Word: byronical
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Chief discomfort for Byron was Claire Clairmont, an "assiduous concubine," who could not understand that "he had succumbed through boredom." Once Byron showed her some of his sister's letters. Claire told Mary and Shelley that they were written in cipher. Shelley saw nothing unusual in that, thought the ciphers "most likely were used to convey news of his [Byron's] illegitimate children." While Claire went off to England to have one by him, Byron went off to Italy...
Nothing Like It. "I know not how it is," Byron was soon writing from Venice, "my health growing better, and my spirits not worse, the 'besoin d'aimer' came back upon my heart . . . and, after all, there is nothing like it." This time the besoin d'aimer took the form of Marianna Segati, wife of Byron's landlord, who ran a draper's shop at the sign of Il Corno (the horn), soon changed by his apprentices into II Corno Inglese (horns by Byron). Marianna has been described as a "demon of avarice...
Life became even more exciting when Byron met Margarita Cogni, La Fornarina (the Little Oven), "a fierce product of Venetian slums and backways." Marianna tried to 'defend her prior rights against Margarita, but was crushed by superior logic...
...Said Byron: "An amazon ... a fine animal ... a gentle tigress...
When Marianna moved in as Byron's housekeeper, his expenses were cut in half. Byron employed "about fourteen servants . . . besides a floating population of Venetian parasites. Unnamed and unnumbered his concubines came and went. . . ." He was surrounded with harlots and pimps and gondoliers and their . . . families. Shelley remarked with chill disdain that among Byron's boon companions were "wretches who seem almost to have lost the gait and physiognomy of man, and who do not scruple to avow practices which are not only not named, but I believe even conceived in England...