'Byron: A Life in Ten Letters': The Regency's rakish rock star | Hacker News Reader

'Byron: A Life in Ten Letters': The Regency's rakish rock star

wsj.com

38 pointsPetiver15 comments

https://archive.ph/2024.02.16-191351/https://www.wsj.com/art...

Byron was a monster, not a sexy “mad, bad, and dangerous to know” character. As one data point (out of many) consider his treatment of his daughter Allegra: https://darkestlondon.com/2012/10/19/the-short-tragic-life-o.... After being transferred from family to family, little Allegra was dumped to a convent. From there “…four-year-old Allegra wrote her father a letter in Italian from the convent, dated 21 September 1821, asking him to visit her (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegra_Byron):

  My dear Papa. It being fair-time, I should like so much a visit from my Papa as I have many wishes to satisfy. Won't you come to please your Allegrina who loves you so?”

She was strictly disciplined by the nuns while there. Seven months after writing the letter she died of a fever, five years old. You can see the letter in Allegra's handwriting here: https://x.com/JedPumblechook/status/1734513882360594640?s=20.

Byron never once visited her or responded to her letter. In the back of the letter he wrote "Sincere enough, but not very flattering - for she wants to see me because it 'is the fair' to get some paternal Gingerbread - I suppose." (https://www.nytimes.com/1983/10/13/arts/notable-children-s-l...)

"Caro il mio Pappa" indeed!

Monster or not, that was not "written" by a 4 year old.

Was that unusual treatment of children of artistocrats at the time? Even today they send their kids to schools miles away for months at a time.

Byron’s been a character in some fun fiction: https://the-true-tropes.fandom.com/wiki/Lord_Byron

My favorites are “The Stress of Her Regard” by Tim Powers and “The Difference Engine” (he appears only tangentially) (but still, damn, what a book).

And of course “Arcadia,” an uncommonly beautiful play by Tom Stoppard.

In terms of Tim Powers, Byron shows up in his "The Anubis Gates" as well.

Byron aside, I recommend Tim Powers' novel "Declare" -- enjoyed that one more than "The Anubis Gates". Keywords: fiction, espionage, thriller, 40s-60s ww2 / cold war, occult horror, historical fiction.

For anyone who enjoys the mix of espionage & occult horror themes in "Declare", there's a couple of similar themes, with differences, in Charles Stross' Laundry Files series. Stross' series features a lot more government & IT bureaucratic comedy/horror.

I'm not sure there's a direct Byronic connection to the Laundry Files, but one of Stross' axioms for the Laundry Files universe is that magic is a branch of applied mathematics -- understanding the right theorem or having a person (or circuit) execute a certain algorithm has occult consequences. So we can at least indirectly make a connection back to Byron via Ada Lovelace.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/190554.Declare

https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2020/10/the-lau...

I've been wanting another book like Declare ever since I read it - annoying to find your absolute favourite genre appears to consist of exactly one book. Not that the Laundry isn't fun and good :) but there's something about how mystical Declare is, like a Crying of Lot 49 or Foucault's Pendulum but that actually wants to get somewhere with its hints of a bigger world rather than just tease the reader with them.

Depends on what you want from a book "like Declare". While it isn't about spies, Powers' "Last Call" is basically "Declare" only about the early mob-run history of Las Vegas as the background instead of the Cold War.

“Last Call” is amazing. I’ve read it 3 times, and I swear, the last 150 pages are still some of the most intense I’ve encountered.

I've read most of Powers' other books and liked them, but none hit quite the same. Declare had a gritty majesty to it with the geopolitics, the others had a bit too much of the fantastic about them. Too obviously stories to fit the history, rather than... history turned into a story, I guess? The spy angle really lent itself to his writing, for me.

O fish, are you constant to the old covenant?

"The War in the Dark" by Nick Setchfield scratched a similar itch to "Declare" for me. (There's a sequel too, but I've not read it).

I'm just so sad his memoirs were burned

Worse, they were kind of censored - burned by do-gooders to protect the "reputation" of a libertine whose life and ideas were beyond their grasp - a poet who judged 'success' as "Men think highly of those who rise rapidly in the world whereas nothing rises quicker than dust, straw, and feathers." In a way, their vicarious vanity secured a legend, forever casting wonder on what unspeakably shocking secrets they held. Today these cowards live on, proscribing as "unacceptable" or "problematic" whatever we may say, think or feel in the digital world. One day all our memoirs will be burned by the moral descendents Hobhouse and Moore.

This was a pretty excellent article! Worth the read if you're into the guy.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com