His system of thinning himself, which he had begun before he left England, was continued abroad. While at Athens, where he stayed at the Franciscan Convent, he took a Turkish bath three times a week, his usual drink being vinegar and water, and his food seldom more than a little rice. The result was that, when he returned to England, he weighed only 9 stone 11-1/2 lbs. (see page 127,
1).
Moore's account of the "cordial friendship" between Byron and Lady Hester Stanhope requires modification. Lady Hester (see page 302,
I) thus referred in after-life to her meeting with Byron, if her physician's recollection is to be trusted (
Memoirs
, by Dr. Meryon, vol. iii. pp. 218, 219) —
"'I think he was a strange character: his generosity was for a motive, his avarice for a motive; one time he was mopish, and nobody was to speak to him; another, he was for being jocular with everybody. Then he was a sort of Don Quixote, fighting with the police for a woman of the town; and then he wanted to make himself something great ... At Athens I saw nothing in him but a well-bred man, like many others; for, as for poetry, it is easy enough to write verses; and as for the thoughts, who knows where he got them? ... He had a great deal of vice in his looks — his eyes set close together, and a contracted brow — so' (imitating it). 'Oh, Lord! I am sure he was not a liberal man, whatever else he might be. The only good thing about his looks was this part' (drawing her hand under the cheek down the front of her neck), 'and the curl on his forehead.'"
Michael Bruce, with the help of Sir Robert Wilson and Capt. Hutchinson, assisted Count Lavallette to escape from Paris in January, 1816. For an account, see Wilson's intercepted letter to Lord Grey (