Nicolo Giraud - Relationship With Byron

Relationship With Byron

Giraud's relationship with Byron has been a topic discussed by many of Byron's biographers. Moore, Byron's early biographer, described the relationship between Byron and Giraud as:

one of those extraordinary friendships – if attachment to persons so inferior to himself can be called by that name – of which I have already mentioned two or three instances in his younger days, and in which the pride of being a protector, and the pleasure of exerting gratitude, seem to have constituted to his mind the chief, pervading charm. The person, whom he now adopted in this manner, and from similar feelings to those which had inspired his early attachments to the cottage-boy near Newstead, and the young chorister at Cambridge, was a Greek youth, named Nicolo Giraud, the son, I believe, of a widow lady, in whose house the artist Lusieri lodged. In this young man he appear to have taken the most lively, and even brotherly, interest.

However, Moore's work was commented on by Byron's close friend, John Hobhouse, who noted that "Moore had not the remotest guess at the real reason which induced Lord B. at that time to prefer having no Englishman immediately or constantly near him." Regardless of Moore's bias against the lower class and Byron's spending time with other boys during his times in Greece, Byron was close to Giraud while the two were together.

Early 20th-century biographer André Maurois argues that "what Byron was capable of loving in another was a certain kind of innocence and youthfulness" and that the relationship was one of Byron's "protective passions". Likewise, G. Wilson Knight, in his 1953 biography of Byron, believes that Byron became protective over Giraud just as he did with all of the children he met during his travels. However, Giraud was special to Byron, and, according to Knight, "it was probably of Nicolo that he was thinking when he wrote that Greece was 'the only place I was ever contented in'". In Byron: A Biography, published in 1957, Marchand points out that Byron "wished Hobhouse there to share the nonsensical gaiety" of when Byron and Giraud were together, but changed his mind after remembering that Hobhouse's personality would not be conducive to entertainment. Their time together "was a relaxed pleasure that was to remember more fondly than most of the adventures of his travels".

A few critics disagree with the speculation over Giraud's and Byron's relationship. The early 20th-century biographer, Ethel Mayne, points out both the frequency of such relationships in Byron's life and their inherent ambiguity when she says, "His stay was also marked by one of those ambiguous friendships with a youth infinitely below him in rank which have already been seen to recur in his life ... The patron was supposed to be learning Italian from ; this made a pretext for giving him, on their parting at Malta in 1811 ... a considerable sum of money". Elizabeth Longford, in her 1976 biography, disagrees with the claims that there was a physical relationship between the two and argues, "Byron's especial favourite among the 'ragazzi' was Nicolo Giraud. He had first taken up with Nicolo while Hobhouse was away in Euboea the year before, but there is no evidence that his feelings for Nicolo were anything but romantic and protective." Jerome Christensen followed this view in 1993 and adds, "we know little more than what Byron tells us".

However, Christensen is quick to point out that "Although there is no evidence that Lord Byron, padrone and amico, was ever so vulgar as to set an exact market value on his sexual arrangements in Greece, Nicolo Giraud, Eustathius's replacement in Byron's affections, was employed as 'dragoman and Major Domo', a position that almost certainly entailed payment in love and money". D. L. MacDonald's 1986 biography simply describes Giraud as "The great love of Byron's Eastern tour", and D. S. Neff's 2002 work describes the two as part of "an amorous relationship". Others, like Jay Losey and William Brewer in their analysis of 19th-century sexuality, speculate that Byron's relationship with Giraud was modeled on a Grecian form of pederasty, and homosexual studies scholar Louis Crompton believes that pederasty was a facet of Byron's life and that his letters hinted towards a sexual relationship between Byron and Giraud. As Paul Douglass, in an analysis of Byron biographical studies, points out, Crompton also claims that biographers like Leslie Marchand ignored the nature of Byron's relationship with Giraud. However, Douglass also mentions that Crompton's work, Byron and Greek Love "focuses Byron's life around a single issue, rather than attempting to create a larger view. Such studies prompt negative responses from those who feel the writer warps Byron to fit the theme, presenting a one-sided account".

Benita Eisler, in 2000, argues that Giraud was one of many of Byron's intended sexual conquests. Although, as Eisler claims, Byron was at first unable to attain "that state of total and complete satisfaction" of a sexual relationship with Giraud, he wrote to Charles Matthews declaring that he would soon conquer any of the boy's remaining inhibitions. During Byron's illness, Byron boasted to Hobhouse and Lady Melbourne that he continued to have sex with one such incident almost causing his death. Although it is uncertain, according to Eisler, "Whether this surfeit of erotic fulfillment involved only Nicolo as partner, he does not say. He was still fond enough of the boy, but his sexual obsession, with its attendant scorekeeping, seems to have run its course." However, Nigel Leask, in 2004, argues that Hobhouse would have disapproved of Byron's relationship with Giraud, and Fiona MacCarthy notes in her 2002 biography that Lady Melbourne "would have understood his partner to be female". In a survey of the various biographical opinions and disagreements about Byron's relationships, including Giraud, written before 2004, Douglass points out that "despite the greater certainty about his sexual ambivalence, the exact nature of those relationships remains elusive".