A One-way Ticket to the Continent

The Owl
Vol. 2, Issue 10
March 6, 2008
Baltimore, Maryland

Dear Inquiring Traveler,

We finished our issue last week with Lord Byron in England after his first Grand Tour, enjoying the instant success that his epic poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage brought him.

Thrust into society’s limelight, it wasn’t long before his outspokenness and love of adventure got him into trouble again, and he found himself leaving for another tour. Little did he know that it would be his last.

We go with him on this second trip and discover how he found distraction in the arms of the women he met abroad, and got involved in some political intrigues.

Read on and you will find out whether it was political imprudence or a lack of basic hygiene that turned this cultural experience into a journey of no return.

Editor, The Owl

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The Poet Turns Activist—Lord Byron’s Final Tour

by Madeleine Zhang

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824), 6th Baron Byron, by Thomas Phillips, painted in 1835. He’s seen here in Albanian costume. Photo courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.

Various setbacks, both political—Lord Byron backed the Luddites—and personal—including a disastrous affair, rumors of an incestuous relationship with his half-sister, and his short-lived marriage to Anna Isabella Milbanke—saw him set off again in 1816. This time he was not to return.

The trip was also a literary escape from the censure of the British press unwilling to publish the more risqué sections of Childe Harold that alluded to his sexual adventures. And it was to prove a journey of cultural discovery—and  transformation: the second tour turned the poet from a mere observer and tourist into an active figure in more than one nation’s struggles.

Literary encounters

On this trip he traveled through Belgium to Switzerland with his physician, Dr. Polidori, and they toured the Bernese Alps. He set up house by Lake Geneva and was able to attend Madame de Stael’s literary salon in Coppet, where he met Goethe. This is where he also first met Shelley and Shelley’s future wife Mary—the couple was staying nearby with Mary’s step-sister Claire.

The meeting was fruitful in more than one way. Mary wrote the first draft of Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, Lord Byron finished the third canto of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage and had an affair with Claire, resulting in a daughter. But he didn’t stay long in Switzerland and headed to Italy with his old friend Hobhouse who joined him in 1816.

Poet turns activist

Venice was the inspiration for the fourth canto of Childe Harold and is a tribute to the city. But it was in Rome that he took part fully in Carnevale and fell in love again, this time with Countess Teresa Guiccioli. Her father was an Italian patriot active in a secret society of republican revolutionaries, and the poet was sympathetic to their cause of freeing Italy from Austrian rule. He didn’t just write about the cause however, but gave some of his own money to arm the group. He later followed the countess and her husband to Ravenna where he started work on Don Juan.

Lord Byron eventually moved on to Genoa, his last home in Italy, with the Countess (this time she was without her husband). Towards the end of February 1823, however, he seemed to be tiring of his life in Italy. A friend observed: “. . . his thoughts veered round to his early love, the Isles of Greece, and the revolution in that country.” A committee had been formed in London to help free the Greeks from Turkish rule. Byron was keen to represent them—and also to take up active service for their cause. He vowed to take direct action, left his beloved Teresa and headed for Greece.

He landed on the Ionian isle of Cephalonia with arms and medical supplies that he had paid for himself. He mobilized a fleet, maintained an army of 500 from his personal funds, organized many of the foreign volunteers into an artillery brigade and tried—in vain—to unite the Greek forces.

Divided they stood…

Prince Alexander Mavrocordatus, elected first President of Greece, wrote to Byron saying that his appearance would “electrify the troops” and so Byron sailed to Missolonghi where he landed with great panache in a dashing red uniform to the sound of salvos of artillery, musket fire, and music.

Plans were made for an assault on Lepanto and Byron was to lead his heroes, the Suliot troops, himself. This was one of his greatest disappointments, however, and he was sickened to find that these brave men were more motivated by money than by fighting for freedom. Despite Byron's efforts to unite them, internal plotting among the Greeks weakened their campaign against the Turks.

In April 1824 the poet caught a fever. The combination of stress, dirt, and the medical cure-all treatment of the day—bleeding with leeches—proved fatal. Lord Byron died ten days later, aged 36. His martyrdom was an inspiration to the Greek leaders, however, who finally rallied together to win their freedom. He became a national hero, and the Greek form of his name Vyron is still a popular first name.