Advertisement

Of Milan and Miniskirts, and Other News

By

On the Shelf

Valentina Rosselli in Nessuno. Photo courtesy Scott Eder Gallery, via Hyperallergic

  • Fun pretentious dinner-party trick: ask if anyone has read Byron’s memoirs and mock anyone who answers in the affirmative, because those memoirs don’t exist, duh. “Byron’s memoirs—which might have finally provided the ‘truth’ about his life—were destroyed soon after his death. The story goes that three of his closest friends (his publisher, John Murray; his fellow celebrity poet, Thomas Moore; and his companion since his Cambridge days, John Cam Hobhouse), together with lawyers representing Byron’s half-sister and his widow, decided that the manuscript was so scandalous, so unsuitable for public consumption, that it would ruin Byron’s reputation forever. Gathered in Murray’s drawing room in Albemarle Street, they ripped up the pages and tossed them into the fire. The incident is often described as the greatest crime in literary ­history. It has certainly served to fuel curiosity and conjecture about Byron’s personal life for another couple of centuries. What was the damning secret his friends needed to protect? Domestic abuse? Sodomy? Incest? Probably all three, we imagine.”