![]() ![]() “What is there excepting writing poetry that I cannot do better than you?” Polidori demanded. Polidori saw himself as a rival to Byron and relations between them soon deteriorated. Shortly thereafter, Byron and Polidori took up residence at the Villa Diodati on Lake Geneva. “As soon as he reached his room,” Polidori wrote from Belgium in April 1816, “Lord Byron fell like a thunderbolt upon the chambermaid.” ![]() Polidori immediately saw the predatory side of Byron’s personality. Quick to see the commercial potential of the arrangement, Byron’s publisher, John Murray, commissioned Polidori to keep a diary of his time with the notorious poet, whose passionate interest in young men and scandalous love affair with his half-sister Augusta had hastened his departure from England. Thomas Phillips/National Portrait Gallery The poet Lord Byron, oil on canvas, circa 1835, based on a work of 1813. ![]()
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