Byron was sensitive on the subject, fearing that it made him ridiculous, throughout his life, alike when he was the darling and when he was the outcast of society; and various stories show how the deformity embittered his childhood. "What a pretty boy Byron is! What a pity he has such a leg!" he, one day, heard a lady say to his nurse. "Dinna speak of it," he screamed, stamping his foot, and slashing at her with his toy whip. And then there is the story of his mother who, in one of her fits of passion, called him "a lame brat." He drew himself up, and, with a restraint and a concentrated scorn beyond his years, replied in the word which he afterwards put into "The Hunchback": "I was born so, mother." That was one of the passionate scenes that passed between them--but only one among many; and it was only in the case of this one affront which cut him to the quick, that the child displayed such precocious self-control. More often he answered rage with rage and violence with violence. In one fit of fury he tore his new frock to shreds; in another he tried to stab himself, at table, with a dinner knife. Exactly why he did it, or what he resented, he probably did not know either at the time, or afterwards; but he vaguely felt, no doubt, that something was wrong with the world, and instinct impelled him to kick against the pricks and damn the whole nature of things. Then, in 1798, came the sudden change of fortune. The wicked Lord Byron was dead at last; and the child of ten was a peer of the realm and the heir to great, though heavily mortgaged estates. He could not take possession of them yet--the embarrassed property needed to be delicately nursed--but still, subject to the charges, they were his. He was taken to look at them, and then, a tenant having been found for Newstead, Mrs. Byron settled, first at Nottingham, and then in London, and her son was sent to school--first to a preparatory school at Dulwich, and then to Harrow. Even so, however, there remained something strange, abnormal, and uncomfortable about his position. On the one hand, Mrs. Byron, not understanding, or trying to understand, him, nagged and scolded until he lost almost all his natural affection for her. On the other hand, his father's relatives, whether because they felt that "Mad Jack" had disgraced the family, or because they objected to Mrs. Byron--who, in truth, in spite of her good birth, was extremely provincial in her style, and of loquacious, mischief-making propensities--were very far from cordial. They had not even troubled to communicate with her when the death of her son's cousin made him the direct heir, but had left her to learn the news accidentally from strangers. Lord Carlisle, the son of his grandfather's sister, Isabella Byron, consented to act as his guardian, but abstained from making friendly overtures.