BYRON: THE LAST PHASE BYRON: THE LAST PHASE BY RICHARD EDGCUMBE NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 153-157 FIFTH AVENUE 1909 TO MRS. CHARLES CALL, DAUGHTER OF EDWARD TRELAWNY, BYRON'S COMPANION IN GREECE, I DEDICATE THIS WORK AS A MARK OF AFFECTION AND ESTEEM PREFACE This book has no pretensions; it is merely a record of events and impressions which nearly forty years of close study have accumulated. There seems to be a general agreement that the closing scenes of Byron's short life have not been adequately depicted by his biographers. From the time of Byron's departure from Ravenna, in the autumn of 1821, his disposition and conduct underwent a transformation so complete that it would have been difficult to recognize, in the genial, unselfish personality who played so effective a rôle at Missolonghi, the gloomy misanthrope of 1811, or the reckless libertine of the following decade. The conduct of Byron in Greece seems to have come as a revelation to his contemporaries, and his direction of complex affairs, in peculiarly trying circumstances, certainly deserves more attention than it has received. Records made on the spot by men whose works are now, for the most part, out of print have greatly simplified my task, and I hope that the following pages may be acceptable to those who have not had an opportunity of studying that picturesque phase of Byron's career. I should have much preferred to preserve silence on the subject of his separation from his wife. Unfortunately, the late Lord Lovelace, in giving his sanction to the baseless and forgotten slanders of a bygone age, has recently assailed the memory of Byron's half-sister, and has set a mark of infamy upon her which cannot be erased without referring to matters which ought never to have been mentioned.