The Life of Lord Byron by John Galt

 John Galt published his Life of Lord Byron in 1830, just six years after the poet's death in Missolonghi, in what is now modern Greece and then was part of the Ottoman Empire. Byron had been legging it around the Mediterranean for a number of years, his entourage significantly greater than a backpack. Modern reads will need to readjust their ideas of travel when they read details of the veritable caravan that accompanied the Good Lord and will then immediately understand why it was that everywhere he went he was immediately able to access elite society. In modern day terms, this is like a dot-com-owning billionaire moving into the local estate that in feudal times used to own the locality. His presence, it seemed, demanded attention. Having said that, he was always short of money.

Apart from occasional vocabulary that we no longer recognise, John Galt's work reads easily, its tenor remarkably modern, except in matters of race and religion, where a modern interpretation might just confuse. It is important to understand the assumptions of these people in order to understand their work. Yes, Wagner was anti-Semitic, but wasn't everyone else at the time? Rejecting his work on that basis would lead to an equal rejection of other people and institutions that shared the same beliefs, which would automatically include anything to do with Christianity and most writers. Two centuries ago, people did not see the world in the same light and it is through their eyes, not ours, that their work must be seen.

Paradoxically, the Lord Byron was perceived as a Liberal which, at the time, must have placed him in sympathy with at least some of the aims of the French Revolution. This is interesting, given his title, but understandable given his relative penury. He supported the Luddites in Britain, but his domestic political life in the House of Lords was not easy and he was not chosen or perhaps suited for a life in public affairs. His identification with liberal politics is exemplified in this passage from Galt, though it must be noted that at the time liberalism did not extend far into the realm of gender relationships (a cicisbeo is a lover, by the way).

"but young Italian women are not satisfied with good old men, and the venerable Count did not object to her availing herself of the privileges of her country in selecting a cicisbeo; an Italian would have made it quite agreeable: indeed, for some time he winked at our intimacy, but at length made an exception against me, as a foreigner, a heretic, an Englishman, and, what was worse than all, a Liberal."

His liberalism did extend to the support of liberation movements, however, particularly those in Greece, where still today he is seen by some as a national hero. That is not to say that he was particularly fond of the people.

"Do you know," said he to the doctor, "I am nearly reconciled to St Paul; for he says there is no difference between the Jews and the Greeks, and I am exactly of the same opinion, for the character of both is equally vile."

The significance of the above reference to Wagner's anti-Semitism now becomes clear. Perhaps we ought to reject much of Romantic poetry from the canon if we deny Wagner a place. What would be left? Answer - very little...

So what was it that Byron saw worthy of struggle and sacrifice in liberating people for whom he had little respect? The key, which becomes clearer as Galt's biography progresses, is that Byron, like other Romantics, possessed an internal motivation, a personal interpretation whose vivid emotion perhaps raised a screen that was capable of obscuring, even contradicting experience. His response to reality, it seems, is not directly born of the real, but of an idealised knowledge, perhaps pre-formed via education, birth-right and culture, that was more important, at least for the poet, than hard evidence, which could be dismissed or ignored. Galt sums up the process thus.

"that is another and a strong proof too, of what I have been endeavouring to show, that the power of the poet consisted in giving vent to his own feelings, and not, like his great brethren, or even his less, in the invention of situations or of appropriate sentiments"

The author describes how Byron was ambivalent towards the reality of Classical sites, not really showing much interest in the archaeology or the history. Perhaps, via his English public school education, he was au fait with the detail all along and so did not need to absorb direct experience. Perhaps the assumptions of his social class and culture did not admit contradiction of an already internalised ideal that was simply more important than any concrete reality.