“Marriage has often been represented as the proper goal and terminus of a wild and dissipated career, and it has been supposed to be the appointed mission of good women to receive wandering prodigals, with all the rags and disgraces of their old life upon them, and put rings on their hands and shoes on their feet, and introduce them, clothed and in their right minds, to an honorable career in society.”
Oh, my sainted aunt. Friend of the Toast Elon Green turned me on this 5,000-word essay by Harriet Beecher Stowe (!) in the Atlantic (!!) vindicating Lady Byron (!!!) that ultimately caused “fifteen thousand of the Atlantic’s subscribers (about one third of the readership) [to] cancel in protest, almost wrecking the magazine in what Oliver Wendell Holmes dubbed the Byron whirlwind.’”
“Her answer was a frank, outspoken avowal of her love for him, giving herself to him heart and hand. The good in Lord Byron was not so utterly obliterated that he could receive such a letter without emotion, or practice such unfairness on a loving, trusting heart without pangs of remorse. He had sent the letter in mere recklessness; he had not seriously expected to be accepted.”
PILE MORE SICK BURNS UPON HIS UNDESERVING HEAD, HARRIET. LORD BYRON CAN SUCK AN EGG. I had to stop reading this essay at multiple points to whisper “kablammo” to myself, as the author intended. God bless you and keep you all.
“When her husband described to her the continental latitude,—the good-humored marriage, in which complaisant couples mutually agreed to form the cloak for each other’s infidelities,—and gave her to understand that in this way alone she could have a peaceful and friendly life with him, she answered him simply: ‘I am too truly your friend to do this.’”
kablammo
Tags: harriet beecher stowe, history, lord byron, suck an egg byron
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http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1869/…
The article is this, yes?
THIS ARTICLE IS AMAZING SHE IS TEARING HIM TO FUCKING SHREDS
“For six years he had been plunging into every kind of vice and excess, pleading his shattered domestic joys, and his wife’s obdurate heart, as the apology and the impelling cause; filling the air with his shrieks and complaints concerning the slanders which pursued him, while he filled letters to his confidential correspondents with records of new mistresses.”
THIS IS GLORIOUS
“FILLING THE AIR WITH HIS SHRIEKS AND COMPLAINTS.”
Set her loose on the Sad Puppies!
She goes in so hard omg
Lord Byron 100% deserves it too. I’ll wait to read it when I’m not at work and can fistpump freely
I am crestfallen that the “suck an egg byron” tag is otherwise empty.
Give it time
I was going to say the same thing!
I like how in the excerpt of his apology (?) letter to his wife that Stowe reprints in her essay, he says, “I burnt your last note, for two reasons: firstly, it was written in a style not very agreeable; and secondly, I wished to take your word without documents, which are the worldly resources of suspicious people.”
Firstly, he’s being a dick there, but how *exactly* is he being a dick? Agreeable meaning not written well or agreeable meaning she just wanted a fight? Secondly, what the h does that part even mean?
Man, I’ve got stuff to do today, Mallory! Super juicy! Sorry that this affected Stowe more than anyone else involved, especially Byron. I wonder how well that mistress’s account did, financially.
Oh my God, he never even sent the letter. This was just his public defense. His own defense!
I’m so confused.
I believe the second part translates as “Gaslighters gonna gaslight”
“I’m so sad that I have hardly anything you’ve written! It’s so mean of you to never send me anything, except for that note you sent me, which I burnt because you didn’t coddle my feelings enough and also I didn’t actually want a note from you.”
Also when he says, “For my own part, I am violent, but not malignant; for only fresh provocations can awaken my resentments.”
Translated, this is the garbage excuse of abusers everywhere: “I don’t want to hit you but you keep asking for it.”
“And still feel superior to you because at least I don’t STAY mad.”
“At least now I have some of your handwriting, because I’m so sad not to have any sign of you ever since I mailed back all that stuff you wrote me. Except for that last one. I burned it because it was SUPER bitchy. Who even sends notes? Don’t you TRUST me? People who TRUST people don’t write notes, they talk in PERSON.”
Exact transcription of some *names redacted* stuff I’ve encountered recently.
“I assure you that I bear you now (whatever I may have done) no resentment whatever. Remember that, if you have injured me in aught, this forgiveness is something; and that, if I have injured you, it is something more still, if it be true, as the moralists say, that the most offending are the least forgiving.”
This bit. THIS BIT. “I will take credit for forgiving you for any vague and unstated wrongs you might have done me. I will take EVEN MORE credit because moralists say that forgiving somebody that you’ve hurt is really hard and look! Here I am doing it! I will take three dozen cookies now.”
The most dreadful men to live with are those who thus alternate between angel and devil. The buds of hope and love called out by a day or two of sunshine are frozen again and again till the tree is killed.
Yup.
I came here to post this too. OOF.
LIKE. I JUST.
DAMN.
I mean, I knew Byron was a (beautiful, reasonably talented, sometimes amusing) dirtbag. I’ve read his collected letters. But just how dirtbag, I hadn’t quite grasped.
I understand that Byron’s approach to sexuality came from somewhere. Quite possibly from a lot of somewheres, including a fair bit of childhood abuse, which sucks. I wish that hadn’t happened.
I also wish Byron hadn’t used a woman to escape scandal, but had owned and advertised his dirtbagness. (Honestly, I think he would have thrived on public shunning.) I wish he had entered adulthood with a warning label, maybe with flashing lights. And I really, really wish he hadn’t tried to buy a 12-year-old. I mean, shit.
I wish Lady B’d had better options than entering into a marriage with someone who didn’t treat her feelings about marriage as if they were as important as his own, and that she entered that relationship with him under (and because of) false pretenses on his part.
“The reader is requested to take notice of the important admission that the letter was never sent to Lady Byron at all. It was, in fact, never intended for her, but was a nice little dramatic performance, composed simply with the view of acting on the sympathies of Lady Blessington and Byron’s numerous female admirers; and the reader will agree with us, we think, that in this point of view it was very neatly done and deserves immortality as a work of high art.”
Surely the politest record in history of calling somebody a bullshit artist.
I just sent this to a friend who had the most glorious response:
“HBS:
::spends years studying electricity and metallurgy::
::invents the microphone::
::drops it::”
Lord Byron, the missing link between our ape ancestors and modern-day MRAs.
HBS, scourge of slavery apologists and self-pitying, self-promoting douchebags of the 19th century. Daaaaaaaamn.
Byron is such a flawless exemplar of the Dirtbag. I mean, kudos to commitment to a form, I suppose. #TeamIsabella
Anyway, enough about him, let’s talk about how Lady Isabella raised their daughter to be one of the foremost mathematicians and scientists of her time, SHALL WE?
I love Kate Beaton’s “Young Ada Lovelace”: http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=298
seriously. actually, whenever i do think about Bryon, the addendum is “at least he fathered Ada”
Ada Lovelace was totally the best thing he achieved and all he really contributed was the sperm.
100%
yeah, definitely meant fathered in the very literal sperm donation sense. Lady Isabella gets every ounce of credit here.
Or you could read Sydney Padua’s “Ada Lovelace, the Secret Origin”: http://sydneypadua.com/2dgoggles/lovelace-the-ori…
And then go buy the book. 😀
Oh my god, is this out now?!?!?! I knew it was coming, but I’d missed that it’s now available!
PEOPLE. DROP EVERYTHING. Head to your nearest feminist bookstore (mine is the Women & Children First Bookstore in Chicago) and buy this graphic novel, because I intend to: The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage: The (Mostly) True Story of the First Computer.
I pre-ordered mine and completely geeked-out at everyone I knew when it arrived! I was lucky enough to meet Sydney Padua in analog form at a book signing in Cambridge. 🙂 Great talk.
Oh yes, and I love the link under the comic that reminds us Ada wore PRINCESS LEIA BUNS.
How much better would Star Wars have been if Leia had casually namedropped Ada Lovelace as her style inspiration (I think it’s a good idea, anyway).
In the article, HBS talks about their daughter ‘marrying a man of fashion’ and generally being a bit dissolute, but then reconciles with Lady Byron at the end of her life. No mention of her education and mathematical ability. Is that Ada she’s talking about there, or someone else? If it’s Ada, I’m surprised HBS didn’t mention the ‘math genius’ part, unless it wasn’t known about her until recently.
Yeah, I was reading the letter and had completely forgotten that it’s THAT Ada we’re talking about.
I didn’t know it was possible to love HBS even more, but I DO.
Does this story read to anyone what a realistic Jane/Rochester union would have been like? Lady Byron’s virtue no-nonsense truth bombs seem very Jane-like to me. “I am too truly your friend to do this.” A-YOOOOOO, that sounds like a Bronte original.
Literary ladies of the 1800’s, opening a cafe and serving just desserts. (this is not even addressing Byron’s objections to her being TOO SMART or some BS like such. That is being ignored, as it should be.)
It’s also pretty much exactly how I imagine it would go if Belle had had to actually marry Gaston.
NO ONE’S BYRON LIKE GASTOOOON!
I love Jane Eyre but you have hit the absolute truth with this:
“Does this story read to anyone what a realistic Jane/Rochester union would have been like? Lady Byron’s virtue no-nonsense truth bombs seem very Jane-like to me. “I am too truly your friend to do this.” A-YOOOOOO, that sounds like a Bronte original. “
all of this is glorious. i am going to go read it again now.
I know he’s one of the great poets and all, but when he rhymes ‘intellectual’ with ‘hen-pecked you all’ it just sounds like Ogden Nash minus all the wit.
I just finished reading Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, which was incredible and I’m so sorry to be done with it, and which also tells Lord Byron to suck an egg. Has anyone seen the BBC version? I’m trying to be cautiously optimistic because it could be SO GOOD.
RE: BBC version – It is basically the novel on screen and it is DIVINE. I adore it.
IT IS THE BEST ADAPTATION I HAVE SEEN IN AGES AND I HAVE VERY HIGH STANDARDS.
GO TO IT POSTHASTE.
OMG WHERE CAN I WATCH IT
I’m American, if that makes any difference
*cough* Your usual torrent source? Mine goes by kickass DOT to
Thank you! I wasn’t sure if there’s a legit way I should try first, lol
iTunes has the first episode for free, fyi!
This gave meaning to my Wednesday.
“…and the world at last settled down to believing that the account so often repeated and never contradicted must be substantially a true one.”
that’s just describing… all of history…
🙁
This seems a great time to share Susanna Clarke’s beautiful capture of Byron in Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell:
A lovely young Italian girl passed by. Byron tilted his head to a very odd angle, half-closed his eyes and composed his features to suggest that he was about to expire from chronic indigestion. Dr Greysteel could only suppose that he was treating the young woman to the Byronic profile and the Byronic expression.
I can only hope the adaptation holds true to this.
This really got me through the day!
It makes me a little bit sad that we’ll never know what Harriet Beecher Stowe would say about Jonathan Franzen.
It makes me insanely happy to begin imagining exactly that.
I suspect she might just set down her pen and give him a wedgie instead. (I mean, it’s what *I* would do….)
I had forgotten for a while there that Byron was Ada Lovelace’s dad and I think it’s a fucking crime that a loutish poet is so much better-known than his hypergenius steampunk daughter. a Lovelace appreciation day may be needed in penance.
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s account of Lady Ada is a little grim 🙁
Ha, just saw your version after posting mine! I’m enjoying the different translations of idiomatic Asshole. 😀
I will henceforward always refer to non-monogamy/polyamory as “the continental latitude.”
The takedown of Byron is amazing, but all the ‘Lady Byron was so amazing and godly cause she was SO SELF SACRIFICING and PIOUS and ALWAYS BELIEVED HE WAS A GOOD GUY’ got a bit tiresome towards the end. I’m sure Lady B did curse him out in private, and it’d be very satisfying to hear about it.
"And still feel superior to you because at least I don't STAY mad."
Yeah, I was reading the letter and had completely forgotten that it's THAT Ada we're talking about.
"I assure you that I bear you now (whatever I may have done) no resentment whatever. Remember that, if you have injured me in aught, this forgiveness is something; and that, if I have injured you, it is something more still, if it be true, as the moralists say, that the most offending are the least forgiving."
This bit. THIS BIT. "I will take credit for forgiving you for any vague and unstated wrongs you might have done me. I will take EVEN MORE credit because moralists say that forgiving somebody that you've hurt is really hard and look! Here I am doing it! I will take three dozen cookies now."
I never thought I’d ever be sitting at my desk stewing over my desire to dig up a 200 year old corpse just to kick him in his desiccated nuts, yet here we are.
First,
Mallory, I love your work! You are hilarious! And…..no. Lady Byron was a fabulist on the level of Rachel Doezal. Malcom Elwin, (in Lord Byron’s Family 1816-1824) Doris Langley Moore,(in Ada, Countess of Lovelace) and others have discussed that Lady Byron’s memory can be considered capricious at best. It’s a good joke, but unfortunately a myth that Lady Byron was any kind of credible source and her insight(which she considered infallible) is deeply flawed. Love you bunches!
Aaahh! I was so psyched to read this:
“While she managed with admirable skill and economy permanent institutions of this sort, she was always ready to relieve suffering in any form. The fugitive slaves, William and Ellen Crafts, escaping to England, were fostered by her protecting care.”
If you haven’t heard the amazing, fascinating, movie-worthy story of the Crafts, I implore you to seek out the “The Messrs. Craft” episode of The Memory Palace (fantastic podcast) and be amazed.