Vulgar History - Mary Shelley Month： Lord Byron, The Original F＊＊＊boi of Literature

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00:00:30.000 Hello, and welcome to a very special episode of Vulgar History, a feminist women's history

00:00:41.680 comedy podcast. My name is Anne Foster, and this is our Halloween special. And what is scarier than

00:00:48.100 a gross man from history? That's right. We're talking about Lord Byron today. And this is sort 0.88

00:00:54.240 of the finale of Mary Shelley Month. We've been talking about Mary Wollstonecraft, about Mary

00:00:58.480 Shelley, Mary Shelley's legacy. But Lord Byron has been just like lurking there in the background

00:01:02.880 of this story. And he, he deserves, and when I say deserves, it's like brackets, not complimentary,

00:01:09.400 his own episode. I have a very special guest with me today. It is Emily Edwards, the former host of

00:01:15.360 Fuckboys of Literature, who, if you listen to that podcast, you know how she feels about Lord Byron,

00:01:20.020 perhaps. And also the current co-host of Ticklish Business, the movie podcast,

00:01:25.000 author of a series of murder mystery novels welcome emily edwards hi i'm so excited to be

00:01:31.780 doing this your your energy is like this is where i was just like i was like i should do a lord byron

00:01:37.700 episode because he kept coming up on all the mary shelley stuff and i'm like and then i was like i

00:01:42.060 think i need emily i think i need like lord byron is lurking in the shadows i appreciate the fact

00:01:50.640 that you're like i need to call emily in order to uh i need to talk about this man

00:01:55.040 yeah so when you were doing fuck boys of literature was there like i feel like he's

00:02:00.840 like the number one first episode yeah yeah it was like this is the archetype the the byronic 0.96

00:02:07.860 hero is the archetype of who we're talking about if we're talking about fuck boys of literature 0.89

00:02:11.940 it is a man who reads his own press releases and thinks absolutely nothing he has ever done 0.96

00:02:17.180 is negative. That's just this glorious egoist kind of guy. And he got there by a well-traveled

00:02:27.680 road. And we'll get into it because we're going to go through his entire bio. But he was a real

00:02:34.600 piece of work. He deserves every negative feeling you have about him. Yeah. Here's what I'm going

00:02:40.520 to say though. Not complicated feelings, but I will say that there is at least one thing he did

00:02:45.980 that I'm like, okay, Lord Byron. And that is, I have a book that's coming out in February,

00:02:50.880 Rebel of the Regency, a biography of Carolina Brunswick, who was the princess of Wales and

00:02:55.580 then the queen of England while Lord Byron was doing his thing. And he was a frequent guest at

00:03:01.120 her dinner parties. And I was like, I think he would be a fun guest at a dinner party.

00:03:05.940 He was a frequent guest at her dinner parties. And he was actually a good friend to her. And he

00:03:10.560 like stayed on, there was this whole contentious thing with like her and her husband tried to

00:03:14.420 divorce her. And the whole country was like, Oh my God, she's a whore. What's happening? 1.00

00:03:17.600 And Lord Byron was like, actually, she's great. Yeah. So he, he was like loyal to one brackets,

00:03:23.560 one woman who he was not related to and who he was not romantically involved with,

00:03:28.760 but he was a good friend to her. And so I'm like, okay, he gets like one point for that.

00:03:32.020 Yeah. He, he's an interesting guy. Cause when we get to the end of his life,

00:03:36.380 like he, he threw money at problems that were not his problems. And you're like,

00:03:41.840 that's a really interesting thing for a guy to do. But the road that led there was probably,

00:03:50.700 it was probably not all altruistic. It was probably 95% ego driven. And you know, it's just,

00:04:00.700 yeah, he was messed up. There's a lot of reasons why he was messed up. I have a lot of compassion

00:04:05.020 for him. But it's one of those things where it's like reasons are not excuses. And you kind of go

00:04:10.780 through all of the twists and turns of his life. I go, I see why you are the way you are. I don't

00:04:16.780 like it. Still wouldn't want to know you still wouldn't want to be around anyone like you,

00:04:21.340 but I get why you are the way you are. When I think you said like the road that led to him

00:04:26.880 doing this altruistic stuff, it's like that road was paved with like the bodies of discarded women

00:04:31.720 who he like, and men, people who he treated really, really, really badly.

00:04:37.340 He used and abused and just kind of like tossed out like yesterday's trash and women, especially, but most notoriously, you know, he had a lot of male friends of varying gravitas that he would just sort of be like, you're in charge of my estate now, get this published.

00:04:57.860 And then when it, you know, it would all go wrong and he'd just be like, you're dead to me and flounce off and just, yeah, but by and large, he, oh, he had absolutely no respect for the, the reputation of women that he were in his orbit. 0.91

00:05:13.080 And, you know, he probably got off actually on destroying the reputations of women because he knew that he couldn't be, you know, taking down pegs like they were.

00:05:23.460 And there was like just a certain sort of like, I'm rubber, you're glue kind of aspect to his to his reputation. 0.80

00:05:31.340 And he just, man, it's super gross.

00:05:34.240 he's also if people are like lord byron i've like maybe heard of him maybe i haven't people may

00:05:41.960 have heard the phrase like mad bad and dangerous to know a phrase that was written about him he

00:05:48.920 that's why that phrase exists yeah exactly by a woman who was equally as obsessed with him as he

00:05:56.960 was with her but she was obsessed with him for a much longer period of time and he tried to throw

00:06:01.220 her out with all his other ex-girlfriends and Lady Carolyn Lamb. And she was just like,

00:06:07.720 I'm going to have this man who matches my crazy and we are just going to be a power couple.

00:06:14.940 And he was just like, absolutely not. And so Carolyn Lamb did a whole lot of crazy things 1.00

00:06:20.560 to try to get Lord Byron's attention, including besmirching his name around town, which didn't 0.78

00:06:26.260 really need that much help besmirching but carolyn lamb is why we have that phrase byron wronged her

00:06:33.120 in every creative way possible but she was also not approaching this from a healthy and reasonable

00:06:41.600 standpoint is what i'll say about that what i want to also just like before we get into like

00:06:47.360 his life story is just like to draw a picture for everybody about this era the georgian era

00:06:52.560 slash the regency era um and a lot myself included before i started reading more about it i was like

00:06:58.260 oh wow you know it's like jane austen times like everyone's kind of like genteel and and nice and

00:07:03.140 polite and writing little letters to each other it's like everybody was addicted to opium 0.99

00:07:07.720 is a crucial thing everybody is in wild debt from gambling um everybody is fucking everybody 0.92

00:07:14.600 and that's so it's like he's this person but it's kind of like and it stands out so the fact that 0.54

00:07:20.360 stands out in this society means like how extreme he was about it. But it's also not like he's doing

00:07:24.660 this and everybody else is like, Oh, it's pride and prejudice. Like the world is kind of fucked 0.99

00:07:29.540 up around him as well. That's what people know that. Yeah. And the only way to make money really 0.98

00:07:34.320 is to take these wild ass gambles about like trade and things like that. So, you know, this

00:07:40.460 was the age of exploration, the age of colonization, the age of dividing up Africa and Southeast Asia 0.98

00:07:46.640 and the Americas. And so like so many people were like, I know how I'm going to make my nickel. 0.78

00:07:51.960 And it's been every single last cent that my family left me. If you're lucky, you've got money

00:07:57.120 and you're just going to like sail the ocean blue and 90% of them died or lost all of their money.

00:08:03.840 And so you have all of these noble families, including the Byrons who go from like extremely

00:08:10.320 high wealth to absolutely catastrophic poverty. And by like poverty, by most people's standards,

00:08:16.920 not even just like rich people's standards. And, and they would not know how to function.

00:08:22.600 They have no, they're like, we're coming from massive generational wealth. Like when you think

00:08:27.980 of European and English generational wealth, and it's just like, ah, you know, like they just do

00:08:33.920 whatever they want and breed horses and buy whatever. And they're coming from that. And

00:08:38.860 then they're just losing it all. It is just gone. And they have no idea what to do. And they also

00:08:46.560 are like, I could get a job. That's not going to happen. I could go to school. That's not going to

00:08:51.980 happen. I could do all of these things. The only thing I can do is marry a woman whose father

00:08:56.840 hasn't squandered her wealth. And that's the only option. It's this weird mercantilism of

00:09:03.800 privilege where they're just like, there's a finite amount in this world and I have to acquire

00:09:08.460 it all. Well, and also, I think that's sort of like the English class system, like still today,

00:09:13.220 but then as well, was it's so much just like you're either higher class, you're like lower

00:09:17.960 class, and that's it. So even if you're higher class, you've lost all your money, it's like,

00:09:21.240 well, you're still higher class, even though you're like, actually actively poor, it's like,

00:09:24.580 so that person would still be an appealing marriage prospect, maybe because of the title

00:09:28.100 they bring. Right, exactly. Which is just completely, we romanticize it so much as

00:09:34.780 folks over here on North America, where we're just like, but who wouldn't want to be a Lord?

00:09:39.400 And it's like, yeah, it's probably going to keep you out of the workhouses and poor houses.

00:09:43.980 And you're probably going to have an extended line of credit that other people are not going

00:09:48.740 to get. But it does also come with these overarching burdens where Byron as well,

00:09:55.080 like suffered from like absolutely obsessive compulsive things because he felt like he didn't

00:10:02.360 match the concept of a Lord. And so I can only imagine how much that screws up your basic sense

00:10:07.800 of self of just like, again, we'll get into all the Byron's issues as we keep chatting, but he

00:10:14.020 hated himself so much. And that sort of whiplash of, I am God's gift to women. I'm God's gift to

00:10:23.700 society. I'm God's gift to poetry. I'm God's gift to literature. And then at the same time,

00:10:29.220 he loathed himself so much for so many different reasons, physically and monetarily and talent-wise

00:10:37.820 and things like that. And I could not imagine living in a brain that was that bifurcated on

00:10:43.980 how you view yourself. Well, and that's why I mean, actually, I don't know, but I presume he

00:10:48.860 was also doing a lot of opium because... Oh, tons of drugs. Everybody was. That's just like

00:10:56.480 how you get through drinking and alcohol and we'll get into he also had an eating disorder

00:11:01.840 he was just like it just every single vice and machination of like self abuse that you can think

00:11:10.480 of byron did it had it subscribed to it 100 so if we jump into his his life like we're gonna do life

00:11:18.460 beginning to end which is and it's never not interesting and weird messy and like fascinating

00:11:25.200 but like, but so starting off with like, I don't know how much you know about his parents,

00:11:30.560 but his dad was mad Jack Byron. Yeah. I mean, so like he's already starting off on like a baseline

00:11:37.660 of like, Oh, your dad's nuts. There's an excellent book that I will recommend right off the top of

00:11:42.280 the, of the bat called fall in the house of Byron by Emily brand. It's fascinating. Cause

00:11:46.880 it goes back a couple generations of like, here's how, here's like the screwed up foundations that

00:11:53.020 Lord Byron was coming from. And it goes into his father, his grandfather, and I think even

00:11:57.020 great grandfather of basically as like, here's how much money they had. Here's how it was

00:12:01.160 squandered. Here's how everyone was tortured in America and very different ways. And his dad was

00:12:07.140 really shipwrecked as a teenager and experienced that kind of massive trauma. And he was called,

00:12:14.060 I just want to emphasize mad Jack. Yeah. Yeah. Apple doesn't fall far on that one.

00:12:19.680 Mad Jack. And then you've got mad, bad, and dangerous to know George Gordon Byron.

00:12:26.780 So you've got this, you know, generational sort of, I mean, I bring this up a lot and not a lot

00:12:32.420 of people know what I'm talking about, but I don't know if you're familiar with the Sweet

00:12:36.240 Valley High spinoff series, the Wakefield sagas. Yes. Where it's kind of like the olden times,

00:12:41.940 like the ancestors of the Wakefield twins in different eras. And it's there. They're exactly

00:12:46.040 the same as the Wayfield twins, but they're in the 20s. It's like they're exactly the same as

00:12:49.560 the Wayfield twins, but it's like pioneer times and she runs off to join the circus.

00:12:53.020 So it's like the Byron family. I feel like it's the same thing every generation. It's like,

00:12:56.060 oh, it's the same person again. Yeah. Just like the same problems keep happening and ending badly

00:13:01.140 again and again and again. Like that's just the curse of the family.

00:13:04.500 It's incredible. It's absolutely incredible. Like I am definitely someone who usually believes

00:13:09.240 in nurture over nature. But like the Byron men are absolutely just like carbon copies of one

00:13:16.020 another for generations where they're like, I am profligate. I will just spend every single

00:13:22.280 cent that comes into my pocket. I think I am God's gift to the world. And what is going to

00:13:28.080 fix this situation is marrying and abusing a different woman because I have a title and I 0.55

00:13:33.940 can do that. So who is his mom? Byron's mom? His mother was a woman named Catherine Gordon, 0.54

00:13:41.080 who was a Scottish heiress from clan Gorin. And she, um, like she had money, the debt and like

00:13:48.560 she got chosen because she had money situation. A hundred percent. She owned her dad owned like 0.99

00:13:54.100 Aberdeenshire basically. And so it was like huge, you know, she was wildly, wildly wealthy.

00:14:00.420 And so I found like a really quick thing. She had the equivalent of an estate of almost $4 million. And then when her husband spent all of her money and then died, she was left with about $24,000. That's how much money he spent. And this is like over the course of like eight years. It's like nothing. He just spent every single last dime she had.

00:14:24.940 yeah and then he fucked off and died or did he did he just he basically he's not in the picture 0.99

00:14:30.340 lord by like little baby lord byron is not is being raised in a single parent household yeah 0.99

00:14:35.120 essentially speaking her his father had uh sired a daughter i believe from his first marriage and

00:14:42.780 got divorced and then uh married uh catherine gordon and then uh baby baby lord byron was

00:14:50.900 born he wasn't lord he wasn't actually expected to inherit we're gonna we're just gonna imagine

00:14:55.660 this just like little little miniature yeah exactly yeah exactly little baby lord byron

00:15:01.420 still in like boots and a cravat and a cape and and and basically so he her dad his dad

00:15:08.140 basically is like i'm out of here i'm gonna piece off i think he went to france and then just like

00:15:14.940 died and like never came back to the country he never he just kind of like effed off and died

00:15:20.480 in France because he was, you know, whoring and spending and gambling and doing what he does. 0.83

00:15:26.400 I feel like inevitably it was probably a duel. Probably a duel went bad. 0.86

00:15:31.460 I don't know. I'm trying to remember. I feel like he definitely like drank himself to death

00:15:38.000 or something like that. Or, you know, like had a wasting disease. I forgot exactly what it was,

00:15:42.360 but he definitely did not have like a normal healthy death.

00:15:46.820 But he was there with Catherine long enough to like sire a son, spend all her money and then just like leave.

00:15:52.940 So she's lived with this little baby Lord Byron, not much money.

00:15:58.200 Yeah. And like this house that they inherited that is like falling down and disgusting.

00:16:03.700 And she at least kind of like went back to a smaller home that she owned.

00:16:08.960 And that's where she raised little baby Lord Byron.

00:16:11.100 And but like the the manor house was that he essentially inherited from his father was just like this cripplingly large, you know, absolute pile of a massive house.

00:16:26.600 And he was just, you know, in his entire life, he was like, heard, you know, you're going to inherit this house.

00:16:32.120 You're going to get this massive estate. 0.50

00:16:34.060 And then when he did at age 10 become, you know, inherit some stuff through various uncles and his own father dying, he goes to this house and it is just this moldy, disgusting, horrible house.

00:16:49.200 And he's like, I'm picturing like, you know, in in Crimson Peak, there's like they walk in the house and there's like snow falling because there's like not roof and part of it.

00:16:58.560 That's kind of what I imagine. Yeah, that's pretty much what it was.

00:17:01.700 it was just like roof falling in. Everything is moldy. Every single time I read about this house,

00:17:06.540 like mold is like the number one, which granted, you know, it's England, it rains a lot, but like

00:17:11.960 they're just like, it was just disgusting. It was falling in on itself. It was absolutely

00:17:16.140 reprehensibly like unfit for living. And so imagine this little kid who's just kind of like

00:17:23.840 really full of himself because he's been told, you know, like you're inheriting something.

00:17:28.680 this is your grand man like mansion and he walks in and he's just like this dump and so he just

00:17:36.060 leaves yeah and you can't really blame him but like i can only imagine of like this sets the

00:17:45.880 tenor of what it's going to be like to be lord of you know of byron and basically it's just like

00:17:51.700 yeah no it's it's garbage welcome to the rest of your life this is this is like really setting

00:17:56.960 this scene too because like you were describing earlier it's like people there are lords but they 0.93

00:18:00.480 have no money so it's just you know you think like oh lord by lord whatever like you think about

00:18:04.700 i don't know bridgerton or like anything or just like oh he's a lord and it's just like oh that

00:18:09.120 doesn't actually mean like he has money or like this is good like he's got nothing a title is

00:18:14.260 actually worth nothing if you don't have money also yeah and and every single time i read about

00:18:19.960 him and his past it doesn't sound like there's an estate you know what i mean like he like i'm sure

00:18:26.900 he does have like tenants and things like that, but it's not the same sort of like,

00:18:30.760 and these are my hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland where the people who live here produce

00:18:36.660 money. It's literally more like, here's your disgusting falling down house and like small

00:18:43.380 acreage that doesn't really produce any money whatsoever. Yeah. So it's, so he's 10 years old.

00:18:49.500 He has this moldy house that he walked away from. He's, I mean, he sent up to boarding school,

00:18:55.380 right? Yeah. You know, on top of the, just to also reiterate the fact that Lord Byron was born

00:19:01.980 with a limb difference. And so he had a deformed right or left foot. It's usually considered the

00:19:08.780 right foot. And so his mother, not only was she livid and bitter because her husband just kind

00:19:16.540 of like effed off to France, she was also not particularly kind about her son's limb difference. 0.51

00:19:23.980 and so he was extremely self-conscious about this foot and he was just she called him a lame brat

00:19:31.320 she would call him names and abuse him deeply over this limb difference and again being the son of a

00:19:37.960 man who deeply deeply wronged her so she so he was left with this deeply emotionally abusive mother

00:19:43.700 as well right and so yeah at 10 he's sent off to boarding school where apparently he flourished

00:19:50.140 to an extent he was I think it's important for people to know very attractive yes he was very

00:19:57.860 handsome he had a charisma about him so I just imagine he goes there and he's just like realized

00:20:03.660 it's like oh people treat me in a certain way because of my handsomeness like great like yeah

00:20:08.500 I can use this yeah he definitely had apparently like a real air of being to like you know how

00:20:15.360 like when you're a nerd, like I was and you go off to college and you're like, no one knows me

00:20:20.600 here and I can be a totally different person. And all of a sudden you just kind of like come

00:20:24.460 into your confidence and stuff like that. Like, you know, there's always, I was one of them where

00:20:28.780 everybody's just like, when you go to school, when you go to college, everything's going to

00:20:32.460 be different for you. Like you are not fitting in in high school, but when you go to college,

00:20:36.620 you're the kind of person who blossoms in college. That was basically Lord Byron with

00:20:40.860 boarding school he was just like i'm gorgeous he was very vain he would like sleep with like

00:20:46.360 curling papers in his hair and like he did his makeup essentially and like he went off to boarding

00:20:52.800 school and all of a sudden everybody was like who is that young man including boys and girls

00:20:58.940 and he was also like very uh just i assume because he became a poet and stuff he would have been very

00:21:04.780 like well read like the same like like a nerd going to college it's like he shows up it's like

00:21:09.440 oh my my intellect is respected here like oh this this makes me more attractive to people

00:21:14.540 fantastic yeah and definitely during that era when like you know you were expected to kind of

00:21:20.320 just turn emotions up to 11 like all the time of just like obviously most of the literature we get

00:21:26.040 out of that era and he was clearly a pioneer of that of just saying like you couldn't just be

00:21:31.040 like like someone you had to be like spirited away by love and things like and so he was just

00:21:36.280 Like if I match it up to 11, he's already a dramatic guy to begin with.

00:21:40.360 He's gorgeous.

00:21:41.980 He's got a problem, you know, in his eyes that makes him sexy with this foot.

00:21:47.480 And he's just kind of like, I'm going to overcome it by like dressing in cloaks and wearing like swashbuckling boots.

00:21:55.360 And and this is when he starts the thing with the pets.

00:21:58.900 Oh, my gosh.

00:22:00.060 OK, like I was waiting to see when we would get into the dog and the bear.

00:22:05.280 but later yeah yeah so he byron was an interesting guy and he was from the very beginning had a lot

00:22:13.460 of animals and so he had a newfoundland which is not a small dog those are those like those are

00:22:19.440 those huge huge black 200 pound usually ish yeah water dogs they're massive they're the biggest

00:22:26.920 they're enormous yeah and he had one named boatswain and he was like i'm gonna take this

00:22:33.280 dog to school with me. It's my dog. He, you know, he's helped me through thick and thin. He helped

00:22:36.900 me through a rough childhood. And I'm going to take this dog with me. And his boarding school

00:22:40.380 was like, no, like you can't have a 200 pound dog at boarding school. He has to go home.

00:22:47.760 And I think he was a little bit older when this happened. This isn't happening when he's like,

00:22:50.660 you know, 13 or whatever, but he's like, I know the way around this. The school has a rule against

00:22:56.540 having a dog, but they do not have a rule against having a pet bear. So he bought a trained bear

00:23:04.840 and brought it to school and was just like, check in mate. And they were just like,

00:23:11.520 oh my God. So he had a, he had a captive bear at boarding school with him for a time.

00:23:17.900 The vibes of that are like, you know, those eighties movies about just kind of like the

00:23:22.420 nerds are taking over the school like it feels like animal house or something it's just like

00:23:26.980 you know in this fraternity we can't have a dog well we have a bear like it's just sort of like

00:23:31.300 jack black movie okay so how to imagine being that egotistical you know what i mean like i was

00:23:37.560 terrified of adults when i was 15 and he's just like i like your brain is not even remotely fully

00:23:43.780 formed yet and yet what is formed in byron's mind is like the vengeance reflex and you're just like

00:23:49.840 this is not voting well for this one also he clearly like sees himself as so much smarter

00:23:54.960 than other people yeah and he does for his whole life and he did in this context outsmart them

00:24:01.540 kind of yeah he did you know until the i mean surely the bear got the shortest end of the

00:24:07.860 stick in this situation but i don't know what happened to the bear how long the bear was there

00:24:13.360 i never find details about that yeah the bear like i'm sure not a good life for a bear no maybe

00:24:19.680 got taken to a zoo later on i don't know but this is the kind of guy he is but also like let's talk

00:24:24.420 about his like romances his school his days as a school boy and his romances so in 1803 he's we've

00:24:33.520 got like letters and journals and things like that and that's essentially when byron realized

00:24:40.480 that he was like a sexual being at 15 years old and he i mean there's there's talks about earlier

00:24:48.080 which I'm sure we'll get to at some point. But like he was in love with this woman named Mary

00:24:53.080 Jayworth, who was also a teenager at the time, 15. And they were just like, had the hots for

00:24:59.100 one another that they could not contain. And he also probably had a couple of same sex

00:25:05.840 dalliances or love affairs or air quotes, very close friendships at this time.

00:25:11.140 And this is when all those switches got flipped for Byron. And he was like,

00:25:15.340 this is the greatest drug of all time like sex is like i don't want to diagnose someone who lived

00:25:22.280 this long ago but like there is definitely like whiffs of sex addiction already like kind of like

00:25:28.260 turning on here in 15 year old lord byron well and i think it's just kind of like an addictive

00:25:33.620 personality in many ways and this becomes one one of the addictions that he has yeah and it's

00:25:40.620 probably his favorite addiction because he starts churning through lovers like crazy. And this is

00:25:47.840 15. This is so young. He is such a baby and you're just seeing him churn through people.

00:25:55.960 And he kind of decides fairly quickly. He starts writing poetry and he decides fairly quickly

00:26:00.720 that school is not the life for him. And so he kind of leaves a little bit later,

00:26:06.640 you know maybe like he graduates but he's like and that's the end of the line on education for me 1.00

00:26:11.360 and he goes off on the grand tour and if you're and if you're like a bisexual sex addict with 0.98

00:26:17.860 tons of money to spend the grand tour is what you've been waiting for your entire life so just 0.97

00:26:24.400 so people know in case people don't know the grand tour it's like um we saw colin do this

00:26:28.320 on bridgerton various people did this in bridgerton um but it's just kind of like in this era this like

00:26:33.380 late 19th late 18th century early 19th century like a young man would just it's kind of like a

00:26:39.360 gap year but just for having sex and seeing museums yeah so you would just take a year and

00:26:43.720 just travel around sort of like continental you go to like greece and italy france and you just 0.97

00:26:48.560 kind of like visit the museums um and just like have sex with women and men or whoever 0.99

00:26:53.100 everywhere everywhere you're like so you're just like just a fuck tour of just europe yeah 0.99

00:26:58.120 Essentially. And there is also like an air of poverty tourism, too, where they don't go necessarily to like Paris. 0.86

00:27:06.980 They spend some time in France. But generally speaking, it's to Italy, to Spain, to Greece, to the south of France,

00:27:14.040 where all these British people can just be like, look at all these poor people who once made art that I can appreciate.

00:27:20.720 And I'll steal some of it if Byron was against pilfering antiquities. 0.97

00:27:26.920 So at least we had that going for him.

00:27:30.040 But most of them were just kind of like, oh, look at all of these fallen civilizations.

00:27:34.520 I'm going to take everything I like for pennies on the dollar and return back to the comfort

00:27:39.600 and, you know, like upper crust comfort of living in the UK with my better British people.

00:27:47.000 Is this where he, I mean, spoiler kind of, he gets a real interest in Greece.

00:27:52.620 Is this where he first, do you know?

00:27:54.740 I'm trying to, I, I don't recall exactly where he went on his first grand tour. It was a couple

00:28:01.480 years. It was like three years. And I think he spent most of his time in like Italy, Greece,

00:28:06.800 and Spain. And I think he also, I think this is also when he went to Egypt. And so he was,

00:28:12.900 he was notoriously like carving his name. That's right. He carved his name in the temple of

00:28:17.900 Poseidon. You can still see it to this day. He, he, you know, he wasn't stealing stuff,

00:28:23.100 but he was defacing it. Byron was here. Yeah. Literally like his signature is like in a block

00:28:29.240 at the base of a temple of Poseidon in I think Kefalonia. He there's like Byron is just like

00:28:35.340 scrawled and like foot high letters in the bottom of this ancient Greek temple. What a, what a swell

00:28:40.620 fella basically. Yeah. That's the thing where he's like, well, he was against pilfering antiquities.

00:28:46.400 It's like good. But then it's like, he carved his name in this temple bad. Like it all kind of

00:28:51.180 balances out. Yeah. He like later on, he was totally against Lord Elgin stealing the Parthenon

00:28:56.620 marbles. He wanted them returned. He was really, yeah. Like you mentioned, like he got a real

00:29:02.120 obsessive with ancient Greece. Um, and, and he was just like, this is the greatest civilization

00:29:07.800 in the world, but you know, still beat feet back to Britain after a while, he was not going to

00:29:13.560 permanently settle here as a young man. He was going to go back to a great Britain and fuck 0.99

00:29:20.720 around with its women for a little while. Yeah. So, I mean, you know, we're not going to get 1.00

00:29:25.120 into every single dalliance that he was involved with, but like he comes back to Britain is at

00:29:32.400 what point does he become a famous poet? This actually started while he was on the, just after

00:29:37.960 he got back from the grand tour, he wrote a, the first couple of cantos of his, one of his more

00:29:44.020 famous poems called Child Harold's Pilgrimage in 1812, just when he got back. And the first

00:29:52.200 couple of cantos that were published were essentially like, I am this grand romantic

00:29:57.500 young man. I am in love with this woman. He was in love with a girl at the time. And, but I,

00:30:02.540 yet I have to go, you know, out into the world in order to seek my education and fortune.

00:30:08.320 And this was like, it was like a Taylor Swift album. Like it sold like absolute hotcakes.

00:30:16.260 And again, I should probably do some masks in 1812. He was born in 1788. So he's still a

00:30:22.880 relatively young man. And it just flew off the shelves. It just like churned. The first

00:30:29.120 printing was like 500 copies and it sold out like three days. Like it was just disappeared.

00:30:35.100 And all of a sudden he is being heralded as like the future of British poetry and literature.

00:30:42.240 And he was just kind of like, correct.

00:30:47.860 He believed so much in himself.

00:30:50.420 But so it's like his first published work and he becomes incredibly famous off.

00:30:54.940 Like it's a real, it's not like he's slowly, I've like, I've just been doing these episodes

00:30:58.940 about like Mary Walsongraft and stuff.

00:31:01.160 It's like, she wrote a thing and it's like, well, this did okay.

00:31:03.340 And the next thing goes a bit better.

00:31:04.400 The next thing does a bit better. But Byron was just like, here's my one thing. And everyone's

00:31:07.960 just like, we love you. You're hot and wrote a thing. Like, yeah, it's incredible. I mean,

00:31:12.980 like, it's gotta be both incredibly ego fulfilling where you're just like, yes,

00:31:19.040 I have sat with this poetical thought in my head, probably since birth. I have had this thing where

00:31:25.020 I am clearly a hero. So I'm going to write the most barely disguised Romana Clef about my

00:31:31.720 emotions and my feelings and going on tour and immediately he is rewarded for it there's not

00:31:39.440 even a second where like the entire united kingdom is like maybe i don't know no it's just he's and

00:31:47.360 he has immediate confirmation that he is the most interesting man on the planet yeah but you were

00:31:53.280 saying before like at the very beginning about how he has kind of like the self-hatred mixed with

00:31:57.120 like the vanity so i could see that this is like yes of course of course you all love my book it's

00:32:01.680 great but part like i would imagine like olden days imposter syndrome might have been there a

00:32:06.200 little bit to just be like wow everyone loves my book but it's just but i hate myself like there's

00:32:11.120 yeah exactly like he was very very i mean we can like armchair sort of psychoanalyze byron

00:32:20.420 silver blue in the face but like he definitely had a bit of like a bipolar sort of thing happening

00:32:26.320 where it's like he was never on the up for very long there was always going to be some sort of

00:32:30.600 catastrophic fall, most of them of his own making, right after we published Childe Harold's

00:32:37.320 Pilgrimage is when he starts the affair with Lady Carolyn Lamb. So he's just like, I am on top of

00:32:45.300 the world. We are Jack from Titanic. And what I'm going to immediately do is get involved with a

00:32:51.240 very unstable young woman. And it's just like, oh man, that self defeat that immediately kicks in 0.64

00:33:00.480 in order to you know it's like you could have just found some hot princess who didn't want

00:33:06.640 to marry you across all of Europe and no no he had to go with Lady Carolyn Lamb who was

00:33:12.700 not too tightly tied together okay so this is the person you talked about at the beginning mad bad

00:33:18.760 and dangerous to know so they're the ones like they're into each other and then he is over it

00:33:22.800 and she is not over it she's like making scenes in public and stuff right like she's just like 0.98

00:33:27.340 yeah yeah she would start rumors about him she dressed up as a page boy and broke into his house 1.00

00:33:35.040 yeah like in order to like stalk him she did she would besmirch his name and start rumors about him

00:33:44.420 we're pretty like history is fairly certain like she's the one who started the rumor that byron

00:33:50.500 was having an incestuous affair with his half sister it may or may not been true i don't know

00:33:57.000 if I've ever seen anybody come down hard on either side of whether or not that was factual,

00:34:00.740 but chances are Carolyn Lamb was the one who was, who was tittering about that to all of society. 1.00

00:34:06.580 She was out to destroy this man because he broke up with her after like a couple of months.

00:34:14.700 I want to say, lady, I don't know for sure. You could confirm maybe. Was she not married 0.89

00:34:19.260 Lady Carolyn Lamb? I believe she was. Yeah. So she was her affair partner, basically.

00:34:25.160 So the fact that she's doing all of this stuff to just be like,

00:34:27.140 how dare you break up with me? 1.00

00:34:28.440 Like, get back together with me.

00:34:29.660 Like, besmirching his name.

00:34:30.560 It's like, ma'am, you're married.

00:34:32.160 You're married.

00:34:33.000 This isn't even your husband.

00:34:34.380 This is...

00:34:34.880 Yeah. 0.55

00:34:35.420 He rarely got involved with women who were available to be wed.

00:34:39.740 That was probably certainly a distancing factor for Lord Byron.

00:34:44.480 He did not like single girls. 0.73

00:34:47.100 He liked them. 0.99

00:34:48.260 Either they were too young to get married,

00:34:50.480 or they were already married to someone who was far more powerful

00:34:54.100 than he would ever be. So like, you know, he, he was pretty low on the peerage. I know. What was

00:34:59.960 he? Uh, he was a baron. I don't know where that is on the peerage importance, but it's not like

00:35:05.860 the highest up there. He's not a Duke. He's not like, you know, the most important peer in the

00:35:11.040 world. And, and so he would often get involved with women who were never going to leave their

00:35:15.720 husband for him. And he liked it that way. And Carolyn Lamb was very much someone who was already

00:35:22.660 married, was never going to be granted a divorce by her husband. And she went crazy for him.

00:35:30.960 I don't know why. What year are we in? Do you know? We're in 1812 is about when they started

00:35:36.360 their affair. And it petered out by 1813. It was gone. Okay. Well, I'm just thinking,

00:35:43.100 because we're getting, we're around the time of Mary Shelley enters the chat where he and Percy

00:35:48.540 shelly become bros and they're friends and they like each other and the and he becomes involved

00:35:54.620 with mary shelly's uh stepsister claire and everything you're just describing i'm just like

00:35:59.980 yeah i see why he and claire didn't work out obviously because she was a young single woman

00:36:05.800 um and she was available and she wanted to be with him and he liked people who were

00:36:10.340 less available obviously yeah before he gets involved with claire and the end of striking

00:36:17.240 up a real friendship with the Shelleys. He did actually manage to get married for like two years.

00:36:24.940 So he married a woman named Annabelle Milbank, who was actually Lady Carolyn Lamb's cousin.

00:36:31.180 So it was like, you know, even more crazy. Yeah, exactly. You know, what's great when you're being

00:36:35.640 stalked by a woman who has absolutely no boundaries or sense of protocol whatsoever, 0.97

00:36:41.100 marry someone she intimately knows and is related to. And so he got married to Annabella Millbank

00:36:47.520 in 1815 and fathered a girl by the name of Ada also in that same year. And if you know anything

00:36:55.920 about women's history, which I'm sure you do, if you're listening to the podcast, that was Ada

00:36:59.520 Lovelace, one of the co-creators of computer programming and computational math that I don't

00:37:06.820 understand what my friend lana has said is like ada lovelace became who she was and like which

00:37:13.560 was like a okay person mainly because her mother had let her have nothing to do with lord byron

00:37:19.940 and raised her herself yeah yeah yeah as soon as annabella kind of gave birth to a daughter she

00:37:26.240 was like you cannot be around your father and she just left immediately got a divorce in 1816

00:37:35.000 and Ada never saw her father basically and which thank god her mom did that yeah and then uh as

00:37:44.920 soon as Byron was a divorcee he was like England has nothing left for me and then just left and

00:37:52.440 went to Switzerland right yeah right so this is like we're tiptoeing up to like so the

00:37:58.380 like Geneva, the house, the year with no summer, et cetera. But at some point when he was in

00:38:04.880 England during this time, this is okay. I have a real soft spot for Claire Claremont. I just feel

00:38:09.620 like she was a cool person and deserves better, deserved better and deserves better now. But so

00:38:15.500 she met him at some point and she's just like, well, with Claire Claremont, like she saw the

00:38:20.180 Mary Shelley was with Percy Shelley. And she was like, I too will be involved with a great writer.

00:38:25.040 here's one Byron and she just like belonged on to him and like she's the reason that the

00:38:34.020 Shelleys and like when they wound up at Byron's house was because she was just like pursuing him 0.99

00:38:38.580 and he was like not interested in her whatsoever but he's like you're here I'll fuck you but like 0.95

00:38:43.000 whatever and she was just like this is my great love story and it was all yeah oh girl you know 0.99

00:38:52.160 it's one of those things where you're like where would lucky claire claremont be if she had had 0.73

00:38:58.140 ready access to birth control and hadn't have been attached to byron by being the mother of

00:39:04.040 one of his illegitimate children later on yeah so he's in switzerland so he i presume like you

00:39:12.200 know he was they have this like crimson peak crumbling manor the mother has like 24 000

00:39:16.320 like life is not he's not wealthy but as soon as he becomes a writer he becomes wealthy

00:39:20.180 yeah from his writing yes and that's why he's able to just be like i'm gonna go to switzerland

00:39:24.580 and live in a villa it's just like he's living the life he felt he always deserved really yeah

00:39:28.580 and he also sold the ancestral home so at this time there are you know like you know when you

00:39:33.660 read like old british fiction and it's just like oh the new money industrialists are buying up all

00:39:38.960 of like the the lord you know the lordship manners and stuff like that lord pride was like you don't

00:39:44.080 say and basically sold the pile. He was like, we're done. I want no ties to England. He sold

00:39:50.600 the grounds. He had cash coming out of his eyeballs because of his exceptional prowess

00:39:59.220 at writing and also selling what he wrote. And he was like, oh, this is perfect. I can just

00:40:05.620 be a vagabond about Europe. And the first place he goes is Switzerland, because where else would

00:40:10.860 you go if you've got money coming out of your eyeballs and he settled on uh i forget oh at the

00:40:17.120 suggestion of his doctor john polidori he settled up in this villa and he was just like this is 0.97

00:40:22.640 going to be great we are going to have so much sex do so much drugs and write so much weird erotic

00:40:28.040 poetry and everybody was like sign up we are here for it yeah yeah no it's like the like most 1.00

00:40:34.580 demented writers retreat to just like do you want to come here and just like fuck each other 0.99

00:40:39.140 constantly and write the most fucked up things. Yeah. We've got grown men and teenage girls, 1.00

00:40:45.860 basically. And they're just kind of like, we are going to do so many seedy things that everybody,

00:40:51.140 like, honestly, this sounds like a nightmare to me, like just learning more. When you first

00:40:55.760 learn about this, the villa and the summer when Mary Shelley and John Polidori are basically

00:41:02.140 inventing genre literature, you're like, Oh my God, what would it be like to be there? And now

00:41:06.860 that i'm a grown adult woman i'm just like that sounds like hell on earth i would rather saw off

00:41:12.540 my own foot kind of like like epstein island like it's just kind of like grown men teenage girls

00:41:19.480 just like what is happening there nothing good yeah and mary shelley also it's just like i want

00:41:24.980 to you know we've talked about this all month but like yeah she's a teenage girl but she just like

00:41:28.600 is pregnant and like her baby just died she's not just like woohoo i'm just like here for a good 0.73

00:41:32.800 time. Yeah, no, it's not spring break. She's just like, I'm going to self medicate with orgies and

00:41:40.060 opium alcohol and, and just like, like marinating in my own post, like, you know, a traumatic stress

00:41:50.200 disorder and like, and, and the fact that her husband or her boyfriend at the time is like

00:41:55.740 wildly older than yeah yeah it's just like the least healthy mixture of of uh circumstances

00:42:05.440 possible for this girl to now and write frankenstein basically yeah yeah just the fact

00:42:11.580 that like by i don't know the the whole thing about the the night that she you know that let's

00:42:15.920 write ghost stories or whatever it's just like wow thinking about the people who are there like

00:42:19.260 the fact that one of them is byron is just yeah and now for a quick advertising break

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00:44:27.220 Reality TV is messy.

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00:44:33.460 Welcome to Roxanne and Chantelle, the podcast where Cousins Roxanne and Chantelle break down

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00:44:55.960 This is Roxanne and Chantelle. Let's get into it.

00:44:59.860 and we're back knowing as much as i know now about mary shelley but percy shelley and then

00:45:05.780 also claire i don't know as much about polidori but like long-suffering dr polidori i would say 0.51

00:45:11.400 maybe one of byron's lovers perhaps yeah who was byron not fucking who was around him that's like

00:45:21.460 really the number one question at this point i can assume that he and percy best shelley even 0.54

00:45:27.920 probably had a I'm sure I'm sure there was just like no boundaries whatsoever which like rock on

00:45:34.660 cool if everybody's consenting and totally going along with it have fun you new weirdos but like

00:45:40.040 at the same time like no one's in a good place like like Byron's just been left by the woman

00:45:46.300 he's gonna marry he's never gonna see any of his kids he's severing all ties to his homelands like

00:45:54.440 and, and all of his privilege, he's just decided that like the vagabond life is for me. And he,

00:46:00.700 that's like, when you go through a breakup and you're just like, I'm going to cut my hair and 0.62

00:46:05.820 move titties and things like that. He's doing that. And, and everybody's just like, I want to

00:46:11.200 get bagged down by this man. He's like, clear read the room. You don't want to get bogged down by

00:46:17.080 this man. Yeah. Well, and that's where Claire is just sort of like, obviously, so she becomes

00:46:23.000 pregnant um she oh god claire so she has a daughter and she calls the daughter elba initially

00:46:28.880 which stands for like lb like lord byron which is like oh her nickname that she called him was

00:46:35.320 like lb so she's like our daughter will be elba and he's like no our daughter will be called 0.93

00:46:39.220 allegra and i'm gonna take her from you and send her off to a convent where she like dies of

00:46:43.440 tuberculosis yeah like because he's like i don't want you to raise her because you are just this 1.00

00:46:48.440 like teenage girl and who cares I will take the daughter away and then she will die and then she

00:46:53.020 will die yeah he lost a lot of kids I mean it was the time partially but also like negligence

00:46:58.980 like let's be real here yeah and he just did not care so he's yeah I know just like Claire

00:47:06.460 I don't know I'm trying to think of a comparison it's just like somebody's just like oh I met

00:47:12.460 Lena DiCaprio and I'm just gonna like I'm sure he'll marry me it's like no like

00:47:18.360 no yeah yeah it's like whenever someone announces that they're having like a love child by a

00:47:25.480 celebrity you're like wow what did you do to facilitate that you know what i mean where

00:47:30.160 there's like did you just kind of go like i'm gonna skip my pill for today did you poke holes

00:47:34.720 and things like what did you do and it's you know with claire is definitely like a there she baby

00:47:41.260 trapped that fella like i don't like using the phrase but it might happen i thought that this

00:47:46.720 would persuade him to be interested in her and he clearly was not um poor claire we have an episode

00:47:53.140 about her but if you scroll back through the feed listeners i we we do a whole thing about claire

00:47:57.480 she turned out just fine but um this was quite a time for her so lord byron okay so there's this

00:48:04.320 is like he intersects with the shellys and then they stay connected for a while like they're all

00:48:08.980 palling around in italy having a nice time etc yeah he would quote a nice time percy and byron

00:48:16.180 are having a nice time. Mary is like constantly pregnant and like going through it. Yeah. And 0.72

00:48:21.780 the only person who's like, maybe we should like pay the rent. Maybe we should like have a meal

00:48:27.880 today. Like in it, like that's, that's her role. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And, and I don't know how 0.98

00:48:33.460 long Polidori stuck around, but you know, it was probably like Mary and Polidori, like hiding in

00:48:38.780 like the scullery going like, what are we going to do with these two men who absolutely refuse to

00:48:44.760 do anything but take drugs drink and have sex like what are we supposed to do with these people 0.99

00:48:49.240 can we shoot them is that allowed like what if we go somewhere can we dispatch of them because 0.99

00:48:54.300 this is awful so instead they go to venice and byron's just like i know what i'm gonna do 1.00

00:49:00.760 i'm gonna screw around with two married women and that will not come bite me in the ass and 1.00

00:49:06.960 it did surprise surprise he took up with two italian married women both of whom far lower 0.99

00:49:13.620 on the social strata than him and he's just kind of like this this is perfect nothing nothing could 0.98

00:49:19.100 be better here it's such a nightmare what what what is the result of this thing i i'm just keep

00:49:25.740 hoping for a duel but i don't know no he got chased off by husbands basically more than anything

00:49:32.580 like that was a constant thing where he was just gonna like woo these women i think also at the

00:49:38.360 same time he might have had a thing for like a 17 year old who was like supposed to get yeah

00:49:45.080 there's a teenager who maybe has a baby also yeah yeah in 1820 he meets it so it's a little bit

00:49:52.020 after uh this um he he meets a woman named countess teresa i cannot pronounce that it's italian

00:50:01.760 uh g-u-i-c-c-i-o-l-i oh man i don't know giucioli giucioli i think you're correct

00:50:10.980 and begins an affair with her but she's 17 and she's born nobility and her father is like

00:50:17.140 get out her father is like the only responsible adult man ever in byron's life who was just like 0.94

00:50:24.160 stay away from my daughter touch her again and i will kill you get out of here and he does 0.77

00:50:29.920 He legitimately leaves Venice and he's all over Northern Italy at this point. 0.97

00:50:34.660 I want to say, okay, just to, cause this intersects, I just did like a word search

00:50:38.840 in my manuscript to be like, when was he doing stuff with, with Caroline of Brunswick?

00:50:43.200 So this is where, so Caroline of Brunswick, the, um, at this point, queen of England.

00:50:48.940 Um, but she's living in Italy for various reasons.

00:50:51.460 You can learn about in my book, Rebel of the Regency, but she's living in Italy at this

00:50:55.940 point and so she and Byron like they hang out sometimes because he's like her like chaos friend

00:51:01.400 who just like comes to her dinner party sometimes yeah so at this point um what was happening is

00:51:06.540 that her husband George IV is trying to divorce her and so he sent all these spies to Italy to

00:51:12.220 try to catch Caroline having affairs with people and stuff um like Lord Byron didn't like George

00:51:21.820 the fourth because he thought he was a fuck up so like if you want to know like who is yeah like 0.99

00:51:26.220 lord byron was just like this guy sucks too much for even me lord byron wow is how much he was 0.99

00:51:32.420 awful tragic mess do you have to be for lord byron to be like too too rich for my blood i'm 0.98

00:51:38.580 even for me that's too much yeah let me see so what happens is so lord byron wrote a poem or

00:51:45.140 maybe a play called don juan which was mocking george the fourth actually and kind of like

00:51:50.380 being like caroline's cool actually is sort of the subtext of that play i love it anyway so

00:51:55.960 eventually what happens is that uh lord byron was well caroline was put on trial she went back to

00:52:02.220 england and there's a adultery trial and they had to recall all of the lords to come and like sit

00:52:08.500 at her to be like the jury for her trial yeah this is like 367 men who and it's summer vacation and

00:52:14.660 they're all just like somewhere else but they're like you all have to come back and sweat in

00:52:19.520 parliament while listening to this woman's films be taken out before you yeah they were never all

00:52:26.360 there in the house of lords because they were like yeah it's like an honorary title like you

00:52:30.820 just get to sit in the house of lords when you're a lord but most of them never came so there wasn't

00:52:33.820 enough chairs for them they had to build like stands for all of them to fit in there anyway

00:52:41.080 so here's here's the thing um lord byron is in italy at this time where so he did not attend the

00:52:46.600 trial because he was currently in an active feud with her lawyer. And he was like, if I come back

00:52:51.920 to England, I will have to be in a duel with him. And I don't want to have to kill him. Sorry. 0.70

00:52:57.780 Sorry, girl, bestie. Like I can't come and vote against your husband's like, even though like

00:53:03.940 your literal life and livelihood relies on me perhaps doing so because, um, it sounds really

00:53:10.380 inconvenient and personally traumatic. And I'm not going to do that.

00:53:13.800 Here's what he wrote. So he was from, from Ravenna, Northern Italy. So he's like following

00:53:18.640 the news of the trial, even though he's not personally there. And so he, but he's still

00:53:22.500 on her side. He says, nobody here believes a word of the evidence against the queen.

00:53:26.000 The very mob cry shame against their countrymen and say that for half the money spent upon the

00:53:30.200 trial, any testimony, whatever may be brought out of Italy. So he is from Italy. Like he didn't show

00:53:36.940 up. He didn't go to the, Caroline was like, she's been to all of the ones who are her friends. And

00:53:42.620 she was just like hey like could you like you lord swear my friends can you come here and like

00:53:46.940 support me and he's like girl no sorry so on the one hand it's like you know he's he's he's stands

00:53:54.240 with her he supports her but on the other hand like when he was actually needed he didn't come

00:53:58.240 yeah but he was like i gotta wash my hair i'm sorry he's just being like word on the street

00:54:03.360 here is like yeah everyone in italy is like we all know she's innocent so it's like we get some

00:54:06.980 we get some intel from him so it's it's during this era when he's just kind of like traveling

00:54:10.680 you're in Italy, just like doing whatever that he's like, sorry, bestie, best of luck, Caroline.

00:54:17.440 Oh God. That's so frustrating. It's so frustrating to hear anytime where you just like,

00:54:23.160 here's your moment to grasp like a sex, a sliver of humanity and just scrape back like your

00:54:33.300 reputation for posterity and he's just like no yeah he's like that sounds really grossly

00:54:41.000 inconvenient ravenna and venice are lovely this time of year and i hear something is happening

00:54:46.300 in greece and i should get in on it he's just like no that sounds that sounds like a you problem

00:54:54.520 basically yeah it's just like i you know you're my you're my girl i like when you have a party

00:54:59.420 and i'm in the same city i will attend it but we're not like close like that

00:55:03.300 oh what a monster like again so one thing that i should probably say before we go too much farther

00:55:14.280 is that lord byron was wildly abused as a child he and and probably sexually by both a woman that 0.96

00:55:23.620 was a maid in his house and also one of his mother's boyfriends so there there's yeah so

00:55:30.800 So like you can understand we're talking like he was essentially raped by one of the maids in his house when he was nine. 0.66

00:55:38.480 And even younger than that, one of his mother's boyfriends might have sexually abused him.

00:55:43.940 There's definitely some textual evidence to the fact that he may have been like deeply, deeply, deeply abused as a young man.

00:55:52.460 And I can only imagine what that does to your brain in that time of that era with absolutely

00:56:01.800 no recourse or treatment or therapy about it available, possibly at that time.

00:56:08.460 Well, at this time, like as I talk about in my book, everyone's just kind of like leeches

00:56:11.860 and opium that cures everything.

00:56:16.520 So yeah, everybody is dropping a tuberculosis. 0.98

00:56:19.500 they're like yeah let's like self-medicate with booze whores and opium that's that's what you get 0.90

00:56:25.200 and this is like it's a connection that i've you know seen in other stories or whatever like 0.95

00:56:31.100 documentaries it's like the child's sexual abuse like and then can manifest as an adult with its

00:56:35.960 sexual compulsion like yes absolutely and and just like a relatively complete inability to um

00:56:43.520 to understand like emotional relationships where you're saying you know like carolyn is just kind

00:56:49.440 of like, can you help me? And he's like, no, I can't. Cause I, it's just, I'm just not capable

00:56:56.220 of doing things for other people in any way, shape or form. He just is completely emotionally,

00:57:02.780 you know, messed up in a way is that I can't say in a more academic context, he just does not

00:57:08.680 have, he has never really demonstrated the ability to have adult reciprocal relationships

00:57:16.020 with other people. He had like a bromance with Percy Shelley. And then when Percy dies in like

00:57:22.660 a boating accident, basically the best Byron can do is like, Oh, you know, that yacht that I just

00:57:28.560 built, I'm not going to keep it. And that's it. That's like the end of their, you know, like

00:57:33.600 relationship. There's no outreach to Mary. It's just like, Oh, he dead. Oh no, I'm going to get

00:57:39.280 rid of my boat. Cause I don't want it to happen to me. And that's that, that is that's, that's

00:57:44.400 all there is that's all she wrote yeah and this is where again you know coming back to Claire

00:57:50.160 Claremont um just like the fact that she's just like oh this like if I have a child with him like

00:57:55.740 there will be an emotional attachment like the expectation she had that he would behave like

00:57:59.560 she would expect a person to behave it's like yeah he doesn't do that he doesn't have emotion

00:58:06.920 like you're that's very astute what you're saying like he just doesn't have this depth of emotional

00:58:11.860 relationship with anybody. He just doesn't. That's just not a thing that he's capable of doing.

00:58:16.600 It's a hundred percent self-serving at all times. And I think he was really able to grasp

00:58:23.700 larger scale concepts of justice and human rights and things like that. Like

00:58:30.140 this was also, he read about the Luddites at a certain point. And the Luddites were a group that

00:58:37.240 nowadays get a bad rap for being anti-technology. But realistically, what they were was they were

00:58:42.980 they were mill workers. And they saw that there was like a new invention in milling. And they

00:58:49.260 were like, if you adopt this technology, and huge numbers of people are going to go get out of work,

00:58:56.420 they're going to be put out of work if you adopt this new milling technology, looming technology.

00:59:01.000 and Byron was like, you know, they're right. Like, you know, you don't want to put towns

00:59:07.220 out of business because weaving got more, you know, technology, faster, harder, better,

00:59:12.700 faster, stronger. You know, it's like, this was the industrial revolution. And he was like,

00:59:16.600 we can slow it down. Like we can, we can help people without, you know, like killing industry

00:59:22.220 and things like that. So, you know, he got a sense of a larger scale, you know, justice

00:59:29.380 and relationship and people's well-being he just couldn't get it on an interpersonal scale

00:59:34.200 and so you read about him and you're just like how come you couldn't extrapolate human rights

00:59:41.580 abuses and wanting you know freedom and which we'll get into with the greeks and the turks

00:59:45.740 and it's like how could you understand that but not understand that like maybe you should be

00:59:52.160 nice to the mother of your children like you couldn't grab it yeah well and this also i think

00:59:56.860 that correlates with what we were talking about with like the Elkin marbles where he was just

01:00:01.360 like, and this was a thing where the British government paid a whole lot of money to just

01:00:05.940 like take these cultural artifacts at a time when just the England was not thriving

01:00:13.620 agriculturally, economically, like this money could have been spent helping people in various

01:00:19.160 ways. But instead the government was like, but what if marbles just raped treasure from 0.78

01:00:24.520 everywhere else on the planet what if we use our treasury to buy these like cool looking marbles

01:00:29.180 and lord byron was against that so like again that's another sort of thing where he's just

01:00:33.200 like no those belong to that country so it's like huh i think that's where i have these like

01:00:37.920 mixed not mixed emotions but just like he's a complex person because he did

01:00:42.220 he's often what we would say is like on the right side of these sort of historical 0.74

01:00:46.060 very much so but then on a personal level he's so shitty to everyone

01:00:51.300 that's one of the things where it's like you you read more about the abuses the real tangible

01:00:57.500 concrete like no questions asked abuses that he suffered as a kid and then you get to his his true

01:01:06.180 and honest dedication to like fighting for human rights and and and and cultural um you know like

01:01:14.720 and i can't come up with a better term for it but like and culture at large and things like that

01:01:20.900 and you're just like you were a good guy somewhere and I almost feel bad that his reputation 0.99

01:01:28.240 is for being such a monstrous shitty fuck boy because he was he was and that is his 0.99

01:01:36.360 overarching reputation and he earned every minute of it but at the same time I'm like 0.99

01:01:42.340 I also do want to acknowledge the fact that he was actually kind of cool about some stuff like

01:01:47.620 he really was yeah he contains multitudes this one he does he does so in terms of just like

01:01:54.120 villains of this era george the fourth no redeeming qualities terrible on a personal level

01:02:00.320 terrible on a global scale terrible in a human rights social justice way no redeeming qualities

01:02:07.480 byron some redeeming qualities some shockingly yeah surprisingly so yeah it's like not it's not

01:02:16.380 just like oh everyone thinks this so i'll think this too it's like he really was like no i personally

01:02:21.220 feel the injustice of this and i'm gonna speak out about it yeah it's not the popular thing to say

01:02:25.980 yeah i mean i don't know the full extent of his like sort of ruminations on it but when he was a

01:02:34.040 kid he started reading about the uh oppression of the armenians by the turks so like a hundred years

01:02:39.980 before the genocide. You know, so it's like the 1813, 1815, he's starting to read about how like

01:02:48.100 the Turks and the Ottoman Empire is like overtaking all of these different countries,

01:02:52.820 like the Armenians, and then the Greeks. And he's just like, something must be done about this. 0.62

01:02:59.120 So when he's run out of Italy, essentially for sleeping with way too many underage girls and

01:03:04.720 countesses, he goes to Greece and he's like, this is where I'm going to make my legacy.

01:03:11.800 And he liquidates his entire estate. He's got the equivalent. Again, he finally earned the

01:03:19.660 equivalent of like currently 2 million great British pounds. And he's like, it is all going

01:03:26.420 to go to the Greek war of independence. I am going to help the Greek people overcome the oppression

01:03:34.240 from the Ottoman empire and overthrow the Turks. Like there was a lot of infighting amongst the

01:03:39.500 different like Greek cities, essentially city states and like islands and stuff like that.

01:03:43.260 And he's just like, let's get down to brass tacks. We're all going to come together. We're

01:03:48.040 going to finish our petty squabbles and we're going to gain independence from the Ottoman empire. 0.97

01:03:53.000 And they basically do thanks to Lord Pyrrhon.

01:03:57.840 So I want to clarify though, like he provided funds for them, for people there who knew what

01:04:03.280 they were doing yeah he wasn't like on the battlefield leading troops no he i know that

01:04:10.260 he kind of like sat down with various faction leaders and was like you need to stop doing this

01:04:16.480 basically and it's like you're never going to overthrow the turks unless you like stop

01:04:21.400 infighting amongst yourselves and he managed to like kind of negotiate some stuff but like

01:04:26.600 people on the ground in greece loved him he wasn't there's a statue of him i think right

01:04:31.780 Yeah. Yeah. They named a town after him. Like it's nuts when you think about that. And no,

01:04:37.800 he's not like, you know, admiralty of the Navy, you know, and, and, and leading the charge,

01:04:42.760 but like he is a fairly well-respected person amongst the people who are actually leading

01:04:50.280 the armed forces of Greece against the Ottoman empire. And you think to yourself like that guy.

01:04:56.700 yeah but that guy yeah i know he contains multitudes but this is also the final era of

01:05:06.300 his life yeah yeah because he it's not like dramatically shot down in battle but he like

01:05:12.400 gets a cold or tuberculosis or something yeah he had he gets some kind of like wasting disease

01:05:18.740 um in 1824 and he was about to be a part of an actual like physical attack on a turkish

01:05:26.620 child fortress called Lepanto in 1824. And he gets sick. And then, and within a couple of weeks,

01:05:33.180 he passes away. So he's relatively young, 1824. And he's in, and, and the Greeks are like

01:05:40.460 beside themselves. Yeah. Like he was truly a hero to them. Yeah. It's, it's kind of mind boggling 0.99

01:05:48.140 to, to be like this romantic poet that by like today's standards is like a fet and like, no,

01:05:57.160 and you know, like he is a fancy man basically. And he like cares about, he's still like curling

01:06:02.780 his hair. He's still got affectations. There's a very, very, very famous portrait of Byron and

01:06:08.580 like the full, like, um, sort of like, like a, like different hats and like headgear. And he's

01:06:15.100 got like swashbuckling capes and things like that. And he, this is how he wants to be remembered

01:06:20.700 and fancy dress essentially. And yet like all of these Greek war heroes are like, he's our guy.

01:06:29.400 We wouldn't have been able to do this without him, which is, you know, he never, when you think of

01:06:35.560 like lordship and, and, uh, peerage in Britain, you think of like, oh, the Duke led, you know,

01:06:42.020 his troops into battle and things like he didn't do that in his home country he needed to do that

01:06:46.500 in greece which is very on behalf of just himself it's not like england is coming in and this is the

01:06:52.900 the like army guy that we chose to lead he was just like i personally lord byron on behalf of

01:06:57.820 just myself i'm going to do this it's not just like england is going to intervene he's like no i

01:07:02.220 byron will intervene like it was just entirely it's such a you know if this was like a fictional

01:07:08.240 book, you just be like, that's no, that's not a believable ending for this story. This does not,

01:07:12.920 this does not tie in with what we've been talking about and the person that we we've been hearing

01:07:17.000 about. Like this is the end. Yeah. It's a complete and total, like 180 in personality.

01:07:22.900 It's like when rich white women decide they're going to start dog rescues and you're just like, 1.00

01:07:27.800 you know, other people were doing that. You didn't need to start it up. And he was like, no, 1.00

01:07:32.420 I need to come in here and save Greece. I mean, there was probably again, because he read about

01:07:38.220 the Turks, uh, you know, uh, oppressing Armenians. And then he read about the Turks oppressing the

01:07:44.060 Greeks. And so there's probably some anti-Muslim anti-Turkish sentiment happening here. It doesn't

01:07:49.360 really go down in history like that, but, um, I'm sure there's something nefarious underneath it

01:07:55.580 all, but, um, surprisingly enough, he just decides he's going to do it. And he does.

01:08:00.960 And there's something about, if you don't know, I can, I'll just look up quickly, but like his

01:08:05.700 grave. There's something like he wanted to be buried in Westminster Abbey and they wouldn't

01:08:09.020 let him be or something like that. Yeah. Cause you know, word got back to, you know, the church

01:08:14.380 about Lord Byron and they were like, you are not really appropriate to be buried here. And so, um,

01:08:24.040 he, my goodness, I don't know why I didn't like take notes on his burial, but no, he was not

01:08:29.400 allowed because they have like, you know, poet's corner and things like that. And he was like,

01:08:32.800 know i want to be buried there and they were like actually no and so wasn't he also like and i would

01:08:39.720 also like a grave for my dog yeah i'm just looking up right now because i know that there's yeah so

01:08:46.140 i know that um he had i think he paid for the memorial for his dog and after he died you know

01:08:53.760 and everybody knew of his fame as a poet and kid you know this is like the early 1900s people were

01:09:01.340 talking about like, you know, there's a, there's a memorial to his dog, but there's not a memorial

01:09:06.160 to Lord Byron. And apparently like school children started a fund in order to create like a, a

01:09:13.100 memorial, like plaque, you know, monument for Lord Byron, which like, could you imagine being like,

01:09:20.320 we're going to go around to the primary school and collect loose change for a memorial to this

01:09:26.360 dead poet but they did and the kids like did it amongst themselves and they had a memorial built

01:09:33.240 and then after a short time part of him was was uh removed was finally buried in in or they

01:09:40.340 created a memorial to him in 1969 they there's like a i was there last summer and i was just

01:09:48.340 like and i westminster abbey i found very overwhelming i was just like i'm gonna go

01:09:51.980 see the graves of other people i've heard of and i was just like i did not go in there with a map

01:09:55.480 plan which i should have yeah because everything is in latin yeah including people's names great

01:10:01.520 but his was just in poet's corner i'm like oh lord byron i'm like i remember there's a saga

01:10:05.160 about this but yeah so i want to mention so he yes you can go to poet's corner and there's like

01:10:10.120 a grave or like a floor stone which was paid for by the greeks yeah they were like oh you know what

01:10:19.000 we're gonna have like some greek leader is the person who paid for that memorial like that piece

01:10:23.900 of marble. Cause that's like the one place where he did something good. I want to mention also,

01:10:27.900 um, epitaph to a dog. So this is, um, so he wrote a poem, his dog, Boatswain, remember the giant

01:10:34.780 200 pound dog that he couldn't bring to school. So, okay. So Boatswain, 1808, tragically died

01:10:42.360 of rabies. Yeah. He tried to nurse him back from rabies. Didn't work clearly. Yeah. Did not quite

01:10:49.300 a choice um because as as then as now when you get rabies you just die that is you go nuts and

01:10:58.260 you die yeah yeah so he was like nursing his rabies rabid dog anyway so he wrote a poem about

01:11:05.220 his beloved dog um and so this poem is inscribed on boatswain's tomb which is larger than byron's

01:11:12.080 at Newstead Abbey Byron's estate. Yeah. I would not want to tango with a rabid Newfoundland

01:11:19.320 like that. Like a 200 pound rabid dog. They're enormous. Like I, a couple of years ago, 0.68

01:11:25.500 I almost adopted a Newfoundland and I was like, I don't, and he was small air quotes at 120 pounds.

01:11:31.800 And I was like, I don't want a 120 pound dog. So I like, I didn't adopt that dog. And then I got a

01:11:38.820 pit bull that grew to be 105 pounds anyway. So, you know, that was dumb, but like, yeah, no, 0.95

01:11:43.740 they're enormous dogs. They're very sweet. They're very cool. But like, I would not want to tango 0.99

01:11:48.240 with a 120 plus pound rabbit dog. I saw a Newfoundland dog once I was just like in a park

01:11:55.440 and I was just like, first I was like, bear, is that a bear? And then I went up and like,

01:12:01.480 and I'm like, dog. And I was just like talking to the owner and I was just like, how much food does

01:12:06.860 it, do you, does this dog eat? I was just like, how could you, this is the biggest animal I've

01:12:11.220 ever seen in my life up close. Yeah. They're enormous. And it was the drool. Yeah. That was

01:12:17.900 another reason why I didn't get one. Like bear sized dog with rabies. I know, I know. I, you

01:12:28.100 know, I have to say that like the, the animal thing is very endearing to me. I, it's another

01:12:33.600 thing where I'm just like, Oh, you needed emotional support pets, but his emotional support

01:12:38.640 pets also included like free range monkeys and goats. And like when, uh, Percy Shelley was at

01:12:46.280 the villa in Switzerland, he made like a, uh, like a, basically a checklist, like a shopping

01:12:53.180 list of all the animals that were rolling around. And it was too many animals. Like I'm a weird

01:12:59.260 animal person. And I would love to have every weird ass pet in the world, but it was too many. 0.98

01:13:05.600 I'm trying to find it. And I'm just like, I need to find it. 0.97

01:13:10.000 Well, and I wonder, I hope, you know, he, he did like animals. Obviously he loved his dog so much.

01:13:16.200 I hope that these animals were like cared for and not just sort of like adopted and then forgotten,

01:13:21.480 but I feel like they were probably adopted and then forgotten.

01:13:23.860 I'm absolutely certain they were just adopted and forgotten. So Percy Shelley is talking about

01:13:29.220 how the schedule while we're at the villa. And it's Lord Byron gets up at two and he means in

01:13:35.440 the afternoon. I get up quite contrary to my usual custom at 12 at noon. After breakfast,

01:13:41.320 we sit talking till six. From six to eight, we gallop to the pine forest, which divide Ravenna

01:13:46.360 from the sea. We then come home and dine and sit up gossiping till six in the morning. I don't

01:13:52.140 suppose this will kill me in a week or fortnight, but I shall try not any longer. Lord B's

01:13:57.140 establishment consists, besides servants, of ten horses, eight enormous dogs, three monkeys, five

01:14:04.060 cats, an eagle, a crow, and a falcon. And all of these, except for the horses, walk around the

01:14:10.420 house, which every now and then resounds with their unarbitrated quarrels, as if they were

01:14:15.400 masters of it. I find that my enumeration of the animals in this Cicertian palace was defective.

01:14:21.220 i have just met on the grand staircase five peacocks two guinea hens and an egyptian crane

01:14:27.880 i wonder who all these animals were before they were changed into these shapes so the droppings

01:14:34.680 i feel like the lake of just animals going unencumbered through the indoor of a building

01:14:41.000 like and this is like a villa he's renting like he doesn't own he's the tenant from hell he is 0.99

01:14:46.480 like just having all of these goats run around and shit on someone else's floor. 0.98

01:14:53.020 And I'm just pretty like the eagle, like anything, just sort of like, 0.99

01:14:56.200 I'm sure eating the monkeys. Cause that's what they do. Like the filth of it.

01:15:01.220 Oh God. It's honest. It's honestly really repulsive. But again, that like, to me,

01:15:05.960 that just is part and parcel to the like grand, like, like macro scale. He gets it micro scale.

01:15:13.460 this man is a nightmare like just an absolute careless heartless nightmare and and yet he

01:15:22.320 and grace loves him and they should because he really helped out there on a macro level he's

01:15:28.420 just like in just injustice in the world i will fight against but like cleaning my house i will

01:15:35.840 not do i will absolutely not do i will not have any normal relationship with another living thing

01:15:43.400 one-on-one that is just not going to happen. But like the, the objective concept of a marginalized

01:15:50.480 people. Yes. Yes. I will help the concept of humanity, but not. Yeah. Yeah. It's so hard for

01:16:02.980 me to be like, I wish more people were kind of like that. Like I would love more people to be

01:16:07.400 like, I am going to give all to a cause, but maybe the people who are like, I can give all

01:16:13.980 to a cause can't do interpersonal relationships or interliving thing relationships. Maybe it's

01:16:20.060 like, what are the other? I don't know. But Lord Byron has such a legacy of absolute nightmare

01:16:29.200 crap. And it's really hard to write it off. It really truly is. It's an, in terms of the like 0.99

01:16:36.200 Wakefield legacy of like his father was fucked up and his grandfather's fucked up. Then he's 1.00

01:16:40.800 fucked up. Obviously it's like, but then it's like the, it ends with us. Ada Lovelace was just like, 0.99

01:16:48.860 because she had the Byron genes, but her mother was like, we're going to not like, okay, nature

01:16:54.480 versus nurture. She's just like, I'm just going to nurture you Ada Lovelace so that your Byronic

01:16:59.420 nature won't like destroy your life. And it didn't. So it kind of like, yeah, the curse was

01:17:03.780 broken with her. Yeah. He had like seven or eight illegitimate children and new ones pop up all the

01:17:12.400 time where the, you know, people go through records and it's like, Oh golly, the father on

01:17:17.300 this baptismal record was definitely, you know, Oh, also randomly, he was also like totally against

01:17:22.600 the persecution of the Catholics in England. He was just like, let's open it up fellas. This is

01:17:26.440 ridiculous. So he was just like, again, macro scale, great, macro scale, terrible. But you know, 0.99

01:17:32.320 he mostly sired daughters i was gonna say i feel like they're all girls like i don't know if

01:17:37.680 there's another like byron can't think of another boy because after he died the you know obviously

01:17:44.680 illegitimate children the title doesn't pass them anyway but it went to a nephew and then i've not

01:17:50.900 really paid attention to any of the lord's byron past you know sixth baron byron here so i don't

01:17:57.660 know if he also kind of went off the deep end chances are yeah but um yeah i don't know what

01:18:03.320 happened to be seventh baron byron because honestly the sixth one was all i could take

01:18:08.900 well and i think it's like when you say there's some you know titles pass from like we're calling

01:18:14.140 him byron because like that's how he's best known yeah but it's like he was lord byron my father's

01:18:18.160 lord byron there's someone else's lord byron but it's just like i think like with a sports team

01:18:22.780 where it's like we're just going to retire this number because the number is so inextricably

01:18:27.160 linked with this one person it's like lord byron i think we should retire that like i don't think

01:18:33.020 there can be it like if you're just like oh hey this is my my friend lord byron you just be like

01:18:37.560 what no it's so he reanimated from the dead like there's currently a lord byron like there is

01:18:43.920 currently a guy who goes by the title lord byron and i cannot imagine what it's like trying to get 0.90

01:18:50.660 a date like god that must suck you just don't you just don't go by your title i don't know like it's

01:18:56.620 It's so, it's so linked to this one guy who, and part of that is I think because he was 0.98

01:19:02.000 so, um, he was so famous in his time, but also I think he was so like self-promoting

01:19:06.540 during his time.

01:19:07.420 He's just like, it is I Lord Byron.

01:19:08.820 Like he really, like, it wasn't an accident that he became a famous person.

01:19:13.800 Like he, Greg Jenner wrote a book that's about, um, the invention of celebrities and like

01:19:19.760 Lord Byron is one of the first like real, like the way that we understand celebrity

01:19:23.920 today where it's just like, Oh, Lord Byron was seen at this restaurant and he was eating dinner

01:19:27.500 with this person. Like he was one of the first modern celebrities. And he sort of invented that

01:19:33.100 just instinctively by just being like in his eye, Lord Byron. Like he needed it for his ego. Like

01:19:39.100 even down to like when he is in Greece, there's like, there's, there's like a straight that people

01:19:43.300 swim competitively. And he was like, I swam it. Yep. I did. Like, it wasn't just that I was like,

01:19:49.900 you know, had like reasonable prowess, you know, and physical prowess because he, he was

01:19:54.060 an obsessive exerciser. Like he, he had like honest to God, like ortho x-ray, like in addition

01:19:59.880 to bulimia, like he had every eating disorder imaginable because he was, he was naturally a

01:20:05.060 larger bodied person. And he was just like, no, in order to be beautiful, I need to be fit and

01:20:10.460 gorgeous and skinny and all these things. And so like he, he tried to overcompensate for the

01:20:16.200 deformed foot by being extremely athletic. So it wasn't just that he was a boxer, he was a boxing

01:20:21.360 champion and had to beat everybody. It wasn't just that he was a good swimmer. He had to go to Greece

01:20:25.680 and swim this channel in order to like be the best and be awarded all of these accolades and

01:20:31.460 have everybody know how perfect and wonderful he was. And he, he absolutely wrote and read his own

01:20:37.340 press releases. That man was so full of himself and he needed everybody to know. And like the

01:20:43.260 same way that we look at kim kardashian and she's just like look at my new body that i just paid

01:20:48.320 eight million dollars for i have to tell you about it it's like yeah thanks lord byron you gave us

01:20:55.640 that lord byron is his energy is really just like this imdb bio written by lord byron yes exactly

01:21:02.580 lord byron the most celebrated poet of all time biography by lord byron lord byron i was just

01:21:09.200 remembering something so when i was in london last year i went to the national portrait gallery

01:21:13.060 And there's a wall where there's like, it's so interesting now that I've done more research

01:21:16.460 on these people, but it's like, there's a portrait of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley,

01:21:20.700 John Polidori and Lord Byron are like all on a wall together.

01:21:23.980 And I'm just like, free them from him.

01:21:27.040 But get some distance.

01:21:29.560 I know.

01:21:29.880 Just when you mentioned the boxing, I was like, wait, there was that, there's sort of

01:21:32.720 like, you know, there's like folding screens that, yeah.

01:21:36.020 So on display, like at the, at the National Portrait Gallery.

01:21:38.900 So it's this folding screen decorated with, it's like decoupage, it's literal decoupage.

01:21:43.040 like it's prints of theater personalities and boxers was made for Lord Byron by his fencing

01:21:49.700 teacher. Um, because Byron is fascinated by the new culture of celebrity. So the lives of boxers

01:21:55.420 and actors were the stuff of gossip and their printed portraits were widely available.

01:21:59.240 So his fencing teacher decoupage a like, I don't know, six foot tall folding screen of just like

01:22:05.820 posters, advertising boxing celebrities. And that's, so it's called at the NPG, it's Lord

01:22:11.820 Byron's decoupage screen. And the same way that like, when you're a nerd and you put like band

01:22:18.260 posters on your wall and you're like, yeah, I'm going to learn how to play bass. So I could be,

01:22:22.080 you know, like have a band too. And you're just like, wow. And he did that just with like boxers

01:22:28.080 and pugilists. It's like, it's like you take like a scrapbook and you just like carefully

01:22:32.600 like glue in the pictures from the teen magazine of like your favorite and you put stickers on it.

01:22:38.060 And then I, I heart Byron, like it's that. And it's still like, now it's in a gallery just being

01:22:44.040 like, but also this ties into the whole concept of like celebrities, like boxes were becoming

01:22:47.500 celebrities. He's so interested in the concept of celebrity, but it's just such a little nerd

01:22:52.240 thing. Yeah. I, he's, there are little things about him that are incredibly endearing and it's,

01:22:58.380 and you kind of get the ick with yourself when you're just like, really, I should not find

01:23:02.940 certain aspects of this endearing, like, like, you know, um, the child, I'm going to go back to

01:23:08.700 the name of the poem that I can't pronounce when you go to Harold and the, I forget that's exactly

01:23:15.360 my gosh, child Harold's pilgrimage. Like he honestly just wrote that for a girl. Like he

01:23:21.480 was just like, I'm really in love with this other like teenage girl. I am a teenager. I'm going to

01:23:27.020 write her a poem about how I'm going on tour, but I'm going to be thinking of her and I'm going to

01:23:32.460 write this poem. And then the other thing that he did that is remarkably probably ego aware is that

01:23:38.660 he sent his memoirs to a friend to be published after he died and then was like, scratch that,

01:23:47.360 destroy it. And he had his memoirs destroyed. So we have some snippets of details of his childhood

01:23:53.720 and his own feelings about things like his sexual assaults and things like that as a child. And we

01:23:59.100 have some snippets of it because the men who read it recollected his thoughts about these things,

01:24:06.000 but it was never published. It was completely destroyed. And he knew, I guess, enough to have,

01:24:13.800 to be like, I don't want all of my, all of my details out there. And, you know, it's just like,

01:24:19.800 I really respect the fact that he, he either was trying to manipulate his legacy so much that he

01:24:28.580 only wanted this sort of like playboy sort of persona to survive. Or he was like, that could,

01:24:35.300 that's going to die with me. And no one has to know about all of the abuse that I suffered.

01:24:40.200 It could be one, the other, or both. And I think he was aware enough to have those conflicting

01:24:45.000 feelings. It's interesting though, because it's like, this is my memoir. I wrote myself and I

01:24:49.820 decided what to put in it. You know what? Don't publish it. It's like, you could have written a

01:24:54.240 different memoir and not just excised that or told them to edit it or whatever but no he hasn't

01:25:00.480 he hasn't destroyed it yeah that reminds me of well every time I'm researching somebody in history

01:25:06.380 and it's like and then the papers were destroyed after and I'm like oh why no no Carolina Brunswick

01:25:11.540 when she knew she was dying she was just like burn all my diaries and I'm like no

01:25:17.400 Oh, you know, I couldn't imagine knowing that I was important enough while I was alive

01:25:24.340 to be like, destroy my papers. Like I couldn't imagine having that, like that takes its own

01:25:29.080 level of ego. Cause I'm just like, who wants my notebooks? Like I'm just some like random idiot,

01:25:34.080 but they were just like, no, no. I mean, Carolyn of Brunswick, that makes sense. She was a queen, 0.99

01:25:38.600 but like, but like, but for Byron to be like, again, be like, no, I don't want that, you know,

01:25:47.060 preserve her posterity. He doesn't, no one needs to know that. I was like, could you imagine having

01:25:51.280 that sense of ego? It's so like, I kind of love that, that he's like, I wrote this memoir.

01:25:56.720 Just kidding. Burn it. Why did you write it? And now historians a hundred years later are like 0.88

01:26:03.820 tantalized. And maybe it literally is just like this tantalization thing of like, you want all

01:26:10.140 my secrets and I'm going to take them to the grave. Like I'm going to tell everybody I wrote

01:26:14.680 this thing. I'm going to tell everybody that all of my dirty laundry is in this and I'm going to

01:26:19.220 have it destroyed. So you can't stop thinking about me. Yeah. So you'll know. Yeah. So you

01:26:25.500 exactly. Exactly. So you can't stop thinking like, Oh, if only I could. Yeah. It's a way to

01:26:29.440 life after death. I don't know. What a weird jerk. It's such a second. Thank you. Like,

01:26:35.760 this is where I'm just like, I needed you to come on this episode to just like,

01:26:38.740 cause I'm like, who has thought about him more than you? I don't know.

01:26:41.140 no, it's weird to have this sort of like be part of your like persona. Like, you know,

01:26:48.140 cause I, you know, I started Fuck Boys of Lit in 2019 and it really, it took off like pretty

01:26:53.720 quickly and to start with Lord Byron and to kind of just become like, I never considered Lord Byron

01:26:59.560 before I started the podcast. Like I was, I never like sat and ruminated about this guy I probably

01:27:05.100 read in like 10th grade English class. Like I didn't do that. But now to actually have this

01:27:10.960 sort of Byronic lens to put over, you know, media at large, it's, it's become a very interesting

01:27:19.280 thing to have people kind of like reached out and be like, why this, why this guy, why is he like

01:27:26.380 it? And I'm by no means a scholar. Obviously you've heard me for the last like hour kind of

01:27:31.040 stumble through this, but he's such an interesting lens to put over all of our discussions about

01:27:37.860 masculinity, all of our discussions about femininity, all of our discussions about gender

01:27:42.740 performance, all of our discussions about literature, all of our discussions about history.

01:27:47.040 He's such an interesting person to filter all of this through.

01:27:51.580 There's so much there to just like, exactly. It's just like, if somebody is a historian on

01:27:58.360 celebrity if someone's a historian on like gender performance if someone's a historian

01:28:01.460 on like disability it's like it's all there it's like all there yeah and it's again like why i

01:28:08.920 i probably started fbol more as like a sardonic joke and now and after doing it for so many years

01:28:17.440 i was like i feel so much less cynicism about these people and i feel so much less cynicism

01:28:22.420 about his behavior because oftentimes when you learn about like lady carolyn lamb you also don't

01:28:29.060 ever get the context that he was like sexually abused as a child they just kind of go for the 0.99

01:28:34.160 more look at what a jerk this guy was look at what you know all the things that he did and not 0.99

01:28:40.700 the things that were that were sort of burned into him that he didn't have control over his 1.00

01:28:45.820 family whatever hereditary mental illnesses they may have passed on from one to another

01:28:50.600 And it's just been a really interesting way to have more depth of field of the way that I look

01:28:58.240 about, about society at large. And it's all thanks to, unfortunately, Lord Byron.

01:29:07.820 Yeah. It's just like against your will, against all of our will. It's like, oh,

01:29:11.740 he's still important today. He's still important.

01:29:14.120 He really is. Like, I can't recommend enough reading The Fall of the House of Byron by Emily

01:29:20.360 brand. It's an incredibly well-researched book. And it really also offers just like a much better

01:29:26.780 conceptualization for me as an American about like peerage and privilege during this time.

01:29:34.780 And, and as much as we all love watching like Bridgerton and stuff like that to get a better

01:29:39.460 concept of how, of the privilege and wealth and world that these stories that we're aware of,

01:29:46.140 like actually function in as an incredible book to read, especially about this one family that

01:29:50.940 we all wish we didn't know this much about. Oh, mad, bad, dangerous to know, colon,

01:29:56.120 the entire Byron family, Byron family. Actually, you just cued me up very in a really nice way

01:30:03.240 for me to make an announcement to all the listeners, because this is the, this episode

01:30:07.720 is the finale of Mary Shelley month, which we've been doing for the whole month of October.

01:30:10.940 um and we're pivoting directly into the next season of vulgar history which surprise this

01:30:17.280 is a halloween trick and a treat which is mary shelley month is morphing into the regency era

01:30:22.440 the next season my podcast is about the regency era retrospect retroactively the mary shelley

01:30:28.060 episodes are the beginning of that season and lord byron is such a presence everyone i've been

01:30:33.280 researching for the regency era episodes it's just like everyone has a thought about him or

01:30:37.860 run in with him or he was at their dinner party or something like he's when people think of the

01:30:42.700 regency era it's like oh jane austen whatever it's like no lord byron like that's byron he was

01:30:47.700 the poster child for it like i can't think of an equivalent today like i truly can't think of

01:30:53.040 someone who is like yeah i truly can't think of someone who's like analogous like analogous to

01:30:59.220 like this level of influence and and friendship and connection like maybe just the world's too big

01:31:07.260 it is and i think maybe there's just so many there's someone who's like that for you know

01:31:11.440 people who are fans of country music or people who are fans of horror movies or whatever but

01:31:15.020 there's not one person that everyone is connected to lord byron i might i'm honestly i probably will

01:31:20.080 by the end of this regency era series draw like not a venn diagram but one of those like spider

01:31:25.360 web diagrams where it's like lord byron's in the middle and it's like he's gonna do this and he's

01:31:28.900 gonna do this like he's the linchpin of this entire era in a way like again jane austen is

01:31:33.700 probably the most famous person from the regency era but she was just like living in her little

01:31:37.860 village writing her books like she was not hanging out with every celebrity of the era like lord

01:31:42.760 byron is connected to everybody it's just he's just an incredible incredible like person from

01:31:48.600 history and i never want to go so far as to be a byron scholar like i don't need to know that much

01:31:55.720 but yeah yeah just like like shane on the l word i'm really dating myself on that which is like

01:32:01.780 the web of how everybody knew him and was influenced by them and not necessarily in a

01:32:07.700 positive way. Everybody, I think, I don't know. I'm not, I will not give him the credit of like

01:32:13.620 connecting everybody in my upcoming series to Lord Byron, but just like, no, he will be in

01:32:18.300 almost every episode. Yeah. He's going to show up a lot. He truly is. He was, yeah. Cause it's

01:32:23.700 like, it was the era where it's like, well, you're having a ball or a dinner party or whatever. It's

01:32:28.500 just like, who do you invite? And it's like, well, this is, you always invite Lord Byron

01:32:31.320 because he's just like going to be a good guest. He's the most famous person. And if he accepts

01:32:34.760 your invitation, then more people will come to your event or whatever. Like he's the guy.

01:32:40.220 Yeah. And because he spent so much time outside of England, you know, he's, he's, he's part of

01:32:46.620 balls in Spain, part of balls in Italy, part of balls in Switzerland. It's just everywhere. It's

01:32:51.660 just whack-a-mole Lord Byron. It's like, what are you doing? Transcontinental, like traveling fuck

01:32:57.300 boy. Like it's just incredible how much so many sagas. Yeah. So, um, Emily, thank you so much for 0.99

01:33:04.640 this conversation. Please let everybody know where they can hear more of your voice and read more of

01:33:08.720 your words. This was so much fun. Thank you so much for having me on. This was just like an

01:33:13.400 absolute blast. I am across social media at usually blue sky and Instagram at Ms. Emily Edwards.

01:33:19.780 You can also find me at Ms. Emily Edwards.com. I am the co-host of the podcast ticklish business,

01:33:24.820 which is all about classic film.

01:33:26.320 You can hear Anne on an episode from last year

01:33:29.300 about Anne of a Thousand Days.

01:33:31.000 That was really, really fun.

01:33:32.260 Got to have you back on soon.

01:33:33.880 Oh, we're going to be, I just, comma.

01:33:35.640 Yes, Kristen and I,

01:33:37.200 your co-host of Ticklish Business.

01:33:39.280 We've got something in the works for next year

01:33:41.340 for a return appearance, something Regency era.

01:33:44.800 Wonderful.

01:33:45.800 I'm very happy to hear that.

01:33:47.760 And I also wrote some books.

01:33:50.540 I wrote some historical 1950s noir

01:33:53.180 kind of pulpy mystery novels.

01:33:54.820 They're called the girl Friday mysteries. And if you really like comedy mysteries,

01:34:00.420 it would be great if you could request them at your local library. That's about that.

01:34:03.760 I just want to test that as my two passions in life really are just like

01:34:08.120 women's history and cozy murder mysteries. So yeah, no, like your, your work is right at the

01:34:17.620 intersection of movies, but yeah, no, I murder mysteries are my favorite thing to read. So I'm

01:34:23.040 very happy that you are contributing to that oeuvre. Thank you. It's, it's really fun. It is

01:34:28.340 definitely not the most, uh, the feminine friendly genre out there. Cause I write more like 1.00

01:34:35.380 private detective kind of like PI stuff and a man that can get really anti-women. So I try to make

01:34:41.820 it a little bit more feminist and a little bit more fun and a little bit more funny. So, and

01:34:45.540 it's been fun doing that. I don't have another one coming out soon, but I should have a couple

01:34:49.300 short stories and things like that, uh, pressed this in the next couple of weeks. So if you want

01:34:55.240 to read those, follow me over on blue sky and I will post links to that. And that reminds me also,

01:35:00.820 you have your newsletter, which is about sleuths. Yes. So I just started a newsletter about silver

01:35:06.540 screen sleuths. I really enjoy on screen, uh, detective fiction. And so it just started a

01:35:12.580 couple of weeks ago. We've done like devil in a blue dress and murder on the death on the Nile

01:35:18.100 An upcoming is, well, by the time this comes out, we'll have The Name of the Rose with Sean Connery, based on Umberto Eco's novel from the 80s, which is a trip and a half.

01:35:30.120 It's like a medieval one, right?

01:35:33.100 It's a medieval monk monster. 0.67

01:35:35.260 Yeah.

01:35:36.080 Yeah, the movie is awful.

01:35:38.040 But the book is really interesting.

01:35:40.320 The book is way funnier than the movie.

01:35:42.400 it's like a spoof on Sherlock Holmes. And then the director of the movie decided to throw all

01:35:47.340 of that away and take it very seriously. So it's just like, it's a, it's a very interesting

01:35:52.240 dichotomy between, between book and movie. Cause the book is really funny and the movie is not.

01:35:59.420 That's so interesting. I just assumed that the book was also really serious because the movie

01:36:02.760 is, but yeah, so this is all like people can subscribe to your newsletter. It's your website,

01:36:06.620 right? It's where people go. Yeah. MissEmilyEdwards.com. You can find a sign up there.

01:36:09.780 perfect thank you so much emily and i just want to remind all of the listeners

01:36:13.280 that i do have a book coming out in february um called rebel of the regency the scandal saga of

01:36:17.780 carolina brunswick britain's uncrowned queen who was as i've mentioned a few times um a friend of

01:36:23.120 byron though you know as he was as good a friend to her as he was to anyone really um he defended

01:36:32.020 her in private but did not step up for her in public but anyway if you go to my website

01:36:36.820 rebel of the regency.com. There's all the links there to pre-order my book. And if you pre-order

01:36:40.640 my book, I'm giving, and you send your receipt to me, I'm giving people little treats. They can

01:36:44.640 get a free membership to my sub stack, to my Patreon, and also Carolina Brunswick paper doll,

01:36:49.300 because she was also a fashion icon of the time. Amazing. I was really excited when I thought of

01:36:57.500 the idea of the paper doll. And then my friend Siobhan, she has a really cute art style. And I

01:37:01.320 was just like, could you do this? And I sent her portraits. I'm like, these are the outfits for the

01:37:04.240 paper doll please and can you make it be actually a paper doll so people can actually print it and

01:37:07.560 cut it out and so like you could actually make it paper that is so cool i love that concept

01:37:11.900 that is the thing i've done so anyway rebel of the regency.com is where you can get all the

01:37:15.140 information emily thank you so much for joining me this was i don't know you know what i'm just

01:37:19.740 like sympathy for lord byron i'm like wow what yeah tampa town just tampa town

01:37:24.500 think about think about claire claremont and then i'm then i'm full of rage again exactly

01:37:30.500 sympathy is god this was the best thank you so much thank you so much vulgar history is researched

01:37:38.840 scripted and hosted by ann foster that's me editor is christina lumagi theme music is by

01:37:45.120 the severin duo transcripts of this podcast are available at vulgarhistory.com by aveline malik

01:37:50.640 you can get early ad-free episodes of vulgar history by becoming a paid member of our patreon

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01:37:57.240 at patreon.com slash annfosterwriter.

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01:39:17.860 Hi, I'm Whitney.

01:39:20.140 And I'm Katie.

01:39:21.160 And we're the hosts of True Crime Campfire.

01:39:23.780 We set out to make a true crime podcast we'd want to listen to.

01:39:27.280 We get right to the story.

01:39:28.780 We don't do a lot of extra talking, and when we do, 0.99

01:39:31.320 it's usually to roast the short hairs off of some loser, murderer, or scammer. 0.98

01:39:35.180 You'll laugh, but only at the people who deserve it. 0.98

01:39:37.820 Like, which serial killer would you most like to shove into a locker?

01:39:41.940 BTK and his awful poetry.

01:39:44.080 Dude got caught because he didn't understand what a floppy disk was.

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01:39:51.560 a killer catfish before the internet was even a thing.

01:39:54.600 Or Howard Walmsley, a sentient wad of damp laundry

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01:40:04.320 We've covered tons of cases you've never heard of. 0.97

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01:40:18.280 For eight years, we've been asking the same question

01:40:21.000 over and over again. How did this happen? My name's Mandy. And I'm Melissa, and we're the

01:40:26.820 hosts of Moms and Mysteries, the true crime podcast with over 55 million downloads. We're

01:40:32.060 two Florida moms who are obsessed with mysteries. Each week, we do deep dives into fascinating true

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Vulgar History - October 29, 2025

Mary Shelley Month： Lord Byron, The Original F＊＊＊boi of Literature

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