Anecdotes of Byron

[…] In Piccadilly, Lady Byron in the room, and luncheon was brought in — veal cutlets, etc. She began eating. Byron turned round in disgust — he had an aversion to see women eat — and said, "Gormandizing beast!" and, taking up the tray, threw the luncheon into the hall. Lady Byron cried and left the room. Byron himself told Miss Baillie, who repeated the story to Haydon, that the very morning he and Miss Milbanke were married, and were driving home through the grounds, and all the tenants and peasantry were cheering, Byron said to her, "What could have induced you to marry me?" "Oh, heavens," said Lady Byron, "because I loved you." "No," said he, "you have a spice of Mother Eve. You married me — your friends wished you not to do so. You refused me twice, and I will be revenged."

Byron told John Scott that after his separation from Lady Byron he went to a rout, and was regularly cut by all the women of fashion. As he leaned against the mantle-piece and they were sweeping by, a little red-haired, bright-eyed coquette came flirting up to him, and, with a look that was exquisitely insolent, said, "You had better have married me — I would have managed you better."

Mrs. Leicester Stanhope said the Guiccioli used to watch Byron through a telescope when he went out riding. So one day she asked him why he did not take the Guiccioli out with him. He drawled out his usual say, "Consider, consider what a fright she would look in a habit." "Do you think her handsome?" Lady Blessington asked him. "Handsome!" he replied, "she is a horror, she has red hair" (which was not true). She said then, "Why don't you take her out walking?" He answered, "Because she shuffles like a duck, and I am lame; a pretty couple!" "Do you ever tell her this?" she asked. "Yes." "What does she say?" "She scratches me," replied Byron.

Haydon adds, "I met the Countess Guiccioli subsequently, and she was certainly not handsome. She had small eyes, large nose, long upper lip and chin." Sir John Hobhouse asserts that Byron was no scoffer. Still, on one occasion, Byron said: "I have a great mind to believe in Christianity, for the mere pleasure of fancying I may be damned." He is known to have begged Shelley not to talk of hell or ghosts after dark — it made him uneasy.