Famous love letter from Lord Bryon to Lady Caroline Lamb.
George Gordon Bryon 6th Baron Byron was one of the leading poets in the Romanticism period.
Lord Byron writer of this love letter
Amongst his best known Love poems was “She walks in Beauty”, “When We Two Are Parted” and “Jon Juan”.
However he is equally well known for his lifestyle which included numerous love affairs with married women, bad gambling debts. His “bad” reputation as a womaniser was only exceeded by his bisexual lifestyle.
Following a number of threats on his life by jealous husbands he had to flee the country although close friends stuck by him to act as bodyguards.
Lady Caroline Lamb to whom he wrote this famous love letter described him as being “mad, bad and dangerous to know” which really summed up what a lot of people who shared time with him thought.
Sy even, April 1812
I never supposed you artful, we are all selfish, nature did that for us, but even when you attempt deceit occasionally, you cannot maintain it, which is all the better, want of success will curb the tendency.
Every word you utter, every line you write proves you to be either sincere or a fool, now as I know you are one I must believe you the other. I never knew a woman with greater or more pleasing talents, general as in a woman they should be, something of everything, and too much of nothing, but these are unfortunately coupled with a total want of common conduct.
For instance the note to your page, do you suppose I delivered it? or did you mean that I should? I did not of course.
Then your heart — my poor Caro, what a little volcano! that pours lava through your veins, and yet I cannot wish it a bit colder, to make a marble slab of, as you sometimes see (to understand my foolish metaphor) brought in vases table and see from Vesuvius when hardened after an eruption.
To drop my detestable tropes and figures you know I have always thought you the cleverest most agreeable, absutd, amiable, perplexing, dangerous fascinating little being that lives now or ought to have lived 2000 years ago.
I wont talk to you of beauty, I am no judge, but our beauties cease to be so when near you, and therefore you have either some or something better. And now, Caro, this nonsense is the first and last compliment ( if it be such ) I even paid you, you have often reproached me as wanting in that respect, but others will make up the deficiency … All that you so often say, I feel, can more be said or felt?
This same prudence is tiresome enough but one must maintain it, or what can we do to be saved? Keep to it.
— [written on cover] If you write at all, write at usual — but do as you please, only as I never see you — Basta!
Lord Byron was however also known for having strong beliefs in supporting the underdogs particularly if they had a justifiable case and went to fight in two European wars. Firstly in Italy where he became one of the regional leaders for Carbonari a revolutionary group fighting against Austria.
Later he became a national hero to the Greeks for the way he way he got involved in their war of independence against the Ottoman Empire. He died from a fever contracted in Messolonghi in Greece.
