his

40:31

friends and also things that he wrote in

40:34

his memoirs, which subsequently get burnt by Hobhouse

40:36

to spare scandal, but which various people have

40:38

read and they remember it. So

40:40

if you collate these reports, this

40:43

is the account of the honeymoon. So they're

40:45

driving through Durham, the bells are ringing for

40:47

them in their honor. And

40:50

Byron begins singing and

40:52

basically ranting. And

40:54

he tells Annabella, she has doomed him. She'd

40:56

rejected him two years earlier. If only she'd

40:59

done that, she would have spared him damnation

41:01

alluding to the incest, but not actually naming

41:03

it, but dropping very, very heavy hints. He

41:06

says that she has doomed him to tragedy. He

41:09

then starts slacking off her mother. Oh,

41:11

God. Says that Lady Melbeth says that

41:13

her mother's a terrible woman. So it's

41:16

not a happy drive. This is a very poor way

41:18

to leave the service

41:21

and the reception. Yeah. They arrive

41:23

at Hounby Hall. Byron then apparently

41:25

had written, I had Lady

41:27

Byron on the sofa before dinner. He'd written this

41:30

in his memoirs. Well, that's something I suppose. I

41:32

mean, that's the plus point. It's then time for

41:34

them to go to bed. Byron informs Lady Byron,

41:36

I hate sleeping with women. I don't want to

41:38

go to sleep with a woman, but if you've

41:40

got to, well, okay, fair enough. So that's not

41:42

particularly appealing. And by that he means literally sleeping.

41:45

Literally sleeping in the bed and they go to

41:47

sleep. And then Byron wakes up in the middle

41:49

of the night. The curtains are a bright scarlet.

41:51

There's a flickering candle and Byron cries out, good

41:53

God, I am surely in hell. I

42:00

mean, poor lady Byron. I

42:02

mean, just awful, awful. I

42:05

mean, this is what he does. He's Byron. He

42:07

plays up the melodrama. You know, he does all

42:09

this kind of stuff. This is what happens if

42:11

you spend too much time on your maths. Right,

42:13

because she doesn't recognise that there is an element

42:16

of self-parodied to this. Right. And

42:18

so Augusta would have recognised this, would have laughed

42:20

him out of it, would have made a joke

42:22

of it, and Annabella doesn't. And so this just

42:24

reminds Byron more and more of Augusta. And so

42:26

he starts writing to Augusta and dropping hints about

42:28

how close he is to Augusta. And that

42:30

just makes Lady Byron more and

42:32

more kind of rigid with nervousness and tension.

42:35

And so it's terrible. Now the thing

42:37

is that there are clearly moments

42:40

where they behave like a conventional

42:42

loving couple. He's writing these

42:44

poems. They're called Hebrew Melodies. He's been asked

42:46

by a Jewish composer to write

42:49

some poetry based on the Old Testament

42:51

that this Jewish composer, Isaac Nathan, can send

42:53

to music. And Lady Byron

42:55

is kind of copying it up. And these

42:57

are some of Byron's most beautiful poetry. So

42:59

people may have heard the destruction of Seneca

43:01

Rib. The Assyrian came down like a wolf

43:04

on the fold and his cohorts were gleaming

43:06

in purple and gold. So it's

43:08

all great stuff. And Lady Byron is helping him with that. But

43:10

then the time comes for them to head south. And

43:13

where do they head? Oh, not to

43:15

sister's house. Six-mile bottom. That is exactly

43:17

where they go. And

43:19

by this point, Annabella is really starting to

43:22

put, you know, she's a mathematician. She's trying

43:24

to do it together. And

43:26

she's arriving at four. And

43:28

when they meet with Augusta, all

43:31

her suspicions are confirmed because by now Byron is

43:33

behaving with I think palpable

43:35

cruelty. Basically saying to Annabella, you

43:37

know, you go to bed. I don't need you anymore. I've

43:40

got my sister. I mean, horrible

43:42

behavior. And into course,

43:45

he basically involves them in a threesome. Yes.

43:48

Golly. His delight was to work us both

43:50

well. So that's Annabella writing after

43:52

the failure of the marriage. And

43:55

he basically he's lying on the sofa and he's

43:57

making them both lie beside him. Would you like

43:59

to have an incest? She was three semesters, me

44:01

and my sister. I mean, that's not a request

44:04

you often get, is it? I mean, that's bad

44:06

enough. You know, the man you've just married is

44:08

having an adulterous affair with

44:10

his sister. And wants you to get

44:12

involved. When she writes about this, there's

44:14

something so tragic, because what really upsets

44:16

her, she writes, I was sensible that

44:18

he was more warm towards Augusta than

44:20

he was to me. And when Lord

44:23

and Lady Byron move on to London, Augusta

44:25

goes with them. Oh, right. And in many

44:27

ways, you know, he can behave terribly, but

44:30

he has deep reserves of generosity, of kindness

44:32

as well. Why is he

44:34

being so cruel? I think he's angry with Augusta.

44:36

I think he's angry with himself. I think he's

44:38

angry with Annabella for the reasons that he said

44:40

that, you know, if only she'd married him

44:43

earlier, that none of this would have happened.

44:45

He does have massive financial anxieties, because he,

44:47

predictably, he's taken room, a house that they

44:49

can't really afford. On Piccadilly Terrace, which is,

44:51

maybe in London, it's right by Hyde Park,

44:54

overlooking Green Park. I think also he feels

44:56

trapped. And whenever Byron feels trapped, he behaves

44:58

very badly. Lashes out. Yeah, he kind of

45:00

lashes out. And

45:02

there's a social occasion that sums up why he

45:05

would have been under stress. I mean, it must

45:07

be one of the worst parties of all time.

45:10

So they have this kind of soiree

45:12

at Piccadilly Terrace. Lady

45:14

Melbourne come with Lady

45:16

Caroline Lamb. Annabella

45:19

is there. And Augusta is there. Oh,

45:21

my God, all his women in one room. Annabella's

45:24

mother. That

45:28

is so weird. Oh, my word. Why would

45:30

you put yourself through that? I mean, I

45:32

know. Why would you not just

45:34

make claim you're ill or disappear? I think Byron

45:37

is ill. I mean, I think he's psychologically ill.

45:39

And this is the last time that Caroline will

45:41

see Byron, because shortly after this, Napoleon, all this

45:43

time, you know, great adventures, he's been sent to

45:46

Elba, he's come back. And the

45:48

Battle of Waterloo will be fought a few

45:50

weeks after this. And Caroline's brother gets wounded

45:52

at the battle. And so she leaves London

45:54

to go to Brussels. And while

45:56

she is in Brussels and then in Paris,

45:58

all hell. She

46:01

will never see Byron again because again spoiler Byron is

46:03

going to end up going into exile. The

46:06

crisis comes to a head in November 1815 and

46:08

by now Annabella is eight months pregnant

46:10

and Byron's stress is kind of reaching

46:12

breaking point. He's drinking very very heavily

46:14

just to kind of add you know

46:16

horror to the mix. He's having an

46:19

affair with an actress, a

46:21

dropping hints about that both

46:23

to Augusta and to Annabella and

46:25

then on the 8th of November Bayless forced their way into

46:27

the house. And

46:29

Byron confesses to Hobhouse that I feel half

46:31

mad. He feels half mad with the pressure

46:33

of his marriage, with the pressure of the

46:35

financial humiliation that he's suffering. He says

46:38

my financial worries are doubled by the

46:40

fact that I have a wife. But

46:43

he remains a kind of proud aristocrat. Murray

46:45

offers to lend him money. He

46:47

owes £1500 and the library has been offered

46:49

up aserity and Murray says I'll pay off

46:51

the debt so you can keep the library

46:53

and Byron refuses. He refuses to take money

46:55

for his royalties and the person who helps

46:58

him out is Sir Ralph, Lady Byron's father

47:00

and the Bayless move out on the 9th

47:02

of December just as Lady Byron is going

47:04

into labour and on the 10th of December

47:06

she gives birth to a daughter who is

47:08

called Augusta. Oh come on Byron. Tom he's

47:10

just behaving very self-indulgent now, I'm sorry. He

47:13

is but her second name is Ada and

47:15

so unsurprisingly by her mother she will come

47:17

to be known as Ada. The

47:20

birth of the child does not

47:22

at his fair to say bring

47:24

them closer together and Byron's response

47:26

to the fact that his

47:28

wife is recovering from labour is to

47:30

start dropping hints not about incest which

47:33

Lady Byron now knows all about but

47:36

about sodomy. Although he

47:38

does try to assure her that as he says I

47:40

have never done an act that would bring me under

47:42

the law at least on this side of

47:44

the water. So basically saying I haven't

47:47

had any gay affairs at least since I

47:49

came back from my travels. At least not

47:51

on this side of the water. So he's

47:53

deliberately leaving the implication open which is what

47:55

he does right? There must be a cruelty

47:57

in his nature Tom. Yeah I Think so.

48:00

This image. I mean that's the image of

48:02

the barn, Akira, the nameless crime. Yeah that's

48:04

what is all about. Give it to keep

48:06

taunting her and leaving the hits the i

48:08

create some speaker be cruel behavior. And.

48:10

Lady by by this point is it breaking

48:13

point And so she says I want to

48:15

take ada new bombshell can see my parents

48:17

and by response to this is yes Guppies

48:19

Guys and Co soon as possible. So. Lady.

48:22

By by now basically is convinced that

48:24

he's mad and so see as Caroline

48:26

had l it as he starts rummaging

48:28

through his drawers and his trunks and

48:30

everything in his letter cases, searching for

48:32

evidence the See will be able to

48:34

produce to demand a separation. and she

48:36

discovers in it's a traveling trunk, a

48:39

bottle of Laudanum so opium and secret

48:41

copy of Justine by the Market assault.

48:43

So this is what Barn has been

48:45

reading and on the fourteenth of January

48:47

before she leaves him she goes to

48:49

a doctor and consults with him about

48:51

Byron. And a resistance all because a

48:54

test me is really interesting. She says this

48:56

about Bar and he's convinced that he must

48:58

be wicked, is for doomed to evil, and

49:00

compelled by some irresistible power to follow his

49:02

destiny, doing violence all the time to his

49:04

feelings Under the influence of this imagine fatalism,

49:07

he will be most and kind to those

49:09

whom he loves best. I think that's

49:11

absolutely true. Suffering agonies at the same time for

49:13

the pain he gives them. He then believes the

49:15

well to be governed by the ligaments spirit and

49:17

at one time conceived him says to be a

49:20

fallen angel though he was half the same to

49:22

the idea of becoming a mysterious about it after

49:24

I seem to detect it. Don't you think he

49:26

some mentally ill I think is under such stress

49:28

as effectively to be so at this point. yeah

49:31

okay A says that evening. After

49:33

she's been to consult with doctor she's

49:35

sitting with Byron and with Augusta and

49:37

Byron says winter we three meet again

49:39

and lady Boner place to him in

49:41

heaven I hope. An. Early the

49:43

next morning before Byron scott up, she leaves Steaks

49:45

A to with her and on a second to

49:48

separate Byron gets a letter from Sir Ralph Mell

49:50

Bank. Lady Barnes father asking

49:52

him to agree to a separation and

49:54

aided to some big spoiler. See.

49:57

as of course ada lovelace and since this

49:59

sort of fact computing pioneer. So she's got

50:01

her maths from her mum. She does. Yeah,

50:03

she gets her very self destructive streak from

50:05

Byron, but we'll come to that at the

50:07

end of the next episode. Now,

50:09

what is interesting is that this letter from Seraf

50:11

mobile comes as a complete shock to Byron. And

50:14

he writes back to Seraf denying any

50:16

suggestion of ill treatment. And

50:20

it is fair to say that all the

50:22

accounts of Byron's ill treatment do

50:25

come from Annabella. I mean, clearly she has

50:27

been driven to leave

50:29

him. I mean, she's a very

50:31

pious, devout woman, clearly still in

50:33

love with him. So she's not

50:35

leaving him for no reason. But I think it

50:38

is fair to just to kind of raise the

50:40

possibility that she might be perhaps

50:42

overshadowing things. So I think

50:45

a kind of classic example of the

50:47

scope that exists for misunderstanding between Byron

50:49

and Lady Byron. Annabella reports that as

50:51

her labor began, Byron

50:53

goes out to the theatre, and

50:55

he then comes back. And he

50:57

spends the night downstairs throwing bottles

50:59

at the room in which

51:01

she is giving birth, presumably to

51:03

kind of disturb her and upset

51:06

her giving birth. And she tells

51:08

this to Hobhouse. And Hobhouse thinks

51:10

I can't be true. And

51:12

so he goes and looks at the ceiling where

51:14

Byron is supposed to have thrown the bottles. And

51:17

there's no marks of any bottles having been thrown

51:19

there. And Hobhouse's conclusion is that this is Byron's

51:21

playful habit of knocking off the heads of the

51:24

bottles with a poker, and that

51:26

they're sufficiently accounted for the noise. I mean, you might

51:28

say, well, you know, I

51:30

mean, even, you know, if your wife is in labor,

51:32

knocking bottles off with a poker is a bit unsettling.

51:35

But I don't think there was deliberate cruelty there.

51:37

So it's difficult to know. And this is why

51:39

Hobhouse much later says that Byron could have written

51:41

out the scandal if he'd wanted. You know, he

51:43

says there was not the slightest necessity even in

51:46

appearance for his going abroad. But Tom,

51:48

first of all, Hobhouse's party pre is

51:50

Byron's old friend. And

51:52

secondly, the portrait you have given of

51:55

their marriage and their relationship given What

51:58

you've already told us about Byron About. The

52:00

his patterns of behavior, the traumas he

52:02

suffered as this boy for these kinds

52:04

of things, It does sound

52:06

plausible I'm it does sound like you would have

52:08

done all. This is a does it does. I

52:11

think it's a summit is absolute worst. And

52:13

I think there was a possibility

52:15

of his writing out scandal, not

52:18

least, because by this point Lady

52:20

Caroline Lamb is back from Paris

52:22

and the news got out that

52:25

Lady Bird has as left a

52:27

husband and Caroline rallies to her

52:29

cousin in law's. Support.

52:32

And see stop spreading to

52:34

parable rumors I say offs

52:36

that bird has been having

52:38

an incestuous i was his

52:40

sister and that he is

52:42

and then ccs stick practitioner

52:44

of sodomy and. See.

52:47

How Santa Bella who of course is desperate

52:49

to keep Ada because there's no guarantee that

52:51

the mother will keep the child and maternal

52:53

separation see says I'm guessing he this information

52:55

so that you can menace him with the

52:57

knowledge of it and it was solely make

53:00

him crumble. And. There

53:02

is a particularly damning charge which

53:04

is heard by Lord Holland his

53:06

and tells hop House that bar

53:08

to try to sort a nice.

53:11

Lady. Byron and virus has this isn't

53:13

true rights to the lawyers and gets

53:15

lady buyer and to acknowledge that this

53:17

toss a sodomy that it did not

53:19

for many part of the chart his

53:21

wits in the event the separation by

53:24

agreement not taking place since to the

53:26

been compelled to make against Lord Byron.

53:28

But as for ambivalent. So. Is

53:30

it's denial that it happened only see

53:32

saying that she wouldn't use it in

53:34

court. I mean it's not play idea

53:36

be terribly humiliating for her to have

53:39

used in coordinates. I mean it's unlikely

53:41

she would have used and co a

53:43

word and I say it's almost become

53:45

the orthodoxy that this did happen and

53:47

that this was her breaking point And

53:49

this William Gibson and Bruce Sterling greater

53:51

book the Difference Engine in which Ada,

53:54

Lovelace and Babbage's got together and Six

53:56

to Peace race has begun in Victorian

53:58

Britain counterfactual and the pivot. My

54:00

history is that Lady Byron, rather

54:02

than leaving her husband submit to

54:04

it. And. Stays with Byron. And

54:07

helps Byron's become Prime Minister at unlikely

54:09

prospects as he suspects are likely prospect.

54:12

Yes Anyway says a scandal is now

54:14

spreading across London, across Britain, across Europe

54:16

At the age of I April by

54:19

untestable he is caught. His advice by

54:21

his friends do not get Parliament You

54:23

will be his. Do not step outside

54:25

your front door. People are kind of

54:28

messing. They want to d violence the

54:30

rumors of his homosexuality or provoking the

54:32

kind of mob violence that spiral had

54:35

always been and read off. And so

54:37

he feels he has no choice but

54:39

to sign the data. Separation has been

54:41

drawn up for him by his wife's

54:44

lawyers, which he does on the Twenty

54:46

first of April and the next day

54:48

he leaves and London he is going

54:51

in a coach that in typically Byronic

54:53

fashion has been modeled on that used

54:55

by Napoleon to take him to Waterloo.

54:57

He has to Dover on the twenty

55:00

fifth of April he takes ship for

55:02

Ostend hop houses done with him is

55:04

on that the harbor front over on

55:07

what. Is him until he can see his

55:09

son a more or less evening. How pass

55:11

rights? God bless him for a talent spirits

55:13

and a kind one that's not going extinct.

55:15

Sake of the his behaved. I mean whatever

55:17

you think of his behavior. He

55:19

has not treated Annabella kindly. No, I don't

55:21

think he's been trying to toll on. I

55:24

think another more astute commentary on the whole

55:26

affair is made by another friend of Byron's

55:28

great admirer of his, Sir Walter Scott, the

55:31

novelist and poet who writes a Buyer and

55:33

that he had child heralded himself and out

55:35

lord himself into too great a resemblance with

55:37

the pictures of his imagination. So. I

55:40

think that basically what Scott is

55:42

saying there is that Byron is

55:44

the primal example. Of. How celebrity

55:46

can feed on itself said some I know

55:48

if I never currency long and fear will

55:50

because of us and as because the me

55:52

for asking us questions but just on the

55:54

issue. Is. That tree. So.

55:56

The Self Destructiveness and Byron. The.

55:59

anxieties or or the hang-ups or

56:01

whatever about sexuality and stuff. They

56:03

were there from the very beginning, his very abusive

56:06

upbringing and all that sort of stuff. How

56:08

much would they have happened anyway? Or how much

56:10

is he consciously? Because there's so many times in

56:13

this story that you've told where he's almost consciously

56:15

playing a part, isn't there, of the ironic hero.

56:18

Do you think that that's actually what undid him?

56:20

That he was seduced by his own myth? Or

56:22

do you think the demons within him would always

56:24

have led him to this sort of dark place?

56:26

I think that if he had not been as

56:28

famous as he was, none of this would

56:30

have become the scandal that it

56:32

did. He is given license to behave as

56:35

he does by his fame. And

56:38

as events will show, although

56:40

he is driven into exile

56:43

by one of what Macaulay famously describes as

56:45

one of the periodic fits of morality, Macaulay

56:47

famously says we know of no spectacle more

56:49

ridiculous than the British public enjoying one of

56:52

its periodic fits of morality. Byron

56:55

will be able to reconfigure

56:58

this entire episode into further

57:00

material for his myth and

57:03

to burnish his poetry in

57:05

a way that we will explore in

57:07

episode four. Because although Byron is socially

57:10

ruined in England, his

57:12

reputation and fame as a poet is

57:15

only amplified by it. And the

57:17

sense of him as a mythic figure,

57:19

the paradigmatic figure of a post-Napoleonic Europe

57:22

is completely shaped by the fact

57:24

that he is driven from England

57:26

in moral disgrace. Okay, so next time, I mean,

57:28

if you remember the Rest is History Club, you

57:30

can listen to that final episode right now. We'll

57:33

be talking about vampirism. We're

57:35

talking about Byron in Italy with the

57:37

Shelleys, with Percy the Shelley and of

57:39

course Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein.

57:42

Byron will return to Greece for

57:44

the Greek War of Independence. And it's there,

57:46

of course, Tom, that he meets his

57:49

destiny. So that episode will be out

57:51

on Thursday or right now, if you remember the Rest

57:53

is History Club. And until

57:55

then, goodbye. Bye Bye.