Lord Bryon (1788-1824)

139), the prankster who could besides be more solemn than most; the irre machinateable drifter who continually sought-after(a) to ground himself in long-lasting relationships; and the career poet who staunchly refused to be paid for his poetry believing as did his peers that to accept funds for their publication would be unbefitting a gentleman (p. 435).

vehement passions ruled Bryon. Throughout his life, Bryon struggled to achieve mastery over what enticed him: politics, men, travel, money, women, liquor, and verse. He appears to have been an individual drawn toward extremes, never able to do anything by half. Drawn toward living a life of carpe diem, Bryon was much taken by surprise at the unforseen consequences of his lots hot actions (p. 442). He was surprised that society was scandalized by his taking up residence with his half-sister Augusta, pleased that neighbors gossiped that his skull-drinking bouts with fellow Cantabridgians were actually week-long orgies, wearied by the scandal caused by his all-too-public affair with Lady Caroline dearest (p. 343), and amazed that the scorning of immortality in his verse appalled the public

Early sexual experiences also seemed to have had sustaining consequences for Bryon. Cheated and run-down by her husband, Bryon's mother as the young widow nevertheless spent several years dazed in grief. During this time, Marchand's interrogation uncovered that May Gray, one of Bryon's first caretakers, was sexually unbecoming with her charge. Later correspondence records that at his mother's house "a gratis(p) Scotch girl used to come to bed to him & gaming tricks with his person" (p. 57). To further complicate this sexual abuse, Gray held these intimacies as leverage over the young lord in an feat to ensure his silence correct if became aggrieved by the "low order" she kept during her drinking bouts (p. 58).

Marchand avoids a prudish approach to a controversial topic and shows the strength of scholarship conducted with an open intelligence by highlighting the roots of Lord Bryon's proclivity for and experiment in bisexuality. Marchand conjectures that Bryon was sexually imprinted along parallel lines. Throughout his life, he would be attracted to what seemed ideal and could not be possessed and, conversely, to be given to sexual abandonment in relationships which seemed incapable of fulfilling him. Additionally, Marchand theorizes that Mrs. Bryon's pattern response to Captain Bryon marked by "extremes of uncontrollable passion and demonstrative affection" were repeated with her son to his detriment (p. 29). Although often not on speaking terms with his mother throughout her life, Bryon was deeply distressed by her death. Called home by her death, Bryon sit down in the dark moaning beside her coffin. Told by a servant that this form of grief might be debilitating, the lord replied "Oh, Mrs. By, I had further one friend in the world, and she is gone" (p. 285). Before she had even been buried, one of his closest Cambridge associates died in a freakish drowning accident (p. 285). Death began to surround Lord Bryon and equally it fills many lines in his volumes of poetry.
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