BYRON AND TERESA

New Zealand Listener, Volume 22, Issue 552, 20 January 1950, Page 14

BYRON AND TERESA

THE LAST ATTACHMENT, by Iris Origo; Jonathan Cape & John Murray, London, HOSE of us who had made up our minds about Byron’s later years may have to think again after reading this important book. The Marchesa Origo has used new material in her study of the poet’s affair with Teresa Guiccioli. Count Carlo Gamba, Teresa’s greatnephew, has released papers which in-

clude 149 of Byron’s love letters, an anpublished account of Byron's life in Italy, legal documents which supply a background for Teresa’s separation from her husband, and letters from Pietro Gamba, Shelley, Lady Blessington, Lamartine, and John Murray. "In short," writes the biographer with pardonable satisfaction, "we have at last-with all the gaps filled in by information at which, until now, it was only possible to guess-the full story of Byron and Tere esa Guiccioli," The love interest, perhaps, is not always as vivid as romantic readers would like it to be. Byron was Teresa’s lover for four years; but he was sometimes lukewarm and restive; he was always afraid of seeming ridiculous, especially to English people; and he revealed in his frequent moods the innate respectability which was so often an element of the Byronic attitude. Teresa, barely out of the convent when she married the elderly Count Guiccioli, appeared to be untroubled by conscience, though in later life she tried to make the attachment seem less immoral than in fact it was. But if signs of ennui were often noticeable in Byron’s letters, and if Teresa was sometimes a little too dull to be romantic, there was no lack of, excitement in the background. o Count Guiccioli, who knew quite well what was going on, and who borrowed money from his wife’s lover, was a grey and enigmatic person. Byron was always being watched, by the spies of the Count and by the secret police; and his interest in the Italian revolutionary movement helped to bring exile*and suffering to Teresa’s family. There were alarms and journeys, threats of violence, and a constant murmur of intrigue. As always, Byron brought trouble to those who were drawn closely into his life. In the end, when he went off to the climax in Greece, he was drawn by his interest ‘in thg politics of liberation, by his desire to win back the regard of Englishmén he professed to despise, and per- * haps also by an inner weariness from which love could not save him. Did not the autopsy at Missolonghi reveal that he had the brain of an old man? Teresa remained to mourn and renember. She has been a controversial figure, though it should now be possible to see her more clearly. Some who met her while she was Byron’s mistress thought she was beautiful; others saw

her as merely pretty and not very intelligent; and a few-mostly, unfriendly observers-found her insipid. The portrait in these pages is of a young, strongwilled and charming woman who sometimes could be silly, who was quite amoral, and who was completely disinterested in her love for Byron. "She lived long @nough," writes the biographer, "to read all that was said against him by the people who had called themselves his friends. She must have heard, when she werfit about in the society of London and Paris, all the tales in his disfavour. "Worst of all, she read, in Moore, the flippant and unkind remarks that he himself had made about their love. But none of it affected her. Of all the women who had loved him, including Augusta, she alone stood up for him

to the end."

M.H.

H.