Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - Lord Byron: Incest, Adultery & Daddy Issues

Episode Date: March 21, 2023

How debaucherous do you have to be to be remembered as the original bad boy? How mad, bad and dangerous to know was Lord Byron? And how much of it did he get from his family?For this episode, Kate is joined by Emily Brand, the author of ‘The Fall of the House of Byron: Scandal and Seduction in Georgian England’. From incest to murder - this family must have made for a very awkward dinner party.Poems by George Gordon Byron read by Matt Lewis: ‘So, We’ll Go No More A Roving’ and lines 1089 to 1096 of Don Juan, canto 2.*WARNING there are adult words and themes in this episode*Produced by Charlotte Long and Sophie Gee. Mixed by Sophie Gee.Betwixt the Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society. A podcast by History Hit.For more History Hit content, subscribe to our newsletters here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Do you want even more shocking and scandalous history? Like why the ancient Greek statues had such small manhoods? Or what went on behind closed doors in the Georgian era? We'll sign up to History Hit, where you can see me discover the scandalous side of history, as well as hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, covering everything from prehistoric Scotland to the Treaty of Versailles.

Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. My lovely betwixters, it's me, Kate Lister. I am here with your fair-doos warning to protect you from the absolute filth and debauchery that is going to assail you on this podcast. And if you haven't been here before, what is a fair-doos warning? A fair-do's warning is where I give you a warning that this is an adult podcast spoken by adults to other adults about adult subjects in an adulty way.

So if you continue to listen to this and you happen to get offended by any of that adult content, then you just have to go, fair dues. She did tell us that it would be a bit rude, and it is a bit rude today, because we are talking about none other than my personal historical crush. Oh, it's Lord Byron, mad, bad and dangerous to know, and oh, I could have saved him if only I'd had the chance. So he will definitely be veering into naughty territory. But I'm game if you are. So we'll go no more erroving so late into the night,

though the heart be still as loving and the moon be still as bright. For the sword out wears its sheath and the soul wears out the breast, and the heart must pause to breathe and love itself have rest. Though the night was made for loving and the day returns too soon, yet we'll go no more erroving by the light of the moon. Ah, the words of Lord Byron. And by the time he wrote those words in 1817, I think he was of the opinion,

maybe he'd done a little bit too much roving. So what exactly did he mean by a roving? How did Byron come to be the utter menace to society that he eventually was? Was he really mad, bad and dangerous to know? Well, today we're going to slide betwixt the damp sheets in Byron's home in Newstead Abbey to find out. What do you look for a man?

Oh, money, of course. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect copies of whatever my boss needs by just turning it up and pushing the funny. Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, what beautiful time. Goodness has nothing to do with it, Terry. Hello, and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal and society. with me, Kate Lister. Alluring, dark, mysterious, moody.

No, not me. As if this is what it means to be ironic. We could distill that down a little bit further and just the bad boy, the archetypal, moody, aloof, unavailable, clever, damaged, tortured artisty type that so many people go weak at the knees for, myself included, I'm afraid, but don't worry, I'm working on this particular failing.

but how many people in history have actual words in the dictionary based on them and their philandering? I'm probably not going to search the dictionary to find out, but I know that you'd have to make a pretty big impact in the world to get there. Today, Emily Brand is on the podcast to introduce us to the mad, the bad, the dangerous to know, to Byron himself and his very, very messy family. Hello and welcome to Betwixt this sheet. It's only Emily Brand. How are you? Hi, I'm very well, thank you. It's nice to finally chat with you.

I was trying to think, Kate. I don't know. You might not remember this. We have met in person one time. But you had just been handed some anal beads by EL James. Oh my God. She got me smashed on gin. You're absolutely right. Do you know, I was just thinking, though, I had no chance, really, of trying to have a conversation with you because you were just fondling these anal beads. And that's not something I thought. what I'd say on a recording. That is, that just came back to me like a bolt out of the flashback that did.

You'd be in there of E.L. James, the anal beads and the gin. Yeah. And that was Rebecca Riddle's fault, wasn't it? That was, she organised, oh God, flashbacks. Great events. Oh, well, that's a fabulous way that we met then. That's a hell of a story. I love that.

Brilliant. But it's actually quite a nice opener for the fellow that we're going to talk about because I reckon that would be, that would just be a pretty boring choosing. day for my historical crush, Byron. Oh, is he? Oh, interesting. I think the more you know about him, the more you go off him, probably. Oh, it's some kind of deep-rooted psychological issue with me that a therapist needs to drag out is the more I learn about him, the more I'm like, oh, he's an absolute shit, the more this is going, I can fix him, I can save him. Oh, I think this was the downfall of many a young lady in the regency. It's a historically authentic experience you're having

I think it is. Of Byron. What was it about this matter? And I'm really hoping that you can shed a bit of light on it because the only consolation I can take away from it is I know I'm not the only one to have had this reaction to this particular person. So let's start a really basic page one question. Who was Lord Byron? So Lord Byron, we are talking the Regency era. I know you've done some episodes on the Regency already. So he was born in 1788 and he lived through to 1820. So that's his lifespan. And he's basically known kind of nowadays as one of their first celebrities in British history. Obviously he's a romantic poet. So he's a leading figure in that sort of romantic movement that we see at this time. He's basically a rock star of his day. For me, the most interesting thing about him is his love life.

It's probably not very scholarly of me. But, you know, he's known for his seductions and his reputation with ladies and gentlemen as well. It was, wasn't he? He obviously died young because that just seems to be, you have to do that if you want to be an iconic rock star. That's the goal. Right? I mean, he wasn't 27. How old was he when he died?

He was 36, but from the age, certainly of his early 30s, he was constantly writing about how God is so old and tired. And he might as well be dead now and he wished he was dead and all this kind of stuff. So he very much was into that live fast, die young vibe. I think he was, wasn't he? What kind of stuff did he write about? Because it's very easy to forget that Barrett, actually did writing at the same. Oh, he wrote stuff as well. Yes, he did. Yeah. What was he writing? What was he writing about? I mean, it's weird because he's one of the,

that we don't study him in school in this country, as far as I'm aware, maybe higher ed, obviously, but, you know, we do Shakespeare. In other countries and around the world, he's, I think, the second most read writer in English worldwide. Really? For his reputation, I've heard that. So yes, in his youth, he kind of, he starts writing poetry as a very young man, and a lot of that is to do with a kind of just melancholy ideal that he's got about himself. And this starts young. His ancestry, Newstead Abbey, which is his family seat in Nottinghamshire,

he inherits that when he's 10, and he's immediately taken up with the ghosts of Newstead and the sort of inevitable creep towards the grave and all this kind of thing. Obviously, we see love poetry to cousins, usually, early doors, and then other women, obviously, constantly throughout his life. But what he became famous for, was a poem, an epic poem of 1812 called Child Harold Pilgrimage.

And it's this where he's basically been travelling around Europe and Greece and Turkey and all these places. And he is semi-autobiographically writing about his adventures. And it's very cheeky. There's a lot of sex going on in there. There's a lot of doom. And this is kind of his persona that he creates and this kind of long-form poetry creating this bad boy

that, as you say, women are going to, want to reform. He's so handsome and all this business. So that's kind of what his main kind of poetic writing is about. And incest, which I'm sure we'll come on to. But this incest creeps in all the time. That went to a funny place very quickly. He was writing about traveling. An incest as well. Yeah. Sorry, I had to throw that one in because it just occurred. He's a very odd duck. Right. Don't, right, we'll get into this. And the whole time I'm still thinking, but maybe he's just misunderstood. No, Kate, he's not. He probably, wasn't that nice. We should talk about where he came from, who his family were.

Because I think this is one of the very seductive things about Byron is he is an aristocrat, like lived in sort of a Gothic, catholic, catholy type of a get-up descended from noble titles, and that's quite seductive, isn't he? But tell me about his family. Who are they? For sure, yeah. So, I mean, most of my work has actually been about his early ancestry. It's kind of a prequel to him. And I was just kind of dabbling at first because I was interested in the poet. and then every ancestor that I found, I was like, oh, shit, that's even better than the poet, that story. Really?

Like, they weren't just quite normal, boring people? No. So his dad died when he was very young. He abandoned the family when I think he was one and a half two and then died when he was about three. So he was brought up by his mom in Scotland in this kind of dilapidated estate with not much money near Aberdeen. So that's not a very glamorous start. And at that point, he's not due to inherit.

the title at all. So he's just living this Scottish school life. But then his life is thrown into disarray when he inherits Newstead Abbey and this title to become the Sixth Lord Byron in 1798. So it's an aristocratic family, obviously the Byron's, they're sort of at the bottom of the ladder, the baristocracy, they're barons. And what he inherits is this absolute ruin of an Abbey. Basically no money because it's all been run through. And that's it really. They can't afford to move in or anything like that. I didn't know that he just inherited a sort of a... Because if somebody said you've inherited an abbey,

you'd be like, fuck, yeah. They're an act, but it's kind of shit and no one can live there. Then it's like, oh, pamp. Yeah. There were like cows in the basement and straw everywhere and parts of it had no roof.

It's like, but this is what he loved about it when he took that first tour. Oh, did he? It's got that got that gothic devastation. It does. It's like, I can't remember what he says now. It's like the line of decay of both his house. that he's inherited and of his family, which at the beginning of the 18th century was on the

op. They had a beautiful house, amazing art collection, and then by the time he inherits, it's the ruins of something. Where did it go? This is where the fifth lord Byron comes in. This is his great uncle that he inherits. Right. So this is one dude who's basically run through an entire fortune, his wife's entire fortune, and has ended up with nothing. So the fifth Lord Byron, fascinating character, a very violent character as well. His most famous achievement in life was killing someone and having a murder trial. Yeah, so there's a lot going on. So it's a bit of a shit. Awful. Terrible shit, Kate. How? What's he spending this money on? I mean, that's, it's a lot of money, isn't it? Like, the kind of money that can buy abbeys and art and things, what's

you spending that on? Boats. He likes to have ships constructed to sort of mess about with, on his lake, the lake at Newstead, which is beautiful. Women, gambling, all your stereotypical horse racing, he loves. I think that might be part of it. He's just spaffing it up the wall, isn't he? Okay. Spaffing it. Yeah, beautifully part.

It's the academic in me. Right, come on, we've been proper historians. Okay. Sorry, sorry. So the fortune, the barren fortune is basically done with by the time the future poet inherits because of this previous two generations being, dissipated and dreadful. So there's basically his grandparents' generation

and then his dad's generation who have got no control whatsoever over themselves sexually or financially. What was his dad like? His dad was, I would say, the worst. Oh. Just the worst. Flatline the worst bloat.

Oh, no. Yeah, it's interesting because we know about him because of the poet and because the poet became so notorious and so famous. And so every biography that was written about the poet has a little section at the beginning about his family and his dad. And his dad was always painted as a waste roll and scapegrace, all these words come out.

He'd, with one wife, apparently dying of a broken heart, because of his cruelty. And then he abandons his second wife, who is the poet's mother. So he had a terrible reputation, posthumously known as Mad Jack, Byron. Wow. And part of what I've been wanting to do in my research was to find someone who's got such a bad reputation and try and rehabilitate them a bit. And I tried that with Jack and it just got worse. The more I got into the 18th century records, I mean, privately, he was worse than he was publicly.

Oh, no. What was he doing privately? He was having sex with his sister. Fuck. Okay. Yeah, that's not rehabilitative. No. No. And just, I told you. incest is going to come up a lot. You did? Yeah, but the one most fascinating source for my book was Jack's letters to his sister Fanny.

Oh, she's called Fanny. Oh, no. Well, he didn't stand a chance, did they? No. Right. So his correspondence, which is in the Bodley and Library still preserved, and it's after he's abandoned his wife and the young boy, the poet, he's living in France.

The revolution's happening, but he's not really noticed because he's too busy having sex with everything and everyone that he sees, certainly every woman that he sees, I'll clarify there. But he's writing to Fannie and he's saying things like, I'm having sex with all these people, but the only person I can think of when I do anything extraordinary is how he puts it. I only think of you. So he's basically saying, I can only orgasm when I think of you. Oh, no. Oh, no.

And you're the most beautiful woman I've ever known and I'm so angry that you're my sister. And he says these things repeatedly is the whole tenor of this batch of many, many letters, basically. And I think that the fact that his sister isn't then cutting him off, she's clearly writing back, she's clearly kind of encouraging this type of conversation. So I just, I'm quite convinced that they were actually sexually involved, yeah, at some point. And this is his full sister. I mean, maybe we'll talk about the poet and his half-sister later,

but this is Jack Byron and his full sister, Fanny. I mean, God forbid, even the thought of it upsets me greatly, but if my brother ever wrote me a note with something like that, it would just, Mom! Tell him to stop. Mom, I don't like it. But you're right? Like, if there's a lot of these letters, that sort of suggests, but there's nothing that we've got in her voice is there. Sadly not. All we can hear of her voice is him then complaining, saying, why did you say that?

I hate it when you tell me that you've got a new lover because I can only think of you. Wow. So, yes, maybe one day letters will be discovered in some French archive, which would be amazing. He doesn't seem ashamed of, like, if he's writing about this quite openly in letters, I mean, admitted he probably didn't expect them to end up in a museum

and being spoken about on a podcast, but... Me poking them, yeah. It's not super private, is it? Like, he doesn't seem to be very ashamed of this. I mean, you're right. We have very few letters. that I'm aware of to anyone else, apart from to his sister, to his parents just being awful, and to their financial agent demanding money.

So he's kind of how he might talk to other people isn't necessarily captured. But in these ones to his sister, he's very proud of this kind of thing that he's saying. He'll repeat himself over and over again. And he's very proud of, for example, beating up his servants, throwing women down the stairs if they've had too much to drink and he's angry. All around awful guy, I would say. Awful. Yeah, by anyone's standards. You can't even make the argument, oh, things were different back then. They weren't that different. Oh, no. Terrible guy. Terrible guy.

Horrible. Okay, so he's absolutely deranged. I was going to say, do we know why he left Byron's mum? But I feel that you may have answered that. But was there anything that happened? Or was it just that he was a shit and he just does these things? Well, they were married in the first place only for money on his side. Oh. So he never loved. She was called Catherine Gordon. she was an heiress. She was very young. I think she was about 18 when they met. And they met in Bath. She was kind of struck with how charming a dancer he was. And he's very, very handsome. Before any of this awfulness came out, he was noted in the newspapers as being, oh, Byron has been seen walking about the streets. And he's as handsome as ever. And he would just be in the papers for being handsome. Wow.

So Catherine was obviously taken in by his face, as we are sometimes, you know, it's a terrible thing. but it happens. So they were married. He got her money, basically, as men acquire a woman's fortune, obviously on marriage at this time. He spends it, gets in terrible debt, and then goes to France to escape his creditors, basically, leaving them his wife and infant child behind. You're right, that just got worse and worse and worse. Yeah. Okay, what was his mum like? What was Catherine Gordon like? Is there any chance at all that she was quite a normal, well-adjusted human being? Well, adjusted isn't the word I was used. They had quite a fiery relationship.

Obviously, he was basically brought up by his mum. She had had a terrible experience with his dad and was very affected by that and would constantly, every time that this little boy would do something wrong or show a bit of a temper, she would say, this is your father, this is the Byron in you, your father's awful and your family are all dreadful. She had a bit of a temper, I think. She was young still herself. and they certainly didn't get on.

So I think when he was a young man, he was desperate to get off to school and to go travelling. And it wasn't until she died where he writes this really full-on letter saying, you know, she was the best friend I ever had and I just didn't realise. So it's really sad. Their relationship's very sad, actually. I think I read somewhere,

and maybe this wasn't even about Byron and just flagged up in the back of my head, that his mother was overweight and it gave him a hideous dislike of people that were overweight throughout his life. She is usually described as kind of romp, and round and plump and this is often used for her. I think in a nice way that, I mean, this portrait of her that, I think it's still at Newstead.

She is a larger woman, but that's later in life, so I can't speak to her whole life. But Byron had such a weird relationship with eating and food and dieting and all that throughout his life. I don't know how much that would be attributable to his mum. I'm not sure, but the thing that's leaping to mind is when he was, I think in his 20s he had a female lover. He thought she was brilliant, beautiful, great fond,

but she ate food in front of him unashamedly, and he was disgusted by this. Wow, okay. And he was complaining to one of his friends. She's perfect, except she eats too much like a pig and women should only eat lobster and drink champagne. Are you serious, I think, about this? I mean, I partly agree with that,

but how it's deployed is very mean. If we could just eat lobster and drink champagne, and, you know, great. Because Byron said so. Yeah. But he had really messed up ideas around food. He would go on binge purge sessions and not eat for long periods of time and then gain lots of weight.

Is that true? Yeah, I think there's very convincing argument that he had struggled with eating disorders basically throughout his whole life. He very severely restricted himself and then he would kind of complain that he didn't have any energy to have sex with people. And I guess maybe that, you know, after he'd got over that difficult, moment and that struggle, then he would go back to kind of binging and shagging. Wow. So when you've been looking at his ancestors, this kind of mad family tree,

have you found anyone normal in it? Or are they all quite eccentric and exhibiting challenging behaviour? I think is what we'd say now. I think in the 18th century, you go looking for kind of oddness with the aristocracy. You're often going to find it, especially by modern standards. generation of his grandparents are particularly fascinating to me. There were five of them, and three of them kind of formed the focus of my research, and they're all exceptional in different ways, either for eccentricity or achievement or flirtation, very much Byron vibe throughout the 18th century elopement, constant, incest, occasional, adultery, another constant. I don't think any of them remained faithful to their partners, men or women. Obviously,

women, unfaithful women, treated very differently to the gallantries of men. But yeah, there was one clergyman. She was vaguely normal. Just like Harry in the banner for, I'm normal. I'm the normal one. Yeah. Hats off to Richard Byron. Thanks, Richard.

Thanks, Dick. Oh, God, no, that's terrible. Thanks, Richard. What happened to Fanny Byron? The one that was having sex with his dad. Yeah. So she was the eldest of, I think, six surviving siblings.

So she was kind of the older sister. She was very beautiful. She married in her 20s and had at least one child. She had a son who then went on to marry Byron's half sister Augusta, incidentally. Oh, it's a mess, isn't it? This isn't a family tree. This is a shrub. I know.

This is just some kind of just like wizened, just integrated. Yeah, trying to draw this. I had it on my wall huge. Oh my God. It is a mess. Family Christmases must have been difficult. So she had married and had children or a child, but then she was in the papers for her own affairs

and it was constantly, oh, Mrs. Lee, which was her married name, Mrs. Lee has run off with Mr. Whitworth, but then there's no further mention of Mr. Whitworth, but then she's running off with someone out. Like in the papers, she's constantly rumoured to be running off with people. And she lives a long life. I can't recall actually how she ends her days, but in obscurity, I think, which is fairly surprising considering.

Wow. I mean, I suppose in her frame of reference, there's like an affair here or there just pales in comparison to having sex with your brothers. So, like, yeah. Wasn't there one relative, there was a great uncle who was referred to as the wicked lord or the devil, Byron, who is,

that makes him sound like really scary, but he was actually a massive wimp. Sure, what. Yeah, you've distilled him there perfectly. So this is the fifth lord, Byron, who the poet inherits from. So that's his great uncle, William. And this is the chap I was talking about earlier, who spent everything and who became famous for this murder trial.

But yeah, he had a reputation for cowardice and this enraged him massively. So I think he was out to prove himself a bit sometimes. So it's just while just sort of getting drunk and stabbing to sort of show that he's brave and then ends up killing this distant cousin of his. But yeah, I think that his career early on, we can see this reputation for cowardice comes through. He's off during the Jacobite rebellion. He joins this local militia and then is off tramping up to what will be the Battle of Collodon. But then just as the battle is about to happen, he kind of goes to his commanding officer and sort of says, I need to go home now.

I've got some personal business. Got to go home. So he basically runs back off down to Nottinghamshire, gets out of this battle completely. and I think this kind of lays the foundations for this lifelong reputation that he has for being a coward. I don't know why I'm judging it. I don't know if I would go into battle. I think I might have a, oh, God, I've got a really bad headache. I can't possibly go.

But that's not a reputation you want carrying around. Yeah, but then just don't go in the first place. You volunteered to go. There you go. See, I would have laid the groundwork long before that. Oh, yes, so he's a bit of a wuss. I can understand why people didn't react particularly well to that. But then to counteract that by just randomly stabbing people.

Yeah, I mean, he dams himself there because it's basically, they're in a London tavern. These two, they've been lifelong sort of friends and neighbours and cousins. Oh, really? So they know each other well and they're just drinking and they're getting annoyed with each other. They go in a darkened room and a challenge is issued somehow. And then at some point this fifth lord Byron just says, oh, they'll not call me a coward now and then just stabs him. But then because he ends up dying, it causes a bit of an issue.

Did he get away with that then? What was the court case? Was it just them going, are you very rich with the title? Yes. Well, then he probably didn't do it. Was it one of those? Well, essentially, I mean, a lot of people had seen this man not get stabbed, but to die on a pool of blood on the floor,

and Byron stood there with a bloody sword. So he wasn't going to get away with Scott Free, but there was this huge trial in 1765, and he was ultimately charged just with manslaughter. and then because of his rank as a peer, you know, he's a member of the House of Lords, there's a sort of loophole where he can just pay a bit of money and then he goes on holiday.

Wow. How the other half live? I know. So he goes off to Europe and buys a wolf. Is that what he sort of does? A wolf? A wolf puppy. I don't know.

I mean, why not? Why not? No, there's not much more you can say about that. That's what he did. Did he stab anyone else? Or is it just still off being a bit of a shit? Yeah, oh, dreadful. Yeah, being dreadful, awful to his wife, just doing what he wants to.

It's this sense of entitlement that you see. Again and again and again. What a wanker. All right, so tell me about Captain John Byron, Byron's grandfather, also known as foul weather, Jack Byron. Yes. Now, he's the younger brother of this wicked lord, and he kind of tries to take up the mantle of being the noble military man of the family, which he does quite well. and his name is made.

He becomes famous as a very young man because he's sent off in the Navy as a midshipman when he's I think 16 or 17 and they're sent off to the coast and they end up around Chile and then they're involved in this awful shipwreck. And so the ship is wrecked. I think about 120 of the crew survive.

They end up washed up on the shore on this unknown deserted island near Chile and it's just this amazing survival story. I didn't know this. Yeah, no, it's fascinating. It has been called one of the most harrowing survival stories of the 18th century. He published it when he was older. But this almost falling into cannibalism, lots of them dying of disease.

They're on this island. They don't know how to look after themselves. They have these encounters with indigenous people who, some of them are helpful. Some of them are understandably quite annoyed that these people have turned up. But I think they're wrecked in 1741 and he gets home in 1746. six-ish, I'm going to say. Holy shit. Like, there's a TV series right here.

Oh, I'm waiting for that. I need this, to be honest. Yeah. Yeah, no, it's a very harrowing story. And as I say, it made his name. And then when he got back, because he was one of the very few who had remained loyal to the captain,

he'd obviously shown himself to be trustworthy. That means that they ate everyone else, doesn't it? That's what that means. I mean, he'd come back looking remarkably well-fed, and maybe slightly bigger than when he left. Well, he doesn't include that in his account for sure.

Although... No, you wouldn't. Most of the crew basically mutinied and built their own boat and left. And I think there were a handful of them, I think maybe six, who stayed with the captain. Wow.

You know, that's quite a huge gesture to be like, I know you've built this boat and you're going to try and survive, but I'm going to stay here. The six of us, or how many it was, to stay with the captain.

But, you know, he survived. He got back eventually. I went on to a glittering career Wow, okay, so like almost as bad as the other ones are, this guy seems to be quite, you know, insane, but heroically brave as well. Shipwrecks and cannibalism and... Yeah, in Britain, he certainly, he was one of the most esteemed, admired Navy commanders of the age, and he was involved in the American Revolution. He was given a very prestigious role as a commander-in-chief over on the Lerwood Islands, I think, some sort of West Indian Station. but he is someone who in the 18th century was very renowned and very admired

and the poet includes this story of a shipwreck inspires part of one of his most epic poems Don Jewin and he literally lifts parts from his grandfather's memoir to write the scene of a shipwreck in one of his poems did they ever meet? They didn't so foul weather jack who'd obviously got this nickname because wherever he went he was pursued by foul weather I think it's a cool one He died in 1786 and then George the poet was born in 88, so they didn't quite meet. But he was hugely inspired by his grandfather's book and legacy as an adventurer. The morn broke and found Yuan slumbering still fast in his cave and nothing clashed upon his rest, the rushing of the neighbouring rill.

And the young beams of the excluded son troubled him not and he might sleep his fill. A need he had of slumber yet, for none had suffered more. His hardships were comparative to those related in my granddad's narrative. I'll be back with Emily and Byron after this short break. Hi there, I'm Don Wildman, the host of the brand new podcast, American History Hit. Join me twice a week as I explore the past to help us understand the United States today. You'll hear how codebreakers uncovered secret Japanese plans for the Battle of Midway. Visit Chief Poetan as he prepared.

pairs for war with the British. See Walt Disney accuse his former colleagues of being communists and uncover the hidden history that lies beneath Central Park. From pre-colonial America to independence, slavery to civil rights, the gold rush to the space race. I'll be speaking to leading experts to delve into America's past. New episodes dropping every Monday and Thursday. So join me on American History Hit, a podcast by History Hit. I'm kind of mad like to hear you say all of this, that the one that we remember, the most famous Byron, is the poet. And then it kind of makes you think,

well, and what the hell was he doing to sort of outshine this catalogue of absolute crazy people, but also quite heroic at the same time. So Byron is growing up in the midst of this. I think we can say dysfunctional fairly confidently. There's going to be a lot of issues and a lot of hang-ups there. But when does he become famous? I think one of his quotes is, I woke up and I was famous or something like that that happened very quickly for him.

Yeah. So I think he's 24 years old when he kind of is propelled to fame. And this is after the publication of his epic poem, Child Harold. And I'm not sure what it is that catches the public imagination with this book, but word of mouth, I guess, a bit of excellent marketing from his publisher. But it just sells very quickly. It's just a very very very. appealing persona that he develops in this work that appeals to men and women, I think, voraciously purchased by ladies is kind of what's mentioned at that time. And people go mad for, it's very cheeky, like it's very well written. It's beautifully put together, but he's quite cheeky and funny with it as well. So I think it appeals to us, I think, I mean, I'm not a literary

historian. So for me, I'm more into his letters than his poetry. But I, I, get the sense that for the time it was quite conversational, quite chatty, quite easy to get into and fall in love with the main character who, by the way, was based very heavily on himself. So it's kind of blurring the boundaries there and making him popular as an author. When I first read it, I thought it was going to be like Jim Morrison or like Slash from Guns and Roses. I thought it was going to be that level of like debauchery and kind of like, you know, like the real bad boy image. But it's really. not. It's sort of like a nice, vivid, colourful tale of travelling around and sort of having to think

about some stuff. But I can understand where the character is appealing because there's a certain forlornness about him and I guess he is quite sexy in an 18th century way. But we've got to talk about his actual sex life because in Child Harold Pilgrimage, it's kind of hinted at. There's little, like a little bit that literary scholars love to get hold of and go, ooh, what does this mean? What does that but we do kind of know quite a lot about his sex life, didn't me? Because he's certainly made the papers with this. Oh, he loves chatting about it as well. It is letters.

He is woefully indiscreet to his friends and how he is then shocked that this stuff comes out into the public arena. I have no idea. But yes, very varied sex life, I would say. Well, let's start with the first one. Who was Byron's first? Because I don't think this was a very nice story, actually. No, it is very sad.

And I think with any kind of conversation about Byron at all, you have to bear in mind these sort of formative experiences. And the story seems to be that as a boy of about eight or nine, he was sexually abused by his nursemaid May. And basically that she was this woman who would get drunk all the time and take him to her bed. And how do they phrase it? Something like toy with his person or something. So obviously there's this very strange, traumatic experience. that it'll be having of sexual acts early on. And then when he's about 14 or 15,

it seems that he might have been abused. Seduced is the wrong word, sort of sexually interfered with, I guess, by a man in his 20s, who was his mother's tenant at Newstead. And there's this season, sort of a winter where they're friends, and then after that, Byron, this man, he hates him.

He hates him with a passion and all of a sudden. So it seems that something may have gone on there. So with both men and women, early on, he seems to have had quite traumatic sexual experiences, basically. Wow. How much that informs what then happens and his pursuits later on, we can't obviously say. I mean, no, we can't say that. There have been links made in psychological research, haven't there, between early abuse and adult promiscuous behaviour.

That's pretty well established. Yeah. But for whatever reason, not off to a great start, to say the least. But let's talk about some of his... his great loves, did he fall in love with people? I've struggled with Byron and this because he, the way he words things, he literally says, oh, I fall in love every day with someone different. Right.

Obviously, this is a bit tongue-in-cheek, but his understanding of love, I don't know, is different to mine for sure. There were definitely people who he carries with him or the idea of them, for sure, and his relationship with them, he carries with him throughout his life. So there is a young man who he meets at Cambridge, when he is 17 and this choir boy is 15 and they seem to have had a love affair, sexual affair. And when this young man, John Edelston, dies a few years later,

Byron is inconsolable and he writes, you know, this is the only relationship he got anything from, basically, and this really affects him. But then there are others with women as well, notably his half-sister. Yeah, we'd better talk about that, what was going on there. Yeah, it's not a great story either. To be honest. How do we know that? Like, did they put it in a poem? Like, do write it in a letter? How do we know that that was happening? So some people do dispute it still. It's worth saying that. I'm convinced personally. Basically, they weren't brought up together. I think that's an important thing to say. They're not brought up as siblings. They kind of meet when Byron's young and then are brought together again in around 18, 18, 13. So it's around his early 20s, mid-20s. But they do seem to have fallen quite quickly into what was an incestion.

relationship. And the thing is that I've said Byron talking quite openly about, you know, indiscreetly about things in letters. And he's writing to his friends almost in a gloaty, joky fashion. Oh dear. That his half-sister Augusta has just had a baby. And then he remarks, thankfully, it doesn't look like an ape. Because if it did, that would have been my fault. I think that's a fairly damning. That's pretty damning. He's saying this to Lady Melbourne, who's one of his friends, a socialite order lady. So he's acknowledging parentage, basically, of this daughter. But then the rumours of this incest kind of became public knowledge,

especially after his separation from his wife a few years later. Because he did get married, didn't he? He did. And that did not go well. No, I mean, around the time he's sleeping with his sister, he's also negotiating this engagement a bit half-heartedly. And he's quite surprised, I think, when she actually. accepts him. I think he was sort of joking a bit. But then matter of honour and he needs the money.

He ends up engaged to this Annabella who's, you know, as we've said, she's one of these women who's met him. They've conducted their courtship by letters mostly. So he's presenting himself as he wants. But she very much sees him as a beautiful soul who's lost and she's very religious and she wants to bring him back to the religious life and she believes she can do that. And then it turns out of course, but she can't do that. Nope. Because he's Lord Byron. Yeah. And so, yeah, they have one child together, Ada, but then I think a month after she's born, Annabella, his wife, takes the baby, leaves, and then with the encouragement of her family, who she's obviously told these tales of woe to, files for separation. Wow. So why did he flee the country? Because was it just that the

scandal's getting too much? I think I read somewhere that there was some suspicion he tried to have anal sex with his wife. But I can't imagine anyone will put that on a divorce reason or did they? I don't know. No. So this is in January 1816 where Annabella has finally had enough. They've been married for a year. And their whole marriage has been this very weird, his behaviour has been very weird to say the least. Cruel, really. I mean, this relationship with his sister, he's kind of flaunted in front of his wife. So there's a story where just after their honeymoon, he invites Augusta, his son. our sister to come and stay with them. And then he's sort of making them embrace him one at a time and saying who's best.

And then occasionally he'll say to Annabella, his wife, you know what? You can leave. Me and my sister want to talk and anything I can get from her, I can get from you better. That kind of. Wow. You know, it's all a bit odd. So when they do finally separate, she's obviously told tales of this weird, incesty thing he's got going on with his sister.

she thinks that he's possibly insane. And her parents, understandably, aren't very happy to hear this. No. So they say, look, you can't go back to this man. We're going to sort you out. We're going to get you separated. This is fine. And so when this happens and sort of explodes into the public arena,

there are whispers. One of his friend's notes down in his diary or in one of his books that he's tried to sodomize his wife. And that's obviously a step further than a third. adultery and this normal kind of bad boy behaviour. You have to have some boundaries. Exactly. But then very helpfully, his former flame, the brilliant Lady Caroline Lamb, sort of sticks her oar in.

And she's still pissed off that he's dumped her in the first place a couple of years ago. She chats with Annabella and she says, oh, and also did you know about his affairs with men? He tried to sodomize me as well. And also he's had sex with men since school and on his travels in Greece and in Turkey. so maybe you could use that. Wow. It was Lady Caroline Lamb, wasn't it? Who said that Byron was mad, bad and dangerous to know?

Yes, yeah. And I think that was before he'd annoyed her. So that was her being titillated and nice about him. But after their affair had ended, she had a very different point of view about him. Out for revenge, yeah. Revenge, for sure. But I think genuinely he did these things

and was awful to all these women. So it's not that she's really making anything up, but she's grasping her opportunity, I think, to get back at him. Yeah, you mate your crazy bed, Byron, you lie in it. Yeah, but it's, I think if he lived nowadays... Oh, he would never have survived me too, would he? He would never have survived to me too, maybe. Exactly.

I think he would, for sure, have been kind of cancelled to use a phrase I hate nowadays, but it would be for different reasons. And I think back in 1816, when he felt forced to flee and go to Europe and never return to England, it was the charges of homosexuality and... sodomy that did for him in society, today I think it would have been the incest. The incest, yes. Yeah, and kind of the, I'm not sure how strong the records are on this,

but on, you know, the kind of youth of some of the people he was opting for while on his travels. You know, there's him writing love poetry to 12-year-old girls and things like that much. I mean, he was kind of cancelled. Like, he's cancelled in the fact he was kicked out of the country, never to darken our doorstep again. It's true, but then he did continue to be famous and write. He was writing continually. You couldn't escape him as a figure, I think. He ended up fighting for the Greeks, didn't he?

That was where he died. How on earth did that happen? So I think throughout his life, he was obviously famous to us as a poet. He saw himself as a man of action in waiting who also wrote poetry. And I think into his 30s he's getting quite, you know, kind of reflected. and thinking, I want to actually do something. And I think partly inspired by his grandfather and all those adventures that he had.

And so he gets involved in political radicalism in Italy for a kind of revolutionary movement over there, which kind of falls flat. So then he lands on, oh, I could go over and get involved in the Greek War of Independence and make my name that way. So he goes off hoping to be heroic, really, and then just gets a fever and an illness

and is bled horribly, not dealt with very well by his physicians and then dies, before he manages to do anything. So not his ideal ending. Oh, it's a weird ending to Byron, isn't it? Yeah, I think he probably wanted, in a way, he would have been quite happy to die. But I think that he wanted to go out in glory. Yes. Not as he did. Do you know what, I could honestly sit here and talk to you about this family for a million years,

because I just didn't know any of this. And I feel they need to just keep going back on, what about this person? What about this person? But like... I was just going to say we've not even spoken about the women. No. Which, can I just say, by the book. Because there are lots of brilliant women in there as well

that we've not even touched on. So he never really stood a chance, didn't he was always going to be mad, bad and dangerous to know. Well, he certainly thought that his obsession with his ancestry from early on, he definitely used his ancestors to say, oh, well, there was an occasion where he got into a brawl at school and his reply to being punished was oh well didn't you know that violence is in the Byron blood

because of my great uncle who was a murderer my final question to you is obviously this has to be made into a massive Netflix special it just does because there's so much going on here that just has to happen and then you have to be the historical consultant that's just that has to happen my final question who would you want to play Lord Byron

facially I think Henry Cavill's quite good, but I've kind of gone off him. Okay. I did see a picture last night of Jude Law as a young man in something. So the talented Mr. Ripley, and there was a picture of him from the side, and I just thought, that's the Byronic profile there. So if they can, young Jude Law, can I say that? Can we go back in time and list him? Yeah, definitely. You can definitely say that. Oh, I like that. Emmett, you have been amazing to talk to you. I don't. don't know if you've diminished my Byron crush anymore. You've certainly complicated it for me, but I still have this horrible feeling that I probably still would have shagged him.

Yeah. Even all of this. But if people want to know more about you and more about your book, and they should, because we've barely scratched the surface of this, where can they find you? So, well, my website is emilybrand.com.com.com. My books and stuff are on there. I'm also on Twitter as E.J. Brand and on Instagram as historian underscore Emily. Just making it awkward. by having different names on different things. I'm on all of them. Thank you so much for joining me today. You've been an absolute treat.

Thank you for allowing me to bang on about the Byron's. They're awful and brilliant. Anytime. Thank you for listening and thank you so much to Emily for joining me. And if you like what you heard, please don't forget to like, review and subscribe wherever it is that you get your podcasts. Join me again, Betwixt the Sheets,

A History of Sex, Scandal and Society, a podcast by History Hit. Thank you.