Word: byron
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Bravery & Bravado. Right from boyhood, Byron greedily determined to have an outward career as exciting as his inner life, and to get, if possible, the best of both worlds. A deformed foot and excess weight stood in his way, so at 19 he grimly started training. "I have lost 18 LB in my weight ... by violent exercise and Fasting ... I wear seven Waistcoats and a greatcoat, run, and play at cricket in this Dress, till quite exhausted by excessive perspiration, and the Hip Bath daily; eat only a quarter of a pound of Butcher's Meat in 24 hours...
...character of Lord Byron...
...world, in fact, has been so fascinated with the erotic side of George Gordon, Lord Byron, that it has almost forgotten that he was, after all, a rock of strength as well-allowing for a few streaks of soft shale in the composition. The Selected Letters of Lord Byron, published this week with an introduction by Jacques Barzun, shows almost more intimately than the poems the vigorous male grain of the most varied and masterful English spirit of the Romantic...
...fruit and sweetmeats twenty times a day." Off the isle of Corfu he found he could take the lash of fortune as well as her caress. When the ship seemed certain to go down in a storm, and even the captain "burst into tears and ran below deck," young Byron, with as much bravery as bravado, "wrapped myself up in my Albanian capote (an immense cloak) and lay down on deck to wait the worst." On shore, his valor was heartily rewarded by the female population of Greece...
...farthest extreme of Europe, he committed the master symbol of the Romantic movement. "This morning," he exulted, "I swam from Sestos to Abydos." And then, being Byron, he saw the funny side of it: "The immediate distance [across the Hellespont] is not above a mile, but the current renders it hazardous, so much so that I doubt whether Leander's conjugal affection must not have been a little chilled in his passage...