A sexual debauchee

Monday, February 19th., Cadogan Square, London.

Interesting weekend. Not much work done but sometimes a rest is needed to get the creative juices flowing again. 

Three family visits, two with young children: boy 9, boy 8, and a girl aged 4. I must admit that I enjoy playing with children, especially boys who are more physical. Very different from each other these three. The older boy is very active, likes nothing better than throwing or kicking a ball, and will play 'catch' all day. The younger boy is quieter, but still enthusiastic and likes to know about things. He was telling me that he was the tallest in his class at school, bragging really. I pointed out to him that there were advantages and disadvantages to being both tall and small - I don't think that had struck him before. I asked him, if he had to choose, would he choose to be tall or to be clever. Deep thought ensued! Eventually he decided for clever, but that may have been more for my benefit I think. The young girl is going to be a handful. Very lively. Likes to be involved, but wants to get her own way and turns on the tears when thwarted. I like her, but I wouldn't want to live with her. She told me that she didn't like me!

I got out some old wooden bricks and we all spent a lot of time making towers, bridges and castles. I think they are the best sort of toy, giving maximum scope for creativity. I have to admit that I threw myself completely into the play and had a thoroughly good time. By the time they left I felt exhausted, but in a very satisfied way. There is a child hidden deep within us all I think - pity we need to have children on hand as an excuse to let it out.

Speaking of hidden children, I have been reading a biography of the poet Byron by Andre Maurois. It is beautifully constructed, composed and done! I sailed through it on a fair wind from start to finish. It reconstituted Byron for me and corrected all sorts of wrong ideas about him which no doubt I share with the man in the literary street. I was surprised to learn for instance that Byron was hostile to drinking and gambling, and that he had a decided preference for regular habits. Left to himself it seems that he would have done the same things at the same time every day - I warmed to him. But it pained me to learn that as a young man he had the low habit of scratching his name on public monuments.

No man of solid good sense is a sexual debauchee. Byron notoriously was. He had many mistresses but, apparently, only one satisfactory one, Lady Oxford, who with Lady Melbourne contrived to carry on the traditional sexual freedoms of the eighteenth century well into the nineteenth. And he soon tired of Lady Oxford and informed her that he was tired. It seems that tedium always impaired his politeness. Maurois handles the affair with his half-sister in terms in which tact and irony exquisitely suffuse plain speaking.

Byron, cursed with a mother whose character was rendered excruciating by her frightful experiences with an ignoble husband, made a mess of his career. I would not cast stones at the unhappy victim, but solid good sense would have prevented the endless disaster. His work remains, and it cannot be doubted that he found pleasurable experiences in the company of women wherever he went. That he was lovable is obvious. That he was a great poet in the big bow-wow style, and a great ironic poet, surely cannot be disputed. The thought of the permanence of his work redeems the melancholy of his history.