Although today is my birthday, it also happens to have been rather a momentous day in the life of our poet for it was on this day Thursday February 27 1812 that he was make to his maiden speech in the House of Lords.
Byron was speaking out against the proposed Bill for the implementation of capital punishment for the stocking weavers convicted of deliberately breaking the machinery that had deprived them of their livelihood.
In a letter written several days later to his good friend Francis Hodgson, he was to say of his speech:
"I spoke very violent sentences with a sort of modest impudence, abused every thing & every body, & put the Ld. Chancellor very much out of humour, & if I may believe what I hear, have not lost any character by the experiment...
As to my delivery, loud & fluent enough, perhaps a little theatrical.
I could not recognize myself or any one else in the Newspapers..."
It had been a very different scenario four years previously for although he was boasting to his friend Hobhouse that he was 'buried in an abyss of Sensuality' at the fashionable Dorant's Hotel while living in a 'state of Concubinage' and under prescription for a 'debility occasioned by too frequent Connection'; he was also licking his wounds after his collection of poems, Hours of Idleness had been ridiculed by the Edinburgh Review:
"As an author, I am cut to atoms by the E Review, it is just out, and has completely demolished my little fabric of fame, this is rather scurvy treatment from a Whig review, but politics and poetry are different things, & I am no adept in either, I therefore submit in Silence..."
February 27 1808
As history would indicate, Byron was not to submit in silence for very long!
Sources Used:
Byron's Letters and Journals Vol 1 (1798-1810) Ed: Leslie A. Marchand (London: John Murray 1973)
Byron's Letters and Journals Vol 2 (1810-1812) Ed: Leslie A. Marchand (London: John Murray 1973)