Nicolo Giraud
Giraud, who at that time of their relationship was a fourteen-year-old majordomo and then student at the Capuchin monastery in Athens,[1] reportedly taught Byron Italian, and was his travel companion in Greece.
[5] In a letter to John Hobhouse, dated 23 August 1810 and written at the Capuchin monastery of Mendele near Athens where he was residing, Byron states: But my friend, as you may easily imagine, is Nicolo who by-the-by, is my Italian master, and we are already very philosophical.
[7] Meryon was the private physician of Lady Hester Stanhope, who was at that time travelling with Michael Bruce, a friend of Byron's from Cambridge.
By November they were joined by Lusieri, Louis François Sébastien Fauvel, who was a French consul, and a group of German academics.
The two stayed in contact by letter, and after a year Giraud left the monastery, telling Byron that he was tired of the company of monks.
"[16] Early biographers, who had a tendency to idealise Byron, generally depicted his relationship with Giraud as platonic, generous and paternal.
Moore, Byron's friend and chosen 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.
For instance, the early 20th-century biographer Ethel Mayne pointed out both the frequency of such relationships in Byron's life and their inherent ambiguity.
The patron was supposed to be learning Italian from [Girard]; this made a pretext for giving him, on their parting at Malta in 1811 ... a considerable sum of money".
Such studies prompt negative responses from those who feel the writer warps Byron to fit the theme, presenting a one-sided account".
Eisler claimed that Byron was at first unable to attain "that state of total and complete satisfaction" of a sexual relationship with Giraud, but wrote to Charles Matthews declaring that he would soon conquer any of the boy's remaining inhibitions.
"[33] Nigel Leask, in 2004, argues that Hobhouse would have disapproved of Byron's relationship with Giraud,[34] and Fiona MacCarthy notes in her 2002 biography that Lady Melbourne "would have understood his partner to be female".
[36] An unknown author anonymously wrote a poem called Don Leon that, according to Bernard Grebanier, "depicts Byron as having wooed Giraud with gifts when they first met, and to have busied himself with developing the boy's mind".
"[40] Byrne Fone, a historian of homosexuality-related issues, emphasizes how the poem and the fictional discussion of Giraud and Byron's relationship reveal insights into 19th-century British views on homosexuality.
Fone argues that the references to Beckford and Courtenay are used both to talk about the unfair treatment of homosexual men who had committed no real crime, and to emphasise England's hypocrisy when it comes to sex.
