The Love Affairs of Lord Byron

The Love Affairs of Lord Byron

Whether a book is called The Love Affairs of Lord Byron or The Life of Lord Byron can make very little difference to the contents of its pages. Byrons love affairs were the principal incidents of his life, and almost the only ones. Like Chateaubriand, he might have spoke of a procession of women as the great panoramic effect of his career. He differed from Chateaubriand, however, in the first place, in not professing to be very much concerned by the pageant, and, in the second place, in being, in reality, very deeply affected by it. Chateaubriand kept his emotions well in hand, exaggerating them in retrospect for the sake of literary effect, picturing the sensibility of his heart in polished phrases, but never giving the impression of a man who has suffered through his passions, or been swept off his feet by them, or diverted by them from the pursuit of ambition or the serene cult of the all-important ego. In all Chateaubriands love affairs, in short, red blood is lacking and self-consciousness prevails. He appears to be equally in love with all the women in the procession; the explanation being that he is more in love with himself than with any of them. In spite of the procession of women, which is admitted[Pg vi] to have been magnificent, it may justly be said of Chateaubriand that love was of his life a thing apart. Of Byron, who coined the phrase (though Madame de Stal had coined it before him) it cannot be said. It may appear to be true of sundry of his incidental love affairs, but it cannot stand as a broad generalisation. His whole life was deflected from its course, and thrown out of gear: first, by his unhappy passion for Mary Chaworth; secondly, by the way in which women of all ranks, flattering his vanity for the gratification of their own, importuned him with the offer of their hearts. Lady Byron herself did so no less than Lady Caroline Lamb, and Jane Clairmont, and the Venetian light o loves, though, no doubt, with more delicacy and a better show of maidenly reserve. Fully persuaded in her own mind that he had pined for her for two years, she delicately hinted to him that he need pine no longer. He took the hint and married her, with the catastrophic consequences which we know. Then other womena long series of other womendid what they could to break his fall and console him. He dallied with them for years, without ever engaging his heart very deeply, until at last he realised that this sort of dalliance was a very futile and enervating occupation, tore himself away from his last entanglement, and crossed the sea to strike a blow for freedom. That is Byrons life in a nutshell. His biographer, it is clear, has no way of escape from his[Pg vii] love affairs; while the critic is under an obligation, almost equally compelling, to take note of them. It is not merely that he was continually writing about them, and that the meaning of his enigmatic sentences can, in many cases, only be unravelled by the help of the clue which a knowledge of his love affairs provides. The striking change which we see the tone of his work undergoing as he grows older is the reflection of the history of his heart. Many of his later poems might have been written in mockery of the earlier ones. He had his illusions in his youth. In his middle-age, if he can be said to have reached middle-age, he had none, but wrote, to the distress of the Countess Guiccioli, as a man who delighted to tear aside, with a rude hand, the striped veil of sentiment and hypocrisy which hid the ugly nakedness of truth. The secret of that transformation is written in the record of his love affairs, and can be read nowhere else. His life lacks all unity and all consistency unless the first place in it is given to that record. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 41701
Author: Gribble, Francis Henry
Release Date: Dec 24, 2012
Format: eBook
Language: English