Relationships and scandals
In 1812, Byron embarked on a well-publicised affair with the married Lady Caroline Lamb that shocked the British public. She had spurned the attention of the poet on their first meeting, giving Byron what became his lasting epitaph when she famously described him as "mad, bad, and dangerous to know". This did not prevent her from pursuing him.
Byron eventually broke off the relationship and moved swiftly on to others, such as Lady Oxford, but Lamb never entirely recovered, pursuing him even after he tired of her. She was emotionally disturbed and lost so much weight that Byron sarcastically commented to her mother-in-law, his friend Lady Melbourne, that he was "haunted by a skeleton".
She began to stalk him, calling on him at home, sometimes dressed in disguise as a pageboy, at a time when such an act could ruin both of them socially. Once, during such a visit, she wrote on a book at his desk, "Remember me!" As a retort, Byron wrote a poem entitled Remember Thee! Remember Thee! which concludes with the line "Thou false to him, thou fiend to me".
As a child, Byron had seen little of his half-sister Augusta Leigh; in adulthood, he formed a close relationship with her that has been interpreted by some as incestuous, and by others as innocent. The biographer of Byron André Maurois who had access to the poet's archive, regarded the fact of incest as proven. Augusta, who was married, gave birth on 15 April 1814 to her third daughter, Elizabeth Medora Leigh, rumoured by some to be Byron's.
Eventually, Byron began to court Lady Caroline's cousin Anne Isabella Milbanke ("Annabella"), who refused his first proposal of marriage, but later accepted him. Milbanke was a highly moral woman, intelligent and mathematically gifted. She was also an heiress. They married at Seaham Hall, County Durham, on 2 January 1815. The marriage proved unhappy. They had a daughter, Augusta Ada.
On 16 January 1816, Lady Byron left her husband, taking Ada with her. That same year on 21 April, Byron signed the Deed of Separation. Rumours of marital violence, adultery with actresses, incest with Augusta Leigh, and sodomy were circulated, assisted by a jealous Lady Caroline. In a letter, Augusta quoted him as saying: "Even to have such a thing said is utter destruction and ruin to a man from which he can never recover." That same year Lady Caroline published her popular novel Glenarvon, in which Lord Byron was portrayed as the seedy title character.
Byron described his first intense romantic feelings at the age of seven for his distant cousin Mary Duff:
My mother used always to rally me about this childish amour, and at last, many years after, when I was sixteen, she told me one day, 'O Byron, I have had a letter from Edinburgh, and your old sweetheart, Mary Duff, is married to Mr. C***.' And what was my answer? I really cannot explain or account for my feelings at that moment, but they nearly threw me into convulsions... How the deuce did all this occur so early? Where could it originate? I certainly had no sexual ideas for years afterwards; and yet my misery, my love for that girl were so violent, that I sometimes doubt if I have ever been really attached since. Be that as it may, hearing of her marriage several years after was like a thunder-stroke – it nearly choked me – to the horror of my mother and the astonishment and almost incredulity of every body. And it is a phenomenon in my existence (for I was not eight years old) which has puzzled, and will puzzle me to the latest hour of it; and lately, I know not why, the recollection (not the attachment) has recurred as forcibly as ever...But, the more I reflect, the more I am bewildered to assign any cause for this precocity of affection.
Byron also became attached to Margaret Parker, another distant cousin. While his recollection of his love for Mary Duff is that he was ignorant of adult sexuality during this time and was bewildered as to the source of the intensity of his feelings, he would later confess that:
My passions were developed very early – so early, that few would believe me – if I were to state the period – and the facts which accompanied it. Perhaps this was one of the reasons that caused the anticipated melancholy of my thoughts – having anticipated life. This is the only reference Byron himself makes to the event, and he is ambiguous as to how old he was when it occurred. After his death, his lawyer wrote to a mutual friend telling him a "singular fact" about Byron's life which was "scarcely fit for narration". But he disclosed it nonetheless, thinking it might explain Byron's sexual "propensities":
When nine years old at his mother's house a free Scotch girl [May – sometimes called Mary – Gray, one of his first caretakers] used to come to bed to him and play tricks with his person.
Gray later used this knowledge as a means of ensuring his silence if he were to be tempted to disclose the "low company" she kept during drinking binges. She was later dismissed, supposedly for beating Byron when he was 11.
A few years later, while he was still a child, Lord Grey De Ruthyn (unrelated to May Gray), a suitor of his mother's, also made sexual advances on him. Byron's personality has been characterised as exceptionally proud and sensitive, especially with regard to his foot deformity. His extreme reaction to seeing his mother flirting outrageously with Lord Grey De Ruthyn after the incident suggests he did not tell her of Grey's conduct toward him; he simply refused to speak to him again and ignored his mother's commands to be reconciled. Leslie A. Marchand, one of Byron's biographers, theorises that Lord Grey De Ruthyn's advances prompted Byron's later sexual liaisons with young men at Harrow and Cambridge.
Scholars acknowledge a more or less important bisexual component in Byron's very complex sentimental and sexual life. Emily A. Bernhard Jackson asserts that "Byron's sexual orientation has long been a difficult, not to say contentious, topic, and anyone who seeks to discuss it must to some degree speculate since the evidence is nebulous, contradictory and scanty... it is not so simple to define Byron as homosexual or heterosexual: he seems rather to have been both, and either." Crompton states: "What was not understood in Byron's own century (except by a tiny circle of his associates) was that Byron was bisexual".
Another biographer, Fiona MacCarthy, has posited that Byron's true sexual yearnings were for adolescent males. It has been asserted that several letters to Byron from his friend Charles Skinner Matthews reveal that a key motive for Byron going on the Grand Tour was also the hope of homosexual experiences. While in Athens, Byron met 14-year-old Nicolo Giraud, who taught him Italian. Byron arranged to have Giraud enrolled in school at a monastery in Malta, and wrote him into his will, with a bequest of £7,000 (about £480,000 in 2025). That will, however, was later cancelled.
Byron wrote to Hobhouse from Athens, "I am tired of pl & opt Cs, the last thing I could be tired of." Opt Cs refers to a quote from Petronius' Satyricon, "coitum plenum et optabilem," "complete intercourse to one's heart's desire". Allegedly, Byron used this phrase as a code by which he communicated his homosexual Greek adventures to John Hobhouse in England: Emily A. Bernhard Jackson recalls that "Byron's early code for sex with a boy" was "Plen(um) and optabil(em) coit(um)". Bullough summarises:
Byron, was attached to Nicolo Giraud, a young French-Greek lad who had been a model for the painter Lusieri before Byron found him. Byron left him £7,000 in his will. When Byron returned to Italy, he became involved with a number of boys in Venice but eventually settled on Loukas Chalandritsanos, age 15, who was with him when he was killed [sic] (Crompton, 1985).
Loukas Chalandritsanos was Byron's Greek protégé whom he had rescued from Ithaca. During Byron's voyage from Zakynthos to Missolonghi, Byron took Loukas as his page, but was concerned that the boy might be captured by the Turks. He spoiled the teenaged Chalandritsanos outrageously, spending some £600 (about £60,000 in 2025) catering to his every whim over the course of 6 months. On his deathbed he gave Loukas a bag of Maria Theresa crowns and a £600 receipt for one of his loans to the Greeks, but the government was in no position to honour this, and Loukas died in poverty six months later. There has been speculation about whether the relationship between Byron and Loukas was homosexual, pointing to some of Byron's last poem verses as evidence for this claim.
