The Love Affairs of Lord Byron

by Francis Henry Gribble

From Verona, too, he wrote on the same day to his sister, saying, after compliments and small-talk: “I am also growing grey and giddy, and cannot help thinking my head will decay; I wish my memory would, at least my remembrance.” All of which seems to show Byron defiant, but not yet reckless, preferring, if not actually enjoying, the society of his equals, and still paying a very proper regard to appearances. The change occurred when he got to Venice and Hobhouse left him there. Then there was a moral collapse, just as if a moral support had been withdrawn—a collapse of which the first outward sign was a new kind of intrigue.

Hitherto his amours had been with his social equals; and the daughters of the people had, since his celebrity, had very little attraction for him. Now the decline begins—a decline which was to conduct him to very degraded depths; and our first intimation of it is in a letter written to Moore within a week of his arrival. He begins with a comment on the decay of Venice—“I have been familiar with ruins too long to dislike desolation”—and he proceeds:

“Besides, I have fallen in love, which next to falling into the canal (which would be of no use as I can swim), is the best or the worst thing I could do. I have got some extremely good apartments in the house of a ‘Merchant of Venice,’ who is a good deal occupied with business, and has a wife in her twenty-second year. Marianna (that is her name) is in her appearance altogether like an antelope.... Her features are regular and rather aquiline—mouth small—skin clear and soft, with a kind of hectic colour—forehead remarkably good: her hair is of the dark gloss, curl, and colour of Lady Jersey’s: her figure is light and pretty, and she is a famous songstress.”

And so on at some length. Our only other witness to Marianna’s charms and character—a manuscript note to Moore’s Life quoted in Murray’s edition of the Letters—describes her as “a demon of avarice and libidinousness who intrigued with every resident in the house and every guest who visited it.” It is possible—it is even probable—that this description, made from a different point of view than Byron’s, fits her. Byron’s enthusiasm was for her physical, not her moral, attributes; and it does not appear that he was under any illusion as to the latter. The former, however, fascinated him; and we find him dwelling on them, in letter after letter, to Murray as well as Moore—the publisher, indeed, being the first recipient of the confidence that “Our little arrangement is completed; the usual oaths having been taken, and everything fulfilled according to the ‘understood relations’ of such liaisons.” Which means, very clearly, that the draper’s wife has become the poet’s mistress, with the knowledge of her husband, and to his pecuniary advantage.

The story is not one on which to dwell. It is less a story, indeed, than a string of unrelated incidents. Though spun out and protracted, it does not end but leaves off; and of the circumstances of its termination there is no record. Marianna’s avarice may have had something to do with it. So may her habit, above referred to, of intriguing with all comers. But nothing is known; and the one thing certain is that, though Byron was attracted, sentiment played no part in the attraction. It would seem too that he was only relatively faithful.

One gathers that from the account which he gives to Moore of a visit received from Marianna’s sister-in-law, whom Marianna caught in his apartment, and seized by the hair, and slapped:

“I need not describe the screaming which ensued. The luckless visitor took flight. I seized Marianna, who, after several vain attempts to get away in pursuit of the enemy, fairly went into fits in my arms; and, in spite of reasoning, eau de Cologne, vinegar, half a pint of water, and God knows what other waters beside, continued so till past midnight.”

Whereupon enter Signor Segati himself, “her lord and master, and finds me with his wife fainting upon the sofa, and all the apparatus of confusion, dishevelled hair, hats, handkerchiefs, salts, smelling-bottles—and the lady as pale as ashes, without sense or motion.” And then, explanations more or less suitable having been offered and accepted, “The sister-in-law, very much discomposed at being treated in such wise, has (not having her own shame before her eyes) told the affair to half Venice, and the servants (who were summoned by the fight and the fainting) to the other half.”

And so forth, and so forth. It is all very vulgar, and none of it of the faintest importance except for the sake of the light which it throws on Byron’s mind and disposition, though its importance is, from that point of view, considerable. It shows Byron sick of sentiment because sentiment has failed him and played him false, but grasping at the sensual pleasures of love as the solid realities about which no mistake is possible. It shows him, moreover, socially as well as sentimentally, on the down grade, consorting with inferiors, and in some danger of unfitting himself for the company of his equals.

The reckless note of the man resolved to enjoy himself, or at any rate to keep up the pretence that he is doing so, although his heart is bankrupt, is struck in one of the letters to Augusta. It refers to a previous letter, not published, in which the tidings of the “new attachment” has already been communicated, and to a letter addressed, some time previously, to Lady Byron; and it continues: