4iX WOMAN IN LOVE Romance is not confined solely to the realms of fiction. The romances of fact, indeed, are greater and more interesting ; they have made history, and have laid the foundations of the greatness both of artists and of poets. This section of Every Woman's Encyclopedia, therefore, will include, among thousands of other subjects — Famous Historical Love Stories Love Letters of Famous People Love Scenes from Fiction Love Poems and Songs The Superstitions of Love The Engaged Girl in Many Climes Proposals of Yesterday and To-day Elopements in Olden Days, etc., etc. TRUE LOVE STORIES OF FAMOUS PEOPLE No. 3.— LORD BYRON AND THE COUNTESS QUICCIOLI I A DESCRIPTION of Lord Byron as a remark- able man would be analogous to a description of a Swiss mountain as a pretty hill, and an attempt to compress the story of his romantic life within the compass of one short article would be as futile as an attempt to swim the Atlantic. Indeed, even to tell adequately the story of Byron and the Countess Guiccioli is im- possible, for this liaison forms more than a mere incident in the poet's career ; it is a thread woven inextricably into the web of his life, and marks a stage in the develop- ment, perhaps destruction, of that gorgeous intellect and that passionate emotion which composed the man, and which ultimately, like two relentless flames, burnt through and consumed him. " Genius," it has been said, " is a Divine infirmity, a martyrdom," and to this infirmity was Byron born. He was a genius in spite of himself, and he suffered for it throughout his life. Again, his intellect, nature, and position were composed of an amazing blend of contrasts. Of proud and ancient lineage — his ancestors were among the followers of the Conqueror — he was a nobleman vain and unbending, but possessed of a true love for democracy and liberty. He was an Adonis with the features of a Greek god, but was lame from infancy. He was lucky ; his cup was filled with the rich wine of life, but as soon as he placed the cup to his lips the draught turned to bitterest gall. A man to love and be loved, his life was wrecked by inconstancy. At one and the same time he was man and super-man, he could not keep himself in perspective to humanity ; his body, his soul, and his intellect were ever at war against themselves and against each other. He was ridiculously eccentric, he delighted in elaborating on his eccentricities, and spoke of his soul as " a dead body devoured by corruption." During his Cambridge days he kept a pet bear, and drank out of the skull of a woman to whom he professed to have been attached, and who, he declared, had been murdered. Until the very day of his death he was obsessed with a horror of growing fat, and would subsist for weeks on biscuits, vinegar-and-water, and then give way to wild excesses of eating and drinking. In 1 813, after the publication of the early part of " Childe Harold," Lord Byron sud- denly found himself a famous man. He was then twenty-five years of age, and a society pet. " The women," writes Lady Caroline Lamb, " suffocated him with their adulation in drawing-rooms." Indeed, the extent of his popularity can be gauged from the fact that 14.000 copies of " The Corsair " were sold in a single day. On the 15th of January, 18 15. Byron was married to Miss Milbank. In spite of state- ments to the contrary, it appears to have been more than a manage de convenance In the first place, Miss Milbank was not the heiress to a fortune large enough materially to assist an impoverished peer. In the second place. Byron undoubtedly was at- tracted to her irrpsistibly.
