Beowulf 5
Beowulf 5Lord Byron
(1788-1824)
Lord Byron was born on January 22, 1788, on Holles Street, London. His parents, Catherine Gordon Byron and Jack "Mad Jack" Byron, had been living in France, but Catherine wanted their child born in England, so he was. She was a determined and frightening woman it was in her genes (www.byronjournal). Jack stayed in France, living in his sister's house, and died in 1791, possibly by suicide. Jack (George's father), or "Mad Jack," died at age 36. Catherine took her son to Scotland, where they soon realized he had a lame his foot. She had special boots made and arranged treatments for him, but Byron limped all of his life. He lived through his reading, Roman history became one of his favorite subjects (www.webring.org). When Byron's father died he became the sixth Lord Byron, at the young age of ten.
His father's estates included land in Newstead, Nottinghamshire and Rochdale in Lancashire, with other properties in Norfolk. Newstead, the inherited home in England, was an absolute wreck. The Wicked Lord (George's grandfather) hated his sons, so he set about ruining Newstead so his sons would have no proper estate. He used to let swarms of crickets run rampant through the house (www.byronjournal). Because of this Byron's mother moved them nearby to Nottingham. They were very poor. The Byron estate was mostly tied up in lawsuits, but Mrs. Byron finally got her son a decent income. He was sent to Dr. Glennie's Academy at Dulwich and then to Harrow, where he was tormented by the other boys (www.geocities.com/athens/delphi). He went back to Newstead for the Christmas holidays, which had been rented to a Lord Ruthyn who made the place habitable. There he fell in love with a neighbor named Mary Ann Chaworth. So infatuated with her he refused to return to Harrow after the holidays ended, eventually Lord Ruthyn got him to go back. After the woman he was deeply in love with, Mary Ann, married another man in 1805, Byron became a very wild sort of person. He enrolled in Cambridge, but did no work. He wrote lots of verses, and spent lots of money. He inevitably spent beyond his income of �500 a year and had to get a relative's signature to obtain a loan. At this time he was only seventeen years old. He turned to his half-sister, Augusta Byron Leigh, child of Mad Jack's first marriage. Augusta's husband was a big spender too, so she understood and signed (www.geocities.com/athens/delphi).
While staying at his mother's (something Byron did only when absolutely unavoidable), a neighbor of Mrs. Byron's encouraged Byron to publish his poems. In 1806, the book Fugitive Pieces appeared. Byron sent copies to two of his friends, one of whom wrote back to say that he thought the poem To Mary was far too shocking to be read by the general public. Byron took this opinion very seriously, and ordered every copy of the volume to be...
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