Word: byronical
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...jury was impaneled only two days later and the trial begun. But, ruled the Supreme Court, the jury switch nonetheless amounted to double jeopardy. It was the third civil liberties decision in five weeks in which President Kennedy's two appointees were split. Each time Justice Byron "Whizzer" White has voted with the minority of judicial "conservatives," while Justice Arthur Goldberg has voted with the "liberal" majority. » Agreed to give a hearing next fall or winter to an appeal by New York Racketeer Frank Costello, 72, against deportation proceedings. Costello, convicted of income tax evasion...
...LORD BYRON'S WIFE (556 pp.)-Malcolm Elwin-Harcourt, Brace & World...
George Gordon Byron's courtship was as mannered as a Jane Austen novel and his honeymoon as melodramatic as The Mysteries of Udolpho. On the famous drive of the bridal pair from Seaham to Halnaby, Byron's "countenance changed to gloom & defiance as soon as we got into the carriage. He began singing in a wild manner as he usually does when angry and scarcely spoke to me till we came near Durham." Later, added his bride, he said, "Now I have you in my power, and I could make you feel it." The poet, after balking...
Atrocious Crimes. Byron was 27, and his bride, the former Annabella Milbanke, had just turned 23; their marriage lasted not quite a year. Its failure has variously been attributed to Byron's incestuous relationship with his half sister Augusta Leigh, to his heavy drinking, his mental instability, his not-so-latent homosexuality, and even his sagging finances. Byron himself blamed it on his mother-in-law, who later changed her name from Milbanke to Noel. When Lady Noel recovered from a severe illness, Byron scribbled a note to his sister: "I will reserve my tears for the demise...
...went wrong with the marriage. In this first study of the subject based on "unrestricted use of the Lovelace Papers," the famous collection of family letters and documents, Elwin concludes that the real villain was more probably Annabella herself. A quiet, humorless, literal-minded girl, she took all of Byron's Gothic romancing with impenetrable solemnity. For a man like Byron, thinks Elwin, the temptation to pile extravagance on extravagance must have been almost irresistible once he found an audience that responded to his frequent, mysterious allusions to "atrocious crimes" and "abominable secrets" in his past. Annabella apparently believed...