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This woman was Teresa, Countess Guiccioli, whom he first came to know in Venice. She was then only nineteen years of age, and she was married to a man who was more than forty years her senior. Unlike the typical Italian woman, she was blonde, with dreamy eyes and an abundance of golden hair, and her manner was at once modest and graceful.
He wrote some of his most famous poems at this time, and he hoped for the day when he and the woman whom he loved might be united once for all. This came about in the end through the persistence of the pair. The Countess Guiccioli openly took up her abode with him, not to be separated until the poet sailed for Greece to aid the Greeks in their struggle for independence.
One of the most interesting of his new acquaintances was the Countess Guiccioli, upon whose appearance and manners he comments with characteristic frankness. 'I met the Guiccioli yesterday in the Tuileries, he writes shortly after his arrival. 'She looks much younger than I anticipated, and is a handsome blonde, apparently about thirty.
He told me she used to call him 'Baby Byron. It was easy to see that of the two persons she had by far the greater judgment." Byron having laid aside Don Juan for more than a year, in deference to La Guiccioli, was permitted to resume it again, in July, 1822, on a promise to observe the proprieties. Cantos vi.-xi. were written at Pisa. Cantos xii.-xvi. at Genoa, in 1823.
In some of his hours of delirium he dictated to his careful nurses, Fletcher and the Countess, a number of verses, which she assures us were correct and sensible. He attributes his restoration to cold water and the absence of doctors; but, ere his complete recovery, Count Guiccioli had suddenly appeared on the scene, and run away with his own wife.
Near by is the house where Byron first resided in Ravenna, as a tablet records. The people here preserve all the memorials of Byron; and, I should judge, hold his memory in something like affection. The Palace Guiccioli, in which he subsequently resided, is in another part of the town. He spent over two years in Ravenna, and said he preferred it to any place in Italy.
The Countess Guiccioli was at this time about twenty, but she appeared younger; her complexion was fair, with large, dark, languishing eyes; and her auburn hair fell in great profusion of natural ringlets over her shapely shoulders. Her features were not so regular as in their expression pleasing, and there was an amiable gentleness in her voice which was peculiarly interesting.
He was living at the time with the Countess Guiccioli, who had married a man four times her age, had obtained a separation, and now lived as Byron's mistress, with her father and brother in the same house.
"I happen," says he, "to know that Lord Byron offered to give the Guiccioli a sum of money outright, or to leave it to her by his will. I also happen to know that the lady would not hear of any such present or provision; for I have a letter in which Lord Byron extols her disinterestedness, and mentions that he has met with a similar refusal from another female.
It was not until 1819, when Byron had been three years in Venice, that he fell in love with the Countess Guiccioli, the wife of one of the richest nobles of Italy, young, beautiful, and interesting.
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