Free Byron in Love by Edna O’Brien

youthful noblesse Byron took no money for the work, the profits being shared equally between Dallas and John Murray, who had paid for the printing and publication. And so began a relationship unique between author and publisher, as intriguing as any marriage, but more erudite; flattery, disquiet and rebuttal, as they praised, scolded and jabbed, threats of defection from Byron followed by sudden reconciliation, a devious dance of dependence and independence, charted vividly in their rum exchange of letters. Byron would allude to the natural antipathy between bookseller and author, the ‘ferine nature’ of the bookseller always breaking forth, forgetting to mention his own violent nature. Murray would come to know Byron the Classicist, Byron the Jester, Byron the Buffoon, Byron the Bulldog, Byron the Stoic, Byron the Lover and Poet and increasingly, Byron the lover of ‘lucre’.
    Murray guessed that Cantos One and Two would indeed strike an immediate chord, the young hero sick ‘with the fullness of satiety’ and rejecting all thought or hope of redemption was bound to have an appeal in Regency England, except that there were problems. He was appealing to Dallas to persuade Byron to remove or at least ‘soften’ some of the more dangerous stanzas and to temper his outrageous religious sentiments, which were bound to deprive Mr Murray of customers ‘among the orthodox’. Byron parried. He had no time for religion, said it was rife with rival villainous sects ‘tearing each other to pieces for the love of the Lord and hatred of each other’. Murray especially objected to unpatriotic passages concerning the war in Spain and Portugal, when Byron was critical of the sovereign allies, sentiments which certainly did not harmonise with the general, prevalent feeling in England. Byron was intransigent, being too sincere for recantation, adding that with regard to the political content, he could alter nothing and anyhow had high authority for his ‘errors on that point’, because the Aeneid was a political poem and written for a political purpose. Depicting battles and barbarities from ancient times, it reflected the spirit of his own time, England at war, even as Regency London was hellbent on banquet and profligacy. He would however oblige, tag on some more rhymes or stanzas, write an introductory stanza if the poem opened too abruptly, and these offerings he brought in person to Mr Murray’s office, fencing at the bookshelves, jesting as he tried to anticipate Murray’s opinion, quoting Congreve with a warning–‘If you put me in a phrenzy I will never call you Jack again.’

NINE
    â€˜The poet yields to the orator’ Byron announced to Dallas as he prepared for his maiden speech in the House of Lords. He chose to speak for the Whig opposition against the Tory Framework Bill. In 1811 the weavers of Nottingham had rioted because the manufacturers had introduced new machinery for the making of gloves and stockings, so that one man could take the place of seven. The weavers reacted by breaking the new machines, militia regiments were sent to quell them and a commission appointed to try them and possibly sentence them to hanging. Byron deferred to Lord Holland, leader of the Whig Party, nephew and protégé of Charles James Fox, saying his motive for speaking was the palpable injustice and efficiency of the Tory law, adding that his speech would be brief.
    So in February 1812, he was plunged into all that Gothic splendour, peers in their scarlet and ermine robes bristling to outdo one another in wit and invective, innately suspicious of a newcomer. It is hardly surprising that Byron would be nervous and Dallas tells us that he wrote out his entire speech and then memorised it ‘like a Harrow oration’. His voice normally sweet and melodious became unnatural as he declaimed to the assembled House the injustice and the inequity of the Bill,