Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - The REAL Bridgerton: Queen Charlotte, Lord Byron & Georgian Celebrity

Episode Date: May 24, 2024

The third season of Bridgerton is out and we are back in sexy scandalous Georgian society. But while we watch, we're taking a step back to ask: how real is Bridgerton?On this second episode in our REAL Bridgerton mini-series, we're looking at the royals and celebrities who filled the newspapers during 18th and early 19th century Britain.What was Queen Charlotte really like? What was the genius Mozart's fascination with fart jokes? And was Lord Byron as dangerous to know as they say he was?Joining Kate today are Catherine Curzon, Judith Grohmann and Emily Brand.Also, if you'd like to find out more about this incredible period, you can watch Kate present a two-part documentary - Georgian Sex, Drugs and Rock n Roll: Unbuttoning Bridgerton - over on History Hit. Simply click here for a free 14 day trial and watch now.This episode was edited and produced by Stuart Beckwith. Additional production was provided by Annie Woodman. The senior producer was Charlotte Long.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code BETWIXT sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscription/You can take part in our listener survey 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. Dearest gentle listener, today I have something very special for you. You may have heard that London's fashionable set have returned for the new series of Bridgeton. You've seen their love stories, watched their decadent parties, and you've met the Royals and High Society darlings. But, today we're stripping back all the tellers. televised glamour and finding out about the real Bridgeton.

Sex, drugs and celebrities in 18th century Britain. From the real life dating taboos in the Georgian period... It's this thing that if you had one dance with a man at a ball, that's fine. Two dancers signalled you were getting close. Three dancers, you may as well be married because everyone was going to be like, whoa. To partying and letting loose. These glitzy sort of or neat gas-liped. drinking venues that sprang up in cities around the country

where you don't sit down with your pals and have a drink. You're standing at the bar and you're having shots of gin. The It Girls and Boys of the Time. So Lord Byron is basically a rock star of his day. And of course, it wouldn't be Bridgeton without all the steamy sex. There starts to be the production of animal gut condoms. They were reusable, not forever, but certainly for multiple times. Bridgeton is one of the most popular historical series of all time.

But how accurate is it? Wet shirts and Empire Waste dresses at the ready, this season is about to begin. This is the Real Bridgeton, Episode 2, Georgian Celebrities. Hello, and welcome to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society. With me, Kate Lister. While we all continue to immerse ourselves in the world of Bridgeton, Following the release of Season 3 on Netflix, I feel it incumbent upon me to bring to light

the world this series inhabited, that of Georgian Britain. In the first episode of our mini-series, The Real Bridgeton, we explored sexuality in Georgian Britain, from flagellation brothels to STIs and the popular new animal gut condoms. Although whether or not they were effective,

well, you'll have to listen back to figure that one out. As with today, royalty and celebrity were a big, big deal. But what's the truth behind the biggest movers and shakers of the time? From the downright filthy, Lord Byron, to the hilariously immature genius of Mozart, and as we will find out, the marvellous Queen Charlotte, wife of George III.

Helping us find out about this star of Bridgeton and the truth behind her is Regency historian Catherine Curzon. I think about it, and I never really thought about that much until Netflix went, oh, she was a total fox. But she was played by Helen Mirren in the madness of King George, wasn't she? And when you think of her, you do think of her as this kind of like, oh, the poor love, your husband went round the twist. Yeah, exactly.

And she's just this cipher character who's just kind of like they're, like I say, to sort of ring her hands and look worried and occasionally say meaningful things. So it's really good that Netflix has kind of come back to readjust this, although they may, may have readjusted it a smidgy, smidge too far, because that's what we're talking about today. She's one of the kind of, I don't honestly supporting cast of characters in our royal history, but she's definitely been overlooked until now, hasn't she? So who is she? And what bits of the Netflix, they got right? She was the wife of George

the third. The mad one. Yeah, the mother of George the four. Yeah. And Netflix have got right about her coming to England as a young woman and being very sort of out of place. and they've got right that she and George had a real romance. There's a marriage of love and that she struggled to fit in to some degree. And I think quite a lot of the rest of it is, again, this Bridgeton Fantasia, but they've also got right that she was desperate for her kids to have some kids, to produce some airs. And as an older woman, she was absolutely obsessed with court and protocol.

So they've got the broad strokes of Queen Charlotte on the money. Now, in the Netflix, she's being played by, a woman of colour. And there is some historians suggested and some evidence that the actual original Queen Charlotte may have been a person of colour as well. There is. I have to preface this by saying I'm not a genealogist. You don't sound very convinced. No, I'm not very convinced by this. Now, I know that about 10 generations back in a family tree, there's a suggestion that there was a Portuguese woman. And this is where the theory has originated. But, I mean, from my perspective,

massively applaud Netflix for doing it, especially in this new series, they've really tried to explain, because you know, obviously they got a lot of flack for the diversity amongst the castin. Outrageous. I mean, why would you want diversity?

Just behave yourself, everybody. But that kind of thing that, you know, I'm sure we've all seen people saying, well, how can this be? But, you know, it's fine. They're dancing to Taylor Swift, but this diversity has got to stop. But in reality, yeah, I mean,

we don't have any record of, And there were multiple reports, because you can imagine when they were looking for a wife for the king, there were multiple reports of what she looks like. The kind of reports you would see of a racehorse or something, you know, describing her arms and our bosoms and her teeth and a this and a lot. Oh, wow. Yeah, exactly. And there's nothing in there that would suggest that she wasn't Caucasian.

I really liked that story, and it's not quite right. It's not quite right. Okay, we're not quite sure if she was of mixed heritage or white. but probably, as you point out, somebody would have mentioned that in some of these very detailed descriptions of what she looks like when she's being basically advertised to the king. Who set up the marriage between her and George? Well, this is quite a good story because George's mother,

who was very, very, I don't like to say domineering, but dominion. She wanted him to get married, but she wanted him to get married to someone that she would consider appropriate because she was very much the woman in George's life. Right. Okay. This sounds healthy. She didn't want to lose that influence. So basically they set up a kind of list was drawn up of eligible princesses.

And the woman had to be Protestant. She had to be royal. And ideally she would be German. So they gave this list to George and he went through it. And he crossed off loads of names. And some of the reasons were amazing. He crossed one off because she was too interested in philosophy. And he was like, no, no, that's trouble waiting to happen.

And given what we know happened to George, ironically he crossed another one off because he'd heard that her dad was mad. And while George wasn't convinced by the women on this list, one of the courtiers had heard of a minor German royal by the name of Charlotte. But the one snag was that she was about to go into a convent which would have kiboshed the whole queen thing entirely. Luckily, she ticked just enough of the boxes for George and this unlikely romance began when she came to England, age just 17. She was quite shy. Her mother died just before she left, so she was orphaned. Oh, that's sad. So, you know, she came over as a teenager. She was only allowed to bring two friends. But in the end, she bought third because she wouldn't travel without her hairdresser. I respect that. So she bought her hairdresser with her. She came over with her friends and her hairdresser, and yeah, they got on really, really well. They'd had interest in that both were into their religious faith. And they were into kind of the natural sciences. And night. the one of them liked to showy life.

So they both wanted this middle-class marriage that up. And she didn't want to get into politics. He didn't want her to get into politics. So really, in a way that most of the other Georgian kings were not, they were a really well-feited couple. As Queen Charlotte settled into life as a British royal, she developed a fantastic array of interests. Pet kangaroo, anyone?

She was crazy about botany, and she designed gardens and foster gardens at Cue and Windsor and the royal households. Nice. And she was a bit of an expert on it. And some of her daughters, she sort of imparted that loved them. And she loved, loved exotic animals.

She had a little menagerie. Yeah. And she had, there were a couple of stories I absolutely love. She had a zebra in this menagerie. And the zebra was super antisocial. And the upper classes were like, wouldn't it be great if we could use this zebra to create a kind of fleet of zebras to pull our coaches.

But anyone that went near it basically would like try and kill them. Dysfunctional zebras. Then she got these kangaroos, but the, well, the kangaroos proved so fecund. But they couldn't control the number of babies they were having. So they started giving kangaroos to nobility as gifts. And I just love this idea, you know, like when you get a gift you don't want. And her really big passion, she was like the charitable queen. Oh, okay.

So if there was a charity, she was there. and she had a real focus on women and girls that was like her charitable interest. But yes, her big thing was philanthropy and she filled hours and hours and she spent an absolute fortune on charities. There was a point where people started to get a bit worried that she's spending too much on charity.

But we have stories of her like literally pulling a diamond out of something she was wearing and giving it to somebody. It wasn't long before Royal Demands for Ayers took priority and oh boy did it take priority in her life. Charlotte was a baby-making machine. They had loads of kids, didn't they? They were 15, so she was pregnant or recovering from a birth

for something back the first 22 years of a married. It's hard to imagine that, isn't it? It was just like literally birth after birth after birth after birth, like pretty much, for some people it could be every year of their fertile years. It's one of the things where you kind of go, someone said to me the other day, well, yeah, but she had nannies, and she did have all that. She also had a vagina that these things were coming out of.

Exactly. you have to physically carry and deliver all of those babies. Exactly. Once they're born, you've got all kinds of help. But ultimately, as you say, you know, it's your vagina. They're coming out. Fifteen people. Fifteen babies marching out your royal hoo-ha. Are there any records of what her health was like?

Because obviously childbirth is very dangerous. It's still very dangerous. Well, she was considered inordinately robust. Sturdy. Basically because she managed to stay alive. Well done, Charlotte. Yes, she was sturdy, which was. was again seen as then they'd made a really good choice because she was good childbearing's

stuck. But she did find some of the pregnancies, as you would imagine, quite trying. You know, she found them exhausting, which there's got to be a point where just your body goes. Do you know what? This is a lot. This is a heck of a lot. So she's got all these kids. All right, she's got nannies, but holy shit, that's the lot to be dealing with, isn't it? And she's got a husband and things seem to start. well but he isn't a well bunny is he George's third he was not a well bunny no I know like the queen Charlotte series obviously has her you know she's a little bit suspicious of where he's going and what he's doing and then she finds out he's trying to do with his mental health that's fictional right

okay that didn't happen George actually he had a couple of periods where he fell ill but he recovered but then he had a period of illness that kind of started with really bad stomach pains right He'd already had one bad period in the 1760s, but he'd come through it. But this one, it was in 1788, and this was the kind of first real crisis of health that he'd had. And he had these terrible stomach pains, which would put down to stress. But this was the start of his first mental breakdown, or his first severe one, the one that nearly led to the early regency. Had there been any rumblings of this beforehand, like, looking back at his health, already always been, you know, like in fine fettle and a strapping lad? His mother considered that he was kind of a delicate boy.

Sickly child. Yeah. And he was also seen to be really sensitive. And his dad died when he was quite young. And he wrote at the time that he said that when he heard the news that his dad had died, that he felt like a pain in his heart. And he said he'd seen a workman fall to his death from some scaffolding at cue. And that the pain he felt felt like that.

And that was seen as being all like he's a bit sensitive. Because you were supposed to, obviously I'm not saying this, but you'd be expected to just kind of saddle up, if you like. The marital bliss that King George and Queen Charlotte shared was not to last, however. It started off with bad stomach pains in 1788, which the King put down to stress, but this was actually the beginning of what would turn out to be a severely depressive episode that would take him out of circulation for years. George couldn't bear to be away from Queen Charlotte.

For her, however, his violent outbursts made him quite terrifying to be around. she started locking the bedroom door but he wouldn't leave her dressing room the room joined onto her bedroom because he wanted to know she was there but she started waking up at the night and he'd just be standing by the bed staring at her oh that's not nice

so she got so scared of him but which she can understand and then there were other occasions when he sort of on one occasionally burst in and threw her on the bed and her attendants had to drag him off her and I think this is why in the story she gets a bit swamped because what was happening to him was so extreme.

Yeah. And I think, you know, that I've heard from people who have had spouses and loved ones who have suffered from mental breakdowns, that they themselves have said that sometimes you feel a bit that way, like as if you're completely on your own, but you have to deal with it. To the relief of Charlotte and to the country,

King George's condition improved and he was better for the best part of a decade. In 1811, however, the king was declared permanently unfit to rule and his eldest son, the future George, fourth, and absolute tosser by all accounts, was appointed to be Prince Regent to rule in his place. Isolated and unsure of who to trust, Queen Charlotte lent increasingly on her daughters. Her desire to control them, combined with a healthy dose of paranoia,

meant that she rarely let her daughters out, even forbidding them from getting married. The daughters referred to their home as the winds and nunnery, saying in a letter that they should put us down and drowners because we're as useless as old cats. Her world was getting increasingly smaller, but Queen Charlotte did make contact with the outside world with her pen pal, Marie Antoinette. Now that's a flex. He's not exactly an advert for the joys of royal life either. She wrote to Marie Antoinette all through, you know, the terror and right up to the end. She sent her clothes and she sent gifts for the children.

And I think Marie Antoinette's death, it must have been a bit of an eye owner for her. You know, to see someone else who had had had. this, what looked like an immense, and, you know, there was an immense amount of privilege in these marriages, but to see how that could end. And I think, particularly when the Prince of Wales, then Prince Regent, became super unpopular and there was a lot of radical stirring. She must have thought back to that and thought, no, this has happened before we need to tread carefully. What happens to Charlotte? So her poor husband becomes incredibly poorly, like to the point where it's like, right, he just doesn't recover. What happens to her?

Is there any chance that her son, George, looked after her and that she had a nice retirement? He did. Oh, okay. He did. Because, as I say, they were either at Dagger's Drawn or best friends, but as the years went on, they became very, very close. They were super close. I think as she realized, you know, things were slipping away.

She was becoming a... And Bridgeton do this really well with her in the old-fashioned dress. She was becoming a bit of a relic of a different era. Okay. While Queen Charlotte was making her mark on the royal stage, another celebrity of the day, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was making waves in the music world. From a young age, Mozart was a gifted musician. He even played for Queen Charlotte when he was just eight years old.

At the will of his father Leopold, the family travelled around Europe as working musicians. Wolfgang's sister Maria was also gifted, but you hear far less about her because of, well, patriarchy. Wolfgang took the spotlight, but his dad's determination for success made their relationship. strained. And the teenage Mozart spent more time with his mother, Anna Maria. And it was on a trip to Paris with her when she died unexpectedly, throwing Mozart's world into disarray. His desire for independence was growing, particularly as his talent and fame were expanding across Europe too. And with that came groupies. Joining me to talk about the man himself is Judith Gromann, author of The Real Mozart, the original king of pop.

The little Mozart at the beginning was not so interested in women. He was more interested on his career. And then with the time, you know, they grow up and there are concerts and after the concerts, the fans are waiting. Brogis, of course. And it was really the same thing that now, I was, when I did the research, as I said to myself, very strange. It's the same effect is it?

that there were young women watching Mozart play, and it had the same reaction as the Beatles when they performed in America. I've now got an image of 18th century Austrian women throwing their bloomers at the stage at a very young Mozart. Is that what we're talking about here? Yes. Wow.

Of course that's what happened. When you think about it, that makes sense. But it's strange to think of 18th century groupies hanging around Mozart's stage door. Yes. and for him it was also very funny to talk to them. He made some funny jokes. He was more the kind of a funny person.

His sense of humor was weird, though. Yes, that's true. There are things that you learn about Mozart that suddenly you go, I'm sorry, what? Because you hear that in Mozart and you think so sophisticated and grand in these operas and arias and it's amazing. And when you learn that he thought

that farts and poo and shit were incredibly funny, what scholars refer to as scatological humor. That was his sweet spot, wasn't it? Yes, that's true. I think for him it was also totally normal to talk about that and to write that in his letters that you can find nowadays, yeah? Like he writes to one of his cousins, Good night, I hope you shit the bed. Yes, or I shit the bed or whatever.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not black humor. It's maybe a sort of black humor. There has been a lot of research done around this, and I've heard scholars argue that this was just Austrian-German humor at the time. No, thank you. No, it was not all Austrians like that. It was him. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I don't take that. I thought. I thought you can't, that's not like that. We are not like that, oh my God. And I've heard someone say that it was quite common, this kind of humor at the time. But I'm not so sure about that. I mean, obviously these things have always been funny, but I think he kind of is, Not unique, but he definitely finds his stuff funnier than most people,

to the point where later he writes songs about it, doesn't he? His opera that he's called, Lick My Arse, that he writes. Yes, he wrote a lot of stuff, and he also went to parties, and he played the idiot there. He jumped on the tables and danced and meowed. Really? Yes. He had a childish art, in my opinion. He was like a child, but he was an adult man.

So he used that to seduce the women, I suppose, to show them I'm like a child and you can take care of me or whatever. I don't know what. Oh, I see. That technique. Right. I'll be back after this short break. I found that very surprising about his character is that he does have this incredibly childish, childlike sense of humor. I didn't know he meowed at people and danced on tables.

That's quite surprising. And he is having relationships and affairs. Who was the big love of his life? Well, the older sister of his then wife, Aloysia. He met her in Vienna and she was a singer. And he loved her because she was pretty and she could sing. And he did some pieces. He composed some pieces for her so that she could sing his music.

And unfortunately, Aloysia got an engagement with her father to go to Munich and to work there. And he tried to say, please take me with you or stay with me and we go to Milan or to London or whatever. And she said, no, I will take Munich and that's it. Did she love him back? No. No, too many fart jokes and meowing. It was not for her. It was one guy and it was not a good love.

But her mother was very clever, let's say, because her family was sponsored, if you would say it in. nowadays speech by Mozart. He gave them money because the father sometimes had problems and then he gave them money and the mother said, that's a talented young guy. He gives us money. He looks however he looks, yes, nice

and I will marry my youngest daughter with him. And that's what she did. She did everything that he had to marry her youngest daughter. Like that is some Jerry Springer stuff Right. Did Mozart love her? Or do you think that you just married her to sort of stay close to the older sister?

That's a good point, yeah. She had some rooms in her flat and he could sleep there. And he had to pay also her flat, of course. And she did everything so that he could be alone with her daughter. And then he was into the daughter, of course. She was there. She was sweet. She was beautiful. Was there love there? Did they love one another, do you think?

Yes. But at the end, Constancey had a boyfriend who was a sort of assistant of Mozart. Oh, that's very shocking. From what I've read, Mozart wasn't faithful during this marriage either. He always had some groupies, like the musicians we all know, also the British ones. We don't say any names. How old was Mozart when he got married? How old was he? She was 19 and he was 24, 25, something like that, yeah.

You know, we know the portrait. We have it here also. But he was not George CUNY, we have to say, you know. Okay. He was quite short. He was short, yes, and he had a big nose and he had not a good skin. But he was always well-dressed. Yeah.

Unhugely talented, which goes a long way. Yes. And you say, okay, he can look how he looks. I take him. Mozart's fame and social circle were expanding further And if there's one thing that Georgians absolutely loved Especially the high-standing Georgian men It was the gentleman's club

One of the things that I was quite surprised To learn about Mozart is that he was in the Freemasons Yes, because at the time That was very important to be in these men's clubs Like in England you know that There are still the gentlemen clubs And also Freemasons What were the Freemasons doing at the time?

Because they still exist today, but I don't really know what they do. They kind of meet up and, you know, I don't know what they do. And talk and discuss the world. And they gave him some contracts, you know. They told him, we need a concert. Can you please? And then he started to concerts and operas and whatever. Which piece of music was it that he wrote that was supposed to be about the initiation ceremony of the Freemasons?

He had so many, but we had. the Magic Flute, who is one of these operas where they say from character one to character 10, they are old Freemasons. Sarastro is one of the biggest Freemason in music history. So it was really, really important for him to be in this club, in this gang. Yes. And at the time, there were many Freemason lodges in Vienna at the beginning. And so he went from one to the other, which was very funny. He met several people everywhere and they loved him and he was charming and funny. And that's how it started, yeah.

Despite these distractions, the music was always the most important thing to Mozart, but his intense work ethic and hectic social life began to take its toll. For a certain time, everything was okay. Till the day when he apparently got a sort of flu, he didn't know what he had, and he developed high fever and abdominal pain and he was a little bit shocked about that, but he continued in his bed to write and he didn't understand what happened to his body.

When you read things like that about Mozart, is that how dedicated he was to his work. In the film, is it Amadeus? Amadeus, yeah. Yeah, Mozart is portrayed as kind of, like, he's not really taking it very seriously, and he's kind of messing about, and he doesn't really try very hard.

But the truth was that he was almost fanatical about writing music, wasn't he? He was focused on his career that was the most important thing in his life. He loved music, he loved to entertain people, so there were both sides, not only himself,

but the people must be happy with what he does, and yeah, that was his life. And so at the end, there's also this thing that everybody thinks that Salieri killed him, which is not true at all. That's what I discovered.

Salieri was completely, let's say, in love with this Austrian musician. He admired him. And Mozart admired Salieri. So that was completely fabricated. Yes. And Mozart went to the concerts of Sarieri, and Salieri came to the operas or concerts of Mozart. They were in touch. And Salieri visited him one day before he died. And everybody thinks, ha ha, he gave him some poison because he didn't like him. And in fact, no, that's absolutely not true. Because after Salieri, left, there were the two doctors of Mozart who came, and they took some blood of Mozart, because at the time, that was normal. They did this blood-letting thing, and then they thought,

okay, everything will be okay, and in fact, that was not good for him, because he did not have the flu at the end. He had a friezel fever caused by streptocococs and stuff like that, and he didn't survive, so he died the next day, unfortunately. Did people? Did people? think that Salieri had done this at the time? Was that a rumor at the time? Or is that, did that come later? We didn't have newspapers or media at the time, you know? So they were talking, but there were several things that they thought could have happened.

But at the end, you know, what people are saying till now, they still say it now. It could be this and that. And there was a guy who was a killer and who knew Mozart, he could have killed him. No, that's not true. That's not true. I'm old to see when he died. He died young, didn't he? Yeah, he died in 1791, and he was born in 756.

Very, very young. Mozart was far from the only rock star of the period. Another man to hit the headlines was Lord Byron. Born a few decades after Mozart in 1788, he was the romantic poet of the Regency era, where his controversial reputation for his sexual proclivities were just as famous as his writing. I spoke to Emily Brand, author of The Fall of the House of Byron, scandal and seduction in Georgian England, to find out more about this complex and scandalous man.

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 Nottingham shirt, he inherits that when he's 10, and he's immediately taken up with the ghosts of Newssted 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 travelling. An incest as well. Sorry, I had to throw that one in because it just occurred. And if we want to know more about the man famously described as mad, bad and dangerous to know,

it's worth hearing about his parents, whose tumultuous relationship may have set the tone for his own relationships. His dad was always painted as a wistral. And scape grace, 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. 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. it's 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... That they were actually...

Sexually involved, yeah, at some point. And this is his full sister. While his dad was off doing that, his mother was dealing with the young George Byron at home. I think I read somewhere, and maybe this wasn't even about Byron, and just something 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 romping 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 mom.

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 fun, 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 like how it's deployed is very mean. If we could just eat lobster and drink champagne, then, 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, like, 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 would kind of complain that he didn't have any energy to have sex with people and I guess maybe after he'd got over that difficult moment and that struggle, then he would go back to kind of binging and shagging. Byron was propelled to fame age just 24 with the publication of his poem Child Harold's Pilgrimage, making him the toast of Georgian society. It's a story which was loosely based on

himself. And this only encouraged the press to ask more questions and suddenly stories about Byron's personal life, including his sex life, was starting to hit the papers. While his sex life became a source of great gossip in Georgian society, his formative sexual experiences weren't good ones. Lord Byron was sexually abused by his nursemaid as an eight-year-old. He was abused again as a teenager by the tenant of his mothers on their Newstead Abbey estate. Whether these experiences shaped his later behaviour as an adult is up for debate. But was his promiscuity without love? I've struggled with Byron and this because 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, it's 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, did he 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 1820. 12, 18, 13, so it's around his early 20s, mid-20s. But they do seem to have fallen quite quickly into what was an incestuous 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, jokey fashion.

Oh dear. That his half-sister Augusta has just had a baby. And then he remarks, thankfully, it doesn't look like. 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 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 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 that 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. So this is in January 1816, where Annabella has finally had enough. They've been married for a year and 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 half-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. 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 adultery and this normal kind of bad boy behavior. 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 sodomise 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. Byron fled the country after accusations of sodomy and homosexuality proved too risky for him to remain in England. He made his way across Europe and settled in Greece, where he would eventually die, age just 36 in 1824. 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 reflective and thinking,

I want to actually do something. And I think partly inspired by his grandfather and those. 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 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

who would have been quite happy to die, but I think that he wanted to go out in glory. Thank you to Emily and all the guests who featured on this second episode in our real Bridgeton mini-series. We've got an episode about Georgian drugs and alcohol coming your way, and we'll cap that off with a reaction episode

to Season 3 of Bridgeton to find out how accurate to the times these episodes really are. And it's not just on this podcast, oh no. We'll be uncovering this titillating time period over on the history hit website too for a two-part documentary series. You'll see me removing those beautiful Bridgeton rose-tinted glasses and exploring the gritty underbelly of sex drugs and rock and roll in Georgian Britain. The first episode is live right now and explores the reality of sex in the Georgian age. Where, who, when and how were people doing it?

And was it just the beautiful dukes and duchesses and lords and ladies of Bridgeton? Well, of course it wasn't. But what were the regular folk up to? Click the link in the description to sign up for a 14-day free trial to watch it now. Won't cost you a thing. And as always, if you want us to explore a subject or if you just fancy saying hello, then you can email us at betwixta history hit.com. This podcast was edited and produced by Stuart Beckwith.

Additional production was provided by Annie Woodman. The Senior Producer was Charlotte Long. Join me again Betwixt the Sheets, the History of Sex Scandal and Society. A podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.