His VERY SELF AND VOICE (676 pp.)—Edited by Ernest J. Lovell Jr.—Mocmillan ($7.50).
"For a man of genius, in the 19th century," wrote Stendhal, "there is no alternative: he is either a fool or a monster." The great French novelist made this remark after meeting the one great romantic genius of Europe whose monstrous capacities were never in doubt: George Gordon, Lord Byron.
No other poet evoked in his contemporaries the burning curiosity, the passionate enthusiasm and revulsion, that Byron aroused wherever he went. It is an understatement to say that people were mad about Byron; people still are—still consumed with the desire to find out what he stood for and why he had such an overpowering influence on everyone who met him. His Very Self and Voice, instead of reaching one conclusion about him, offers the readers dozens from which to choose.
One hundred and fifty men and women who met Byron and wrote about him enter the witness box to testify to his character—and leave the judge owl-eyed and the jury hung. The outlines of the story will be familiar to readers of Byron biographies, but not most of the details, which have been culled from widely scattered sources—diaries, letters, magazines, rare 19th century books.
"What a Pretty Boy." The very first entry (about 1793) warns of storms-to-come. The little peer with the deformed foot is about five years old; he is out walking with his nurse in Aberdeen. Up comes another nursemaid and pipes: "What a pretty boy Byron is! What a pity he has such a leg!" The little boy's eyes blaze. Striking at her with a little whip, he cries furiously: "Dinna speak of it!" But when he meets another small boy with a deformed foot, the little monster's rage turns to laughter: "Come and see the twa laddies with the twa clubfeet going up the Broadstreet!" This boyish portrait soon gives way to a stranger, far more puzzling picture. The teachings of Calvin and John Knox add another dimension to Byron's thoughts, another torment to his emotions. "He seemed delighted to converse with me," writes a schoolmaster, "with every appearance of belief in the divine truths." "He was so shy," reports a visitor, "that [his mother] was forced to send for him three times before she could persuade him to come into the drawing room." "He was loud, even coarse . . . a rough, curly-headed boy . . . nothing more," says a Harrow schoolmate.
Once people became aware of his unpredictable nature, they were filled with morbid curiosity to find out what emotion he would bring to the surface in response to a loaded question. Like a born actor, Byron guessed what they were after, rarely disappointed their expectations.