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Nicolo or Nicolas Giraud (born c. 1795–unknown) was a friend of George Gordon Byron during a visit to Greece. Giraud probably met the poet in about 1810 while Byron was staying in Athens, where the pair spent a great deal of time together. Giraud was reported to have taught Byron Italian, and was his travel companion in Greece. Byron paid for the boy's education and wrote in his will that Giraud was to receive £7,000 (about £630,000 as of 2024) upon Byron's death. However, years after Byron and Giraud parted company, Byron changed his will to remove Giraud. Little else is known of Giraud's life.

Life

Nicolas Giraud was born in Greece to French parents; the name by which he is most commonly known, Nicolo, was given to him by Byron. Giraud may have been the brother-in-law of Giovanni Battista Lusieri, a Roman painter and broker for Lord Elgin. However, Demetrius Zograffo, Byron's guide in Greece, informed Byron that the 60-year-old Lusieri was unmarried, and was courting two women each of whom believed that Lusieri was to marry her. Lusieri certainly had a close relationship with Giraud, so it is possible that the two were related in another way, perhaps as father and son. In January 1809, Byron met Giraud in Athens during his travels, and the two were companions until Byron resumed his travels in March.

During the following year, Giraud was working at a Capuchin monastery when he was assigned to teach Byron Italian after the latter's return to Greece. The two spent their days studying, swimming, and taking in the landscape as Byron composed poetry.

Byron and Giraud eventually parted ways in Valetta, Malta. Byron saw to Giraud's education by paying for his schooling in a monastery on the island. The two stayed in communication through letters, and after a year Giraud left the monastery, telling Byron that he was tired of the company of monks. Shortly after Giraud left Malta, Byron drew up for him in his will a bequest of £7,000 (£630,000 as of 2024), almost twice as much as he later lent for refitting the Greek Navy. The will read: "To Nicolo Giraud of Athens, subject of France, but born in Greece, the sume of seven thousand pounds sterling, to be paid from the sale of such parts of Rochdale, Newstead or elsewhere, as may enable the said Nicolo Giraud ... to receive the above sum on his attaining the age of twenty-one years." However Byron later removed Giraud from his will.

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.

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".

Elizabeth Longford, in her 1976 biography, argues, "Byron's especial favorite 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 protective." Jerome Christensen followed this view in 1993 and adds, "we know little more than what Byron tells us".

Notes

1. Some biographers, such as Fiona MacCarthy, simply declare Giraud as "brother to Lusieri's French wife" (MacCarthy p. 128). Other biographers, including Phyllis Grosskurth, are unwilling to make such declarations with such certainty and instead say Giraud was "supposedly the brother of Lusieri's 'wife'" (Grosskurth p. 103). Neither provide a source of the declaration of "brother-in-law".

References

1. MacCarthy 2002 p. 128
2. Grosskurth 1997 pp. 101–103
3. ^ Longford 1976 p. 40
4. UK Retail Price Index inflation figures are based on data from Clark, Gregory (2017). "The Annual RPI and Average Earnings for Britain, 1209 to Present (New Series)". MeasuringWorth. Retrieved May 7, 2024.
5. MacCarthy 2002 p. 135
6. Knight 1952 p.185
7. Quennell 1967 qtd. pp. 29–30
8. Quennell 1967 p. 32
9. Moore 1835 p. 114
10. Maurois 1930 p. 555
11. Maurois 1930 p. 140
12. Knight 1953 p. 77
13. Knight 1953 p. 72
14. Marchand 1957 p. 255
15. Marchand 1957 p. 256
16. Christensen 1993 p. 59

Sources

• Christensen, Jerome (1993), Lord Byron's Strength, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, ISBN 0801843553
• Douglass, Paul (2004), "Byron's life and his biographers", in Bone, Drummond (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Byron, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 7–26, ISBN 0521786762
• Grosskurth, Phyllis (1997), Byron: The Flawed Angel, London: Hodder and Stoughton, ISBN 0340688866
• Knight, G. Wilson (1952), Lord Byron: Christian Virtues, New York: Oxford University Press, OCLC 5795106
• Leask, Nigel (2004), "Byron and the Eastern Mediterranean: Child Harold II and the 'polemic of Ottoman Greece'", in Bone, Drummond (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Byron, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 99–117, ISBN 0521786762
• Longford, Elizabeth (1976), The Life of Byron, Boston: Little, Brown and Company, ISBN 0316531928
• MacCarthy, Fiona (2002), Byron: Life and Legend, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, ISBN 0374186294
• Marchand, Leslie (1957), Byron: A Biography, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, OCLC 357767
• Maurois, André (1930), Byron, translated by Hamish Miles, New York: D. Appleton and Company, OCLC 237404
• Moore, Thomas (1839), The works of Lord Byron : with his letters and journals, and his life, London: J. Murray, OCLC 166069835 {{citation}}: External link in |title= (help)
• Quennell, Peter (1967), Byron: The Years of Fame, London: Collins, OCLC 954942

• 1795 births
• People from Attica
• Lord Byron