Byron in Love Read Online Free PDF

his mother to say he had discharged his college bills along with debts that were left from Harrow, but that he would not be returning to Cambridge for the following term. He found it inconvenient to remain at an English university, as improvement to a man of his rank was impossible, the very idea of such a place ‘ridiculous’. He intended to go abroad, France being prohibited because of England’s alliance with the Bourbons against Napoleon, but Germany, the courts of Berlin, Vienna and St Petersburg were still open and he could, if necessary, be accompanied by a tutor of her choosing.
    For his ‘first season’ in London he availed himself of many diversions, took fencing lessons from Henry Angelo and boxing lessons from John ‘Gentleman’ Jackson–a famous boxing champion. He was determined, as was true for his hero the hunchback Alexander Pope, that his lameness should neither blight nor curtail his prowess, claiming that the initial repugnance led to greater fierceness. Jackson, a bit of a bruiser, had great appeal for Byron, who noted his ‘balustrade calf and beautifully turned but not over delicate ankle’.
    But as the money ran out and he found it necessary to leave London, he warned the ‘Furiosa’, his mother, that he would be coming to that ‘execrable kennel’ at Southwell, hoping she had engaged a manservant, since his servant must attend to his horses and, moreover, that she herself cut a very indifferent figure with all those maids in her habitation.
    When he did eventually return to Cambridge, the fornicating and escapading of London had not quenched his love for Edleston–on the contrary, it had deepened it. His extravagance took an even wider radius, Edleston was showered with gifts, a hunting watch with gold chain and gold seal, and to his mother’s consternation Byron acquired a carriage, along with the necessary horses, harnesses and uniformed footmen. He soon realised that Edleston was the love he could not live without and yet could not live with, as suspected sodomites were imprisoned, the crime being punishable by hanging. Contending with such looming and frightening factors, he knew that it must end, but procrastinated, being still in love. The finale came when Edleston’s voice broke and being no longer an asset to the choir, he had to leave Cambridge. Byron told his cousin Elizabeth Pigot that the young man would be stationed in a mercantile house of pre-eminence in the metropolis, but as things emerged Edleston was a lowly clerk in an investment office in Lombard Street. Though his mind was a chaos of hope and sorrow, after the separation, Byron threw himself into even more daring revels, expanding his circle to include jockeys, gamblers, boxers, authors and parsons, his rooms furnished in an Ottoman style that would befit a sultan.
    The bitter aftermath would occur later, when Edleston wrote to ask for help and Byron, though innately generous, bristled, causing his ‘Cornelian’ to write an abject and somewhat hypocritical letter saying that his only wish had been to secure Byron’s patronage so that he could get a respectable occupation and not be burthensome to anyone.
    Byron’s comings and goings to and from Cambridge over the next three years are those of a fitful, prodigal and fugitive young Lord. He would be in some hotel or other in London, frequenting the clubs, where the dice rattled through the night, gambling on upcoming prizefighters, and consorting with prostitutes, whom he ‘rescued’ temporarily from the street. Lost in this abyss of sensuality, living in constant concubinage with these Marys, Corinnas or Phyllises, he sometimes had to take to his bed and undergo a course of restoration, taking Pearson’s prescription for gonorrhea Virgulata, along with laudanum for the pain. The Cocoa Tree Club, a chocolate house in Piccadilly, was the popular retreat at the time, a place, as Edward