Cincinnati daily press. [volume] (Cincinnati [Ohio]) 1860-1862, 1860-10-06
Anecdotes or the Poet Byron's Lameness-
His Morbid SensItiNeness on the subject.


Anecdotes or the Poet Byron,s Lameness--
His Morbid Sensitiveness on the Subject.
In Moore's Life Of Byron numerous refer
ences are made to the illustrious poets per-
sonal deformity, and his own extreme sens-
tiveness upon that score. Moore mentions
that 'the lameness of his right foot, though
an obstacle to grace, but little impeded the
activity of his movements and from this
circumstance, as well as from the skill with
which the foot was disguised by means of
long trowsers, il would be difficult to con-
ceive defect of this kind less obtruding
itself as q deformity; while the diffidence
which O constant consciousness of the in
trinity gave to his first approach and ad-
dress made, in him, even lameness a source
of interest"
The defect, after all, was not either very
great or very perceptible; considerably less.
in fact, than in Sir Walter Scott, who was
lame from the hip, and, like Shakespeare,
was "a halting fellow"
The accident occurred at the time of his
birth, owing, he bitterly complained, to his
mothers false delicacy on that occasion, and
consisted in his foot having been twisted out
of its natural position.
In Moores Diary vol. 5. p. 1856 he states
las told him by DR.. Butler, head master of
Harrow School and his wife), "his lameness,
they both agreed, was from an accident, being
let fall when at nurse" but in the Life, three
years later, he declares it occurred at his
birth. Inthe samevolume, year later, Moore
mentiens a conversation with Lord Sligo,
Byron's warm friend, who travelled with
him during his first visit to Greece, in which
Lord S. said that one day when he was
talking with Byron on the shore of the Gulf
of Lepanto, Byron (who had before said that
he would tell him some time why he hated
his mother so much) pointed to his naked
leg and foot, and said "Theres the reason,
it was her false delicacy at my birth that
was the cause of that deformity; and vet,
atterward she reproached me with it, and
not long before we parted for the last time,
uttered sort of imprecatlon on me, praying
that might be as Informed in MAD as I
was in body Lord Sligo, Moore adds,
said that Byron that day bathed without
trowsers.
The advice of the celebrated surgeon,
John Hunter, was taken upon his case--but
too long after the accident had occurred
and various expedients were resorted to, in
hope Of restoring the limb to shape. Even
when little child, at aberdeen, certainly
not more than eight years old, he was OBJ
served to display much anger if his lameness
was noticed; yet, on other occasions, he
would jest at it, and there being another lit
tie boy in Aberdeen who had a similar de-
feet, Byron would laughingly say, some
times, Come and see the twa laddies with
the twa club-feet going up the Broad-street."
His mother, in her frequent gusts of vehe-
ment and angry passion, would alternate be-
tween wild admiration of his handsome face
and the repulsion of actual disgust at his
lame foot. In his memoirs, Byron strongly
described the feeling of horror and humiIia-
tion that came over him, when, in one of her
fits of passion, she called him "a lame brat" "
In later days he wrote the "Deformed Trans
formed" the hero of which, addressed by his
mother as hunchback, retorts, 81 was born
SO, mother.n