E Rothman 12-16-42 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF LORD BYRON. за GEORGE GORDON BYRON was born in Holles Street, London, Jan. 22, 1788. On his mother's side he was descended from James I. through his daughter Annabella, married to the second Earl of Huntley. (On his father's side he claimed to be of Norman blood. He wrote Count d'Orsay: "My name and family are both Norman." William the Conqueror had in his train two de Buruns: Sir Erneis and Sir Rodulphus or Ralph, who had grants of land in Yorkshire, Lancashire, and Nottinghamshire. Making allowance for gaps in the record, which is faulty | for several hundred years and during several consecutive generations, it is not hard to believe Byron's assertion that his family were knightly from the time of the Conqueror, and noble from that of Charles the First. The name was common though not distinguished in English history. At Calais, at Cressy, and at Bosworth, Byrons fought, bled, and died. Definite ancestry begins with Sir John, familiarly known as "Sir John the Little with the Great Beard," who at the dissolution of the monasteries received from Henry VIII. the church and priory of Newstead. iii a 6 The poet had no great reason for pride in this ancestor. His only son, John Byron, was illegitimate, and received Newstead, not by inheritance, but by deed of gift. James I. made the new owner of the abbey a Knight of the Bath. The Earl of Shrewsbury advised him to cut down the enormous expenses of the establishment which his father had carried on by means of borrowed money. It was probably this man's grandson who for his services at Newbury in 1643 was created Baron of Rochdale by Charles I. The first Lord Byron died without male issue. The Barony went to the eldest of his six brothers, who, having begotten ten children and repurchased "part of the ancient inheritance," died at the age of seventythree. His oldest son, the third Lord, married a daughter of Viscount Chaworth and wrote execrable doggerel. The fourth Lord was interested in the fine arts, and painted landscapes, several of which were reproduced in etchings. Of his sons, one, Richard Byron, took "holy orders," and is known to art as having copied Rembrandt's "Three Trees" so cleverly that it was bought as an original John Byron, the poet's grandfather, became an admiral, and wrote a spirited but somewhat dubious account of his luckless adventures, while the eldest inherited the title, married Frances, second daughter of the fourth Baron Berkeley, and from his fierce murderous duel with his cousin Chaworth and his irregular life was known as the "wicked Lord." In order to spite his son who married for love against his will, the fifth Lord Byron, who has been described as 66 a morose husband, tyrannical father, hard landlord, and harsh master," made an illegal sale of his Rochdale prop erty and dismantled Newstead. John Murray, who visited the abbey in 1814, sixteen years after his death, wrote: "Lord Byron's immediate predecessor stripped the whole place of all that was splendid and interesting, and you may judge of what he must have done to the mansion when I inform you that he converted the ground which used to be covered with the finest trees, like a forest, into an absolute desert. Not a tree is left standing, and the wood thus shamefully cut down was sold in one day for £60,000 [£6,000?]. The hall of entrance has about eighteen large niches, which had been filled with statues, and the side walls covered with family portraits and armor. All these have been mercilessly torn down, as well as the magnificent fireplace, and sold. All the beautiful paintings which filled the galleries - valued at that day at £80,000 have disappeared, and the whole place is crumbling into dust." Admiral Byron, known as "Foul-weather Jack," married his cousin, Sophia Trevanion, also of the mad, impetuous race of the Berkeleys. He died in 1786, a disappointed man, leaving two sons and three daughters. One of his daughters married her cousin, the only son of the "wicked Lord Byron." It was by the death of this only son followed by that of his only son that the barony descended to the poet. From the poet in turn it went to his cousin's son; and thus the present Lord Byron is a descendant of the Admiral. If heredity explains vagaries of character, it is plain that these crossed and intermingled strains of wild and impetuous blood were a terrible legacy rather than a matter of pride. But the poet was to be even more pitied for his immediate birth and training. His father, John Byron, known as "Mad Jack," was the Admiral's oldest son. He was sent first to West minster school, then to a French military academy; entering the army, he served in America. Returning to he ware London, he seduced the Marchioness of Carmarthen, Lady Conyers, whom after her divorce he married, and treated brutally, though, by her death, he lost her income of £4,000 a year. She died in 1784, leaving a daughter, Augusta, who was an important factor in the poet's life. Two years later he married Catherine Gordon of Gight, near Aberdeen, who had about £23,000 in her own right. She is described as "a dumpy young woman, with a large waist, florid complexion, and homely features," lacking even a common education, and subject to "frequent fits of uncontrollable fury." Her father had committed suicide. Captain Byron quickly ran through all but £3,000 of her small property, and three years after his son's birth he begged a guinea from her and fled to France, where he died, possibly by suicide, at Valenciennes, August, 1791. Though Mrs. Byron had found it impossible to live with him, it is said that when she heard of his death she disturbed the neighborhood with her shrieks. Byron claimed to have remembered his father, who, when living apart from his wife, used to waylay the child and play with him, and once took him home to his lodgings for the night. He idealized the memory of "his sire" in a few pathetic lines in Lara. Byron's childhood was spent in Aberdeen. Perhaps fortunate in being out of the influence of "Mad Jack," he was doubly unfortunate in his mother's management. Caresses of passionate violence often alternated with fierce blows. He was lame from birth - not club-footed, but unable 16. to put his right foot flat upon the ground, owing to a Curiously enough this unnatural mother, who boasted of the superior birth of her branch of the Gordons, vaunted herself a "democrat" and sympathized with the French people in their struggle with royalty. If the poet owed anything to her it was his abhorrence of tyranny, his generosity toward the poor and the oppressed. To his nurse, Mary Gray, of whom he was fond, Byron owed his familiarity with the Bible and his strong bent toward Calvinism which survived all his doubts. In his His secular education was not neglected. recollections of Scotland (written when he was twentysix) he commemorates three pedagogues who, with more or less success, prepared him for the Aberdeen Grammar School. This he entered in 1794, and distinguished himself by being constantly at the foot of the class. His lameness prevented him from taking part in boyish games. He, therefore, instead of studying his lessons, amused himself by reading, and the list of works, particularly travels and descriptions of the East, which he had devoured before he was ten years old is remarkable. He remembered them, too, and the influence of some of them is directly traceable in his poetical works. |