The Monsters (44 page)

Like most other women, Mary felt Byron’s attraction. Her emotions were colored by the fact that she strongly associated him
with Shelley and the magical summer of 1816. She wrote in her journal,

I do not think that any person’s voice has the same power of awakening melancholy in me as Albe’s—I have been accustomed when
hearing it, to listen & to speak little;—another voice, not mine, ever replied, a voice whose strings are broken; when Albe
ceases to speak, I expect to hear
that other
voice, & when I hear another instead, it jars strangely . . . since incapacity & timidity always prevented my mingling in
the nightly conversations of Diodati—they were as it were entirely tete-a-tete between my Shelley & Albe & thus . . . when
Albe speaks & Shelley does not answer; it is as thunder without rain—the form of the sun without heat or light—as any familiar
object might be, shorn of its dearest & best attribute—& I listen with an unspeakable melancholy—that yet is not all pain.

Tragically, the last time they saw each other, money caused a rift between Byron and Mary. When Mary requested that Byron
send funds to Claire, who was said to be dangerously ill in Vienna, Byron told Mary to send the money and then he would repay
her. As ever, he did not want to give Claire any reason to think they could be reunited. Byron did, however, want to help
Mary when she decided to return to England. To salve her pride, he gave Leigh Hunt a thousand pounds, telling him to offer
it to Mary as a “loan,” but with the understanding that it would not have to be repaid. Hunt pocketed the money for himself.
Moreover, Hunt viciously told Mary that Byron was bored by her and was paying for her voyage to England only because he didn’t
want her around.

Byron had been approached by the London Greek Committee, which had been formed to lend support to the Greek independence movement.
Byron, like every English schoolboy, had been inculcated with the ideals of classical Greece. From the time of his first trip
abroad as a young man, he had sympathized with the Greeks’ desire to liberate themselves from the Ottoman Empire. He had written
in the third canto of
Don Juan:

The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece!

Where burning Sappho loved and sung.

Where grew the arts of war and peace,

Where Delos rose, and Phoebus sprung!

Eternal summer gilds them yet,

But all, except their sun, is set.

Byron was feeling dissatisfied with his life, perhaps with life itself.
The Liberal
stopped publication after only four issues; it was neither a financial nor a critical success. The three-mile swim in the
ocean Byron had made at Shelley’s cremation caused his skin to blister and brought on a persistent fever. His hair was graying
and he felt a decline in his physical powers. Drinking heavily and relying on purgative pills to control his weight did not
help matters. He contributed money toward the cause of Greek independence, but the siren call of military glory drew him toward
Greece itself.

Byron knew something of the difficulties he would face, but he wanted to rehabilitate his own reputation, at a low ebb in
England because of
Don Juan’
s critical thrashing and lingering memories of the affair with his sister and the separation from his wife. (Byron had written
a preface to the three newest cantos, charging his critics with “cant”—a word he enjoyed using, to mean the expression of
conventionality and piety. Nonetheless,
Blackwood’s
called the latest cantos “Garbage!” and
The Literary Gazette
termed them “moral vomit.”)

In Italy, Byron remarked to another of his confidantes, Lady Blessington, “Yes! A grassy bed in Greece, and a grey stone to
mark the spot, would please me more than a marble tomb in Westminster Abbey.” Byron asked Trelawny to accompany him, and the
make-believe adventurer was only too glad to agree. Countess Guiccioli was unhappy that Byron was leaving her, but her brother
Pietro himself signed on and helped round up about fifty volunteers for the expedition. The
Bolivar
had been sold, but Byron chartered two boats, and procured enough medical supplies, he thought, to supply a thousand men
for two years.

As always, Byron seized the opportunity to dress up in costume. He had tailors make him scarlet full-dress uniforms trimmed
with gold lace, shoulder knots, and silver epaulets. Byron even commissioned several elaborate helmets modeled after those
worn by Greeks of the Homeric era, and he had his family coat of arms and the motto of the Byrons embossed on the one he chose
for himself. A decorative sword completed the outfit.

As Byron’s fleet set sail from Genoa harbor on July 15, 1823, the men fired pistols into the air, sang patriotic songs, and
shouted, “Tomorrow in Missolonghi.” The next day, however, saw them back in Genoa, for a storm blew up that evening, forcing
the ships back into port; it was not an auspicious beginning, but Byron told Pietro Gamba “that he considered a bad beginning
a favourable omen”—a sentiment all too reminiscent of Shelley’s optimism about his near-drowning.

Byron was aboard the
Hercules,
a small boat crammed with medical supplies, livestock, five horses, and chests stuffed with coins and banknotes. He was cash
rich for the first time—from the sale of the family lands at Newstead—and Byron knew that spreading it around would ease his
travels. Never without dogs, he brought a bulldog and a Newfoundland named Lyon. The mood on the voyage was light-hearted.
Byron and Trelawny, along with the dogs, sometimes slipped overboard for a swim in the sea. Once, before going over the rail,
the two friends donned the captain’s scarlet waistcoat as a prank; he was so stout that it encompassed them both.

On August 3, Byron and his men landed at Argostoli in the Ionian Islands. Here Byron received his first reality check to the
romantic view of the Greeks’ struggle. There were many factions among the Greeks, and some were fighting each other rather
than the Turks, who still controlled parts of Greece with heavily armed garrisons. The strongest rift was between those Greeks
who had lived outside the country for many years, and those who had never left, having remained loyal to local chieftains
called
klephts
. No matter which faction they belonged to, they all had a hand out for financial help from Byron.

His reaction was to retreat to the British-controlled island of Cephalonia and go into a funk. “I was a fool to come here,”
he wrote, “but being here I must see what is to be done.” He fell in love for the last time—with a fifteen-year-old boy, Lukas
Chalandritsanos. Byron made Lukas his “page” and bought him lavish presents—expensive clothes and a set of gold-plated pistols.
Trelawny, who was eager for action, was disgusted and left to join a rebel leader named Odysseus, who reportedly lived in
a cave.

On Cephalonia Byron thought mostly of the past, of what his life might have been. He would sometimes stare out to sea, wearing
a cloak of Stewart tartan, reflecting his mother’s claim that she had been related to Scottish royalty. He received letters
from Augusta, his half-sister in England, reporting that Byron’s seven-year-old daughter Ada suffered from headaches that
were so severe they threatened her eyesight. He fretted that her mother, Lady Byron, was overtaxing her with a rigorous study
schedule. Byron answered that he had had a similar condition when he was a child, but had bathed his head in cold water every
morning to cure it. The letter made Byron recognize and regret how little he knew about his daughter. He wrote Augusta back
asking, “Is the Girl imaginative? . . . I hope that the Gods have made her any thing save
poetical
—it is enough to have one such fool in a family.”

On another day, Byron was startled to see the ghost of Shelley approach. In reality it was George Finlay, who bore a striking
resemblance to the dead poet. Finlay, who would later write a history of the Greek war for independence, had come to Greece
because he heard Byron was here, and wanted to join the fight. “Both [Byron’s] character and his conduct presented unceasing
contradictions,” Finlay noted. “It seemed as if two different souls occupied his body alternately. One was feminine, and full
of sympathy; the other masculine, and characterised by clear judgement. When one arrived the other departed. In company, his
sympathetic soul was his tyrant. Alone, or with a single person, his masculine prudence displayed itself as his friend.”

Byron finally made up his mind to join the Greek forces under Prince Alexander Mavrocordatos, the man who had taught Greek
to Mary in Pisa. She had described Mavrocordatos as a cultivated and honest man, and Byron felt he was the potential George
Washington among the Greek leaders. The prince’s provisional government and headquarters were at the coastal town of Missolonghi
and from there he wrote Byron, “Be assured, My Lord, that it depends only on yourself to secure the destiny of Greece.” Byron’s
vanity could not resist such a summons.

Before he left, Byron was showing signs of ill health, probably brought on by the fierce heat of the Greek summer. He had
brought one doctor with him from Italy; now a second, Julius Millingen, appeared, courtesy of the London Greek Committee.
(It was Millingen who quoted Byron as saying, “I especially dread, in this world, two things, to which I have reason to believe
I am equally predisposed—growing fat and growing mad.”) Millingen tried unsuccessfully to dissuade Byron from the frequent
use of weight-reducing pills and his heavy drinking.

Byron did not set off for the mainland till December 29. His little flotilla then maneuvered its way through the blockade
of Turkish warships off the Greek coast. The larger of his two vessels, carrying Pietro Gamba and valuable supplies, was captured
and briefly detained; by a coincidence Byron might have written in a fanciful poem, the captain of Gamba’s ship had once saved
the life of the Turkish commander, who accepted his story that Gamba was a traveler. However, it was an unpleasant reminder
to Byron that there really was a war going on.

He landed at Missolonghi on January 5, and received a reception suitable for a conquering hero. Dressed in his scarlet uniform,
he was greeted by a twenty-one-gun salute and a singing crowd of soldiers, priests, women holding up babies, and old people
who wanted to catch a glimpse of him. News of his arrival had been rumored for weeks, and he was regarded as the savior of
Greece. It was believed that Byron was capable of raising large amounts of money from English sources, organizing an army
and navy to attack the Turkish stronghold of Lepanto, and settling the blood feuds among the Greek chieftains assembled at
Mavrocordatos’s headquarters. The prince himself turned out to be no George Washington: he was paralyzed with indecision and
everyone now looked to Byron for leadership. The expectations for him were too great for anyone to fulfill.

Conditions were hardly what Byron was used to. The town, originally home to three thousand fishermen and their families, was
in an unhealthy location next to a stagnant lagoon. Its muddy lanes were covered with human and animal excrement. Rain fell
constantly, turning the place into a swamp where mosquitoes bred.

For the first time in his life, Byron was in a situation where he could not solve his problems with a clever turn of phrase
or a flash of his rapier wit. The aristocrat who liked to sleep till noon now was besieged with requests and questions at
all hours. Nothing could be done until Byron decided it must be done. He forced himself to rise by nine, receiving reports
and issuing the orders of the day over breakfast. He personally inspected the supply accounts—guaranteeing payment for new
supplies from his own accounts. Every day he met with the other leaders, who squabbled incessantly.

The London Greek Committee’s assistance was often unhelpful. The committee’s representative in Missolonghi, Colonel Leicester
Stanhope, felt that the Greeks—of all people—needed to be educated in republican principles. He had ordered a printing press,
which Byron had brought from Cephalonia, so that he could publish a newspaper, even though few Greeks outside the cities could
read. The committee had also promised a drill instructor and artillery experts, but neither had yet arrived. The soldiers
at Missolonghi included volunteers from many other countries, making communication difficult, though Byron attempted to train
them himself (without great success).

Lady Blessington, his confidante in Italy, had observed that she could easily imagine Byron going courageously into battle,
but not “enduring the tedious details, and submitting to the tiresome arrangements, of which as a chief, he must bear the
weight.” She was correct: Byron yearned for action. At his request, Mavrocordatos gave him the title Archistrategos, and “permission”
to stage an attack on the fortress of Lepanto, still under Turkish control. Byron’s plan may have been as much from historical
consciousness as anything else, for Lepanto was the site of a famous victory over the Turks in 1471 by the combined forces
of Spain and Venice.

Byron put himself at the head of a brigade of Suliotes, the Albanian warriors who had charmed him on his first trip to the
Near East eleven years before. Unfortunately, he found them riotous and mutinous. When a ship brought needed supplies, Byron’s
Suliotes refused to carry them from the beach, because they had arrived on a saint’s day. Enraged, Byron started the job himself
until others finally joined him.

On his birthday, January 22, 1824, Byron was feeling depressed. Despite the favors he had shown to his beloved Lukas (“Luke”)—
even putting him in charge of a squad of thirty soldiers—the boy was greedy, arrogant, and worst of all, unloving to Byron.
Byron emerged from his bedroom that morning to read a poem he had written especially for the occasion, titled “On This Day
I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year.” The poem reveals a man obsessed by age and the loss of his youth—and along with it, his
physical beauty and sexual power.