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Byron’s loves and life
has been of abiding interest to all and not only men of letters,
THAT genius has a close affinity with promiscuity is the impression one gathers on reading the biographies of men and women whose names will, nonetheless be revered as long as lesser mortals retain the capacity to admire a great painting, be awed by the magic of words or be transported to celestial heights listening to the music composed by an acknowledged virtuoso. Both Guy de Maupassant and Oscar Wilde died of a disease brought about by their own excesses. Franz Liszt and Chopin, Toulouse-Lautrec and Picasso led lives that some of us would call ‘immoral’, others ‘amoral’ and yet others, ‘unconventional’. But all of them are remembered, not for their aberrations but for their supreme contribution to art, literature or music. One such man of genius was the poet George Gordon, Lord Byron who was born in 1788 and died at the young age of 36. To chronicle all of Byron’s love affairs would fill volumes. So I shall deal only with the most controversial, and ‘shocking’ of them, with his half-sister, Lady Augusta Leigh. ‘Incest’ is an ugly word, but students of history will recall that thousands of years ago the Pharaohs of Egypt traditionally married their own sisters. And before passing judgement on Byron and Augusta it would be well to remember that they lived at a time, in the reign of George III, when open liaisons and extramarital relationships were not frowned upon as they were to be later under Queen Victoria. The Hon’ble Augusta Mary Leigh was born in 1783 to the 5th Lord Byron, a feckless and often insolvent peer commonly known as ‘Captain Jack’ and the former Marchioness of Carmarthen who, forsaking her husband and three children, eloped with Captain Jack and obtained a divorce just in time to legitimise the birth of her daughter by him. She died soon after the event. The Captain then got married to the Scottish heiress, Catherine Gordon, who became the mother of the poet. Three years later the 5th Lord Byron died in France. Brought up by her maternal grandmother, the Countess of Holderness, Augusta became used to the ways of the aristocracy, easily absorbing the rules of etiquette and the subtleties of the English class system. Lady Holderness died when Augusta, a raving beauty, was only 17, homeless and of modest means. George Gordon was then at Harrow and, hating his mother, wrote to Augusta, "You are the only relation who treats me as a friend." Thus, the two were drawn to each other by a common, insecure childhood but, for Augusta, a good marriage was a necessity. This was arranged by her kinswoman, the Countess of Melbourne and in 1807 she was married to her cousin Colonel George Leigh of the Dragoon Guards whose mother was also a Byron. The following year was born their daughter Georgina, the first of her seven children. Col. Leigh, much older than his wife, was a rake, a gambler and, more often than not, in a state of insolvency. He disappeared for long periods at a time, leaving his family to fend for itself in his country house in a village near Newmarket. It was here that young Byron visited them and became intimate with his half-sister. In 1812, Byron took Augusta with him to have a last look at New-stead Abbey, his ancestral home, before selling it to pay his debts. And it was here that the lovers carved their names on an old oak tree. But, already, Byron’s self-advertising poetry had caused gossip. The Bride of Abydos concerned a romance between a couple believing themselves to be brother and sister. In the same year appeared the first part of his epic poem, Childe Harold in which the following lines betray his feelings: For he through Sin’s long labyrinth had run/Nor made atonement when he did amiss/Had sighed to many though he loved but one/And that loved one, alas, could ne’er be his. Byron’s increasing insolvency, with creditors knocking at his door, made it imperative that he should marry money. Strangely, it was Augusta who encouraged him to do so, and in 1815 he married a rich heiress, Anne Isabella Millbanke who bore him a daughter, Auguata Ada. |
