|
George Gordon Byron (later Noel), 6th Baron Byron, FRS (22 January 1788 – 19 April 1824), commonly known simply as Lord Byron, was an English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement. Among Byron's best-known works are the lengthy narrative poems ''Don Juan'' and ''Childe Harold's Pilgrimage'', and the short lyric "She Walks in Beauty". Byron is regarded as one of the greatest British poets,〔http://www.bbc.co.uk/poetryseason/vote_results.shtml〕 and remains widely read and influential. He travelled widely across Europe, especially in Italy where he lived for seven years. Later in life, Byron joined the Greek War of Independence fighting the Ottoman Empire, for which many Greeks revere him as a national hero.〔 〕 He died one year later at age 36 from a fever contracted while in Missolonghi. Often described as the most flamboyant and notorious of the major Romantics, Byron was both celebrated and castigated in life for his aristocratic excesses, including huge debts, numerous love affairs with people of both sexes, rumours of a scandalous liaison with his half-sister, and self-imposed exile.〔 He also fathered Ada, Countess of Lovelace, whose work on Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine is considered a founding document in the field of computer science, and Allegra Byron, who died in childhood — as well as, possibly, Elizabeth Medora Leigh out of wedlock. ==Early life== Mayne states that George Gordon Byron was born on 22 January 1788 in a house on 24 Holles Street in London. However, R.C. Dallas in his ''Recollections'' states that Byron was born in Dover. He was the son of Captain John "Mad Jack" Byron and his second wife, the former Catherine Gordon (d. 1811), a descendant of Cardinal Beaton and heiress of the Gight estate in Aberdeenshire, Scotland.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=The Gordons of Gight )〕 Byron's father had previously seduced the married Marchioness of Caermarthen and, after she divorced her husband, he married her. His treatment of her was described as "brutal and vicious", and she died after having given birth to two daughters, only one of whom survived: Byron's half-sister, Augusta.〔Galt, John, The Life of Lord Byron, 1830, Chapter 1〕 In order to claim his second wife's estate in Scotland, Byron's father took the additional surname "Gordon", becoming "John Byron Gordon", and he was occasionally styled "John Byron Gordon of Gight". Byron himself used this surname for a time and was registered at school in Aberdeen as "George Byron Gordon". At the age of 10, he inherited the English Barony of Byron of Rochdale, becoming "Lord Byron", and eventually dropped the double surname. Byron's paternal grandparents were Vice-Admiral the Hon. John "Foulweather Jack" Byron, and Sophia Trevanion.〔 〕 Vice Admiral John Byron had circumnavigated the globe, and was the younger brother of the 5th Baron Byron, known as "the Wicked Lord". He was christened, at St Marylebone Parish Church, "George Gordon Byron" after his maternal grandfather George Gordon of Gight, a descendant of James I of Scotland, who had committed suicide〔 〕 in 1779. "Mad Jack" Byron married his second wife for the same reason that he married his first: her fortune.〔"...it was known to be solely with a view of relieving himself from his debts, that Mr. Byron paid his addresses to her." Moore, Thomas, The Works of Lord Byron: With His Letters and Journals, and His Life, John Murray, 1835.〕 Byron's mother had to sell her land and title to pay her new husband's debts, and in the space of two years the large estate, worth some £23,500, had been squandered, leaving the former heiress with an annual income in trust of only £150.〔 In a move to avoid his creditors, Catherine accompanied her profligate husband to France in 1786, but returned to England at the end of 1787 in order to give birth to her son on English soil. He was born on 22 January in lodgings at Holles Street in London. Catherine moved back to Aberdeenshire in 1790, where Byron spent his childhood.〔 His father soon joined them in their lodgings in Queen Street, but the couple quickly separated. Catherine regularly experienced mood swings and bouts of melancholy,〔 which could be partly explained by her husband's continuing to borrow money from her. As a result, she fell even further into debt to support his demands. It was one of these importunate loans that allowed him to travel to Valenciennes, France, where he died in 1791.〔McGann, Jerome, ‘Byron, George Gordon Noel, sixth Baron Byron (1788–1824)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, Oct 2009 () accessed 10 June 2010〕 When Byron's great-uncle, the "wicked" Lord Byron, died on 21 May 1798, the 10-year-old boy became the 6th Baron Byron of Rochdale and inherited the ancestral home, Newstead Abbey, in Nottinghamshire. His mother proudly took him to England, but the Abbey was in an embarrassing state of disrepair and, rather than live there, decided to lease it to Lord Grey de Ruthyn, among others, during Byron's adolescence. Described as "a woman without judgment or self-command", Catherine either spoiled and indulged her son or vexed him with her capricious stubbornness. Her drinking disgusted him, and he often mocked her for being short and corpulent, which made it difficult for her to catch him to discipline him. She once retaliated and, in a fit of temper, referred to him as "a lame brat".〔Galt, John, The Life of Lord Byron, 1830, Chapter 3〕 However, Byron biographer, Doris Langley-Moore, in her 1974 book,'Accounts rendered', paints a more sympathetic view of Mrs Byron, showing how she was a staunch supporter of her son and sacrificed her own precarious finances to keep him in luxury at Harrow and Cambridge. Langley-Moore questions the Galt claim that she over-indulged in alcohol. Upon the death of Byron's mother-in-law Judith Noel, the Hon. Lady Milbanke, in 1822, her will required that he change his surname to "Noel" in order for him to inherit half of her estate. He obtained a Royal Warrant allowing him to "take and use the surname of Noel only". The Royal Warrant also allowed him to "subscribe the said surname of Noel before all titles of honour", and from that point he signed himself "Noel Byron" (the usual signature of a peer being merely the peerage, in this case simply "Byron"). It is speculated that this was so that his initials would read "Noel.B.", mimicking those of his hero, Napoleon Bonaparte. Lady Byron eventually succeeded to the Barony of Wentworth, becoming "Lady Wentworth". 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Lord Byron」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|