BYRON’S LAMENESS

Evening Star, Issue 19763, 13 January 1928, Page 7

BYRON’S LAMENESS

SUFFERER FROM LITTLE DISEASE The Byron mystery, which has been discussed for more than a hundred years, still crops up for discussion in English literary periodicals, but_ in these days it is only the enthusiasts determined to believe no ill of Byron who are able to shut their eyes to the great amount of evidence regarding his relations with his half-sister, Mrs Augusta Leigh, as the cause of Lady Byron’s separation from him (says the ‘Age’). But there is another Byron mystery, which, despite its interest, is seldom mentioned when Byron is discussed. Everyone knows that Byron, was lame from birth, but it seems incredible that even among those who knew him closely during lile there was a difference of opinion whether it was the right or left foot that was lama. It was generally believed by many who knew him that he had a club foot. M so, it ought to have been a simpll matter to determine which foot was deformed. It is true that Byron always tried to hide the defect from which h« suffered. When he entered a room h« ran rather than walked, and stopped himself by planting his left foot on tbs floor and resting on it. On the rar« occasions when he was seen walking in the streets during his brief and brilliant career in London it was observed that, he moved with a sliding gait, hire a person walking on the bails and toes: of his feet, and ho did his host to hide this singular mode of progression, CONFLICTING EVIDENCE. Tom Moore, tho Irish poet, who edited the ‘ Life, Letters, and Journal of Lord Byron,’ first published in 183 U, which was six vears alter Byron’# death, was uncertain whether it waa the right or left foot that was lame. John Galt, the Scottish novelist, who accompanied Byron on one of hi# ' Eastern tours and wrote a biography of his friend, was also undecided on the point. Lady Blessington, an Irish author, distinguished for beauty and wit, who was a great friend of Lord Byron, after he went to Italy wrote is her book, ‘ Conversations With Lord Byron ’: “He is very slightly lame, and the deformity of his foot is so little remarkable that 1 am not now aware which foot it is.” Countess Albrizzi, another of Byron’s intimate friends, confessed that she was equally uncertain regarding bis lameness. “ Gentleman ” Jackson, the famous English pugilist, with whom Byron associated in his early years, when Jackson’s boxing saloon in Bond street, London, attracted many of the young bloods of the day who desired to become proficient in “ the noble art of self-de-fence,” thought it was the left loot. Mrs Leigh Hunt, who with her husband was Byron’s guest when he was living at Pisa, Italy, thought that the left foot was shrunken, but that it was not a club foot. Countess Guiccioli, one of Byron’s numerous lady loves with whom he lived for some years in Italy, declaimed that it was the left foot that was lame. Byron’s mother, in a letter to her sister-in-law, stated definitely, “It is the right foot.” When the embalmed body of the poet Jay at Missolonghi, in Greece, Edward John Trelawney, who had been the friend and companion of Byron and Shelley, sought to solve the mystery. In his hook, ‘ Recollections of the Last Days of Shelley and Byron,’ first published in 1858—thirty-four years after Byron’s death—he described minutely the trouble be took to satisfy his curio- 1 sity on tho point. He hurried to Missolonghi on hearing of Byron’s death, and found Fletcher, the poet’s valet, watching over the body. To got Fletcher out of the room Trelawney pretended to be overcome by faintness, and asked for a glass of water. .While Fletcher was getting the water Trelawney drew back the black pall and white shroud. “I uncovered the pilgrim’s feet, and was answered—the; great mystery was solved,” he wrote, j “ Both his feet were clubbed, and his j legs were withered to the knee—the 1 form and features of an Apollo, with! the feet and legs of a sylvan satyr.”-! But twenty years later, when Trelaw-j ney, who was then_ eighty-six years of j age, republished his book with some j additions, he made the passage quoted! above read as follows:—“I uncovered' the pilgrim’s feet, and was answered—it was caused by the contraction of the hack sinews, which the doctors call tendon Achilles, that prevented his heels touching on the ground, and compelled him to walk on the fore part of his feet; except for this defect his feet were perfect.” This retraction serves to recall the fact that Byron had described Trelawney as a man who could not speak the truth to save his life, A MEDICAL EXPLANATION. At a meeting of the Royal Society of Medicine in London four years ago, Dr 11. C. Cameron put forward an interesting medical explanation of tho mystery of Byron’s lameness—that ho suffered from what is now known as “ Little disease,” called after a famous orthopaedic surgeon, who discovered tho cause of this disease forty years after Byron’s death. Little’s disease is the result of a form of injury to the brain at birth. Through delay in tho establishment of respiration in the newlyborn infant, and the consequent asphyxia, a haemorrhage takes place over tho area of the brain, which presides over the voluntary movement of the legs. A person suffering from Little’s disease has a stiff and awkward gait. At rest or during sleep nothing amiss is to he noted, but when a voluntary act such as walking is attempted the limbs are gripped in a kind of spasm. The knees tend to be pressed together, and the body rises stiffly on the toes. Though progress may be slow, the movement in each step .is exaggerated, as though the sufferer were running in a curious, stiff, and jerky fashion. All this fits in with what is known about Byron’s gait. It also helps to explain why there has been so much uncertainty and confusion as to which foot was lame. Neither of his feet was deformed, but Little’s disease, which was unknown to the medical profession in Byron’s day, affected his mode of walking, and suggested to observers that he was lame.