Stephanie Barron - Jane and the Madness of Lord Byron

Most of the inn’s occupants are abed; being a Wednesday, the town was not very lively this evening, given over to card parties and boxes at the theatre in New Road—tho’ I have an idea that the better part of the populace was gathered privately, in a multitude of salons, to talk over the scandalous news of murder. But to return to the scene in Scrope Davies’s drawing-room—

Lord Byron was drinking claret as he lay on the sopha, nursing a bottle to himself. His bloodshot eyes moved dully over our party, but at his friend Davies coming forward to bow to the Earl and Countess—clearly astounded that Swithin had not come alone, as his card had suggested, but had actually brought his wife , not to mention a pair of strangers—Byron forced himself upright, and set the bottle between his feet.

I tried not to stare at these; one, his right, was perceptibly deformed. His lordship is said to be morbidly anxious on the subject of lameness.

“Our intimate friends,” the Earl said to Scrope Davies carelessly, “Mr. and Miss Austen.”

“Pleasure,” Davies murmured, looking about him with a wild air, as tho’ we four had stumbled upon an orgy. “Countess, I had no notion—beg you will forgive the general air of disorder—I live as a bachelor, as you no doubt know—believe you are acquainted with Mr. Hodge.…”

Upon hearing his name, this gentleman shot our uncertain group a sharp look and said, “Mona, your servant. Miss Austen,” and went back to throwing his dice. The sandy-haired Runner who cast against him swore loudly and fluently, without a thought for ourselves, and slammed his free hand upon the table. “That’s seven pounds you’ve stolen from me!” he cried. “I shall have to sell me pistols.”

“I would not have you do so for the world,” Hodge replied in a bored tone, “for then Byron should be killed; and there would be no end to the women laying blame at my door. Let’s throw again—Luck’s the very Devil, but it changes as swift as affection.”

The Earl of Swithin, meanwhile, had bowed to the dissipated figure on the sopha. “My felicitations, George. You came out of the morning’s affair rather well. Have you any notion of when you may be released from your obligations to the Law, and return to London?”

“None,” the gentleman said curtly. “The magistrate is a fool. Mona, have you had a letter from Lady Oxford?”

“We expect her every hour,” the Countess said. “Pray dine with us this evening; there shall be no one but yourselves.”

“She means to stay with you, then?”

“So I understand.”

“Bloody hell,” Byron said heavily. “I wish she had not got it into her head to come here. She shall be subject to every sort of insult—and from that I would preserve her at any cost. The rabble of Brighton are nothing, you know, to its haut ton . They may freeze the blood of Satan’s imp at a single glance; and my poor Jane shall be held in abhorrence, being known for an enemy of the Regent’s. The office of maîtresse to a murderer is as nothing to it. Well, we have given them something to chatter about, at least! Society is now one polished horde / Formed of two mighty tribes, the Bores and / Bored. ”

“Byron, I believe you’re foxed,” Swithin observed.

“ What’s drinking, quoth he? A mere pause from thinking . And why should I not be drunk?” his lordship demanded belligerently. “It is of a piece with all the rest. Do you not know me for a hellhound? Is that Miss Austen, did’ye say? Miss Jane Austen?”

“That is my Christian name,” I returned calmly, “but how you are in possession of it, I know not.”

“I am by way of being a collector of Janes,” Byron replied coolly. He reached for his bottle and drank deeply of claret. “Augustas, Annabelles, Ara … Ara … bellas; such a multitude of vowels as women employ! Give me plain Jane any day.”

“Or … Catherine, perhaps?”

The poet lifted sodden eyes to mine. “She declined to be collected. As you yourself observed. We last met, I believe, in a stable yard in Cuckfield—tho’ I should not call it so much as a bowing acquaintance.”

“And yet, you know my name.”

He smiled secretly to himself, the leer of a successful Cupid. “I can get anything from the mouths of ladies, my sweet; they fall over themselves to offer me confidences. Eliza was one of those.”

Startled, I stared at him narrowly. Could it be possible he spoke of my late sister?

“Did they not inform you I’ve a taste for older women? Married, where possible, but I have been known to violate my principles. Indeed, I only hold principles that they might be violated.”

“Sir!” Henry said through his teeth. “Consider what you say!”

Byron allowed his glittering gaze to drift over my brother. “I do not like your face,” he said. “It suggests stupidity, without the redemptive air of Fashion. Indeed, Mr. Austen, in you I smell the shop . With your wife it was otherwise. Stiled herself a comtesse , did she not? I wonder what Mona has to say to that. ”

Henry stiffened, but the Earl grasped his sleeve with a strong hand. “Do not regard him,” he said in a lowered tone. “He is far too well to live , at present. I shall urge Davies to wrest the bottle from him presently, and put him to bed.”

“Miss Austen,” Byron sang out from his sopha-throne, “I should like to speak with you, for all you look so melancholy. Do you go in mourning for your life—all its hope of love long since lost—or for some nearer being? Come, sit beside me. I do not reek of spirits yet; I promise I shall not drown you.”

I had a strong impulse to slap him, man of five-and-twenty tho’ he was; yet a burning spark in his eye and a dangerous throb of feeling beneath the rude words piqued my interest. This was the man who had bound Catherine Twining with a cravat; this the man who had sailed on, regardless, as Caro Lamb foundered in the sea. What impulse of destruction rode him like a monkey? What would he not risk, of the lives of others—and why did danger draw him like strong drink? Was he capable of seeking the final proof of his violent impulses—capable, even, of murder?

“Let us go, Jane,” Henry urged in a lowered tone. “I do not like this fellow. I do not like him at all.”

“You should do me the greatest service, my dear,” I murmured, “if you would but cultivate Scrope Davies. He is too plausible a foil for his lordship by half. Learn what you can of him. And leave Byron to me.”

Before he could protest, I gathered my skirts and glided towards the listing figure of the poet, whose delicate fingers—quite beautiful—caressed the neck of his wine bottle.

“Tell me how you know my name,” I demanded quietly as I adopted a position beside him on the sopha.

“The ambitious must always know their rivals.” It might have been a cherished aphorism, so swiftly did the phrase fall from his lips; and then he glanced up, to hold my gaze with his own. The dark intensity of that look, the unnerving penetration—the impression immediately received, that I alone existed for this man, that he breathed for me and me entirely—was almost overpowering. It was as tho’ a swift magnetic bond had formed between us, dragging me within his orbit, a bond I was incapable of breaking. The room and its several occupants slid effortlessly away; I heard the distant chatter as through a roaring in my ears; I might have been falling into the dark pools of those eyes, and all they promised of passionate annihilation. I was aware, as I had not been a few moments previous, of the rapidity of my pulse, the wave of heat rising in my frame, the sudden parting of my lips to protest or plead—all involuntary, all ungovernable. It was impossible that my body should thus betray me—should throw me into the power of one I despised , indeed! And yet, each fibre of my rebellious being strained towards that pale countenance, that burning gaze.