The Fall Of The House Of Byron
Emily Brand John Murray €27.29
When Lady Caroline Lamb announced in 1812 that her poet lover George Lord Byron was ‘mad, bad and dangerous to know’, she wasn’t telling people anything that they hadn’t guessed already.
Even if you blocked your ears to the rumours about the poet’s private life – he’d abandoned his wife, slept with his half-sister – there was no getting away from his notorious family backstory. Long before m’lord was a twinkle in ‘Mad Jack’ Byron’s eye, generations of Byrons had spent their time gambling away their fortunes, suing each other in court, fighting duels and sleeping with people whom they really shouldn’t.
But somehow they always managed to get away with it.
In this luscious slice of popular history, Emily Brand knits together all the naughtiest Byrons of the Georgian period into a glittering family tapestry. My favourite is the poet’s great aunt Isabella, a stunning beauty who believed in true love and was determined to have a lot of fun finding it. Her first marriage, to the much older Earl of Carlisle, turned out to be remarkably happy, although a cynic might point out that this could have had more to do with the fact that he was one of the wealthiest men in Britain.
Brand is particularly good at describing the outrageous excess of aristocratic life – Isabella was whisked from balls at the Carlisle family seat Castle Howard in Yorkshire to sparkling salons in London’s Soho. She loved every minute, which is why, when her husband died in 1758, she wasted no time seeking a replacement.
Within months, Isabella scooped up a handsome but dull baronet called Sir William Musgrave. But when that marriage failed, the ageing beauty started behaving increasingly desperately. She racketed around Europe looking for suitable aristocrats with whom to fall in love, attracting gossip and pity in equal measure.
The Byrons did occasionally stick their nose outside the ballroom, brothel or casino for a gulp of fresh air. One of the most famous was Isabella’s brother ‘Foul Weather Jack’ (everyone in this family got nicknames), who spent six years missing at sea in the 1740s before stumbling back into Soho looking like a pirate and scaring the servants. This Jack Byron eventually published a successful book about his adventures following the shipwreck of the Wager off the coast of Chile. It was Vice-Admiral Byron’s example that gave his grandson the poet the idea that being a writer could be a thrilling – and lucrative occupation for an aristocrat.
Brand has done an excellent job of placing the sexploits of the Byron family into the context of a broader social and political history. In between the anecdotes about excellent parties, we learn about the terrible mortality rates, financial losses, constant threat of social and political violence. Beneath the shimmering surface, this feels like a fable for our times.