When We Two Parted

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1816

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Background

Literary Context: Romantic Poetry and the Byronic Hero

As a young writer, George Gordon Byron was influenced by poets like Robert Burns and fiction writers like Sir Walter Scott, who shared his Scottish heritage. He also liked neoclassical works of the 18th century, especially those that were satiric such as the work of Alexander Pope. He admired the heroic couplet and the cadence of medieval romances. He borrowed from these texts, which can be seen in “When We Two Parted,” as words like “thy” and “thou” were already falling out of favor when Byron was writing but would signify the work is about romance. Byron is considered one of the six key figures of the Romantic era, along with William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, and Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Byron’s longer works helped spawn a variant on the Romantic hero, a moody man driven by inner tragedies and secrets called the Byronic hero. This, in turn, deeply affected the consciousness of Victorian writers like Charles Dickens and the Brontë sisters, who styled such classic male characters after this type of hero, such as Rochester in Jane Eyre (1847) and Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights (1847). This type of hero is still popular in fiction today, as is evidenced in books series like Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series (2005-2008) and Leigh Bardugo’s Grishaverse series (2012-2023).

Unlike many of the other Romantic poets, he wrote less about nature’s grandeur and more about personal relationships. Byron’s biography often colored his career as a writer as it was somewhat scandalous due to his erotic exploits. From the publication of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage in 1812, he was a vastly popular writer. The Corsair notably sold 10,000 copies in a day. Byron, both due to his talent and his habits, became a celebrity who inspired what we’d call in the modern age “groupies” of both sexes. He wrote several short lyrics of a highly personal nature regarding these liaisons.

Authorial Context: Byron’s Notation on the Excised Stanza

A man named John Gore originally discovered the identity of the “you” in “When We Two Parted” when he received a previously unpublished set of Byron’s letters from Lady Anne Hardy, who knew Byron from 1814 until his death. Gore published these letters in Cornhill Magazine in 1928 (See: Further Reading & Resources). He explains that in 1813, Lady Melbourne (Caroline Lamb) felt Byron had grown too emotionally enamored of his half-sister Augusta Leigh, with whom he had recently reconnected after living apart as children. Fearing for his reputation, she suggested he visit his friend James Wedderburn Webster. In September, Byron did so and, in Gore’s words, “began a hot courtship of his friend’s young wife,” Frances Webster (Gore, John. “‘When We Two Parted’: A Byron Mystery Re-Solved.” The Cornhill Magazine. John Murray Publishers, 1928). The 20-year-old Frances’s flirtation with 25-year-old Byron was intense but brief as Frances did not want to harm her marriage to James. Byron was bitter about this, especially later, when Frances allegedly began seeing Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, in 1815.

Years later, in 1823, Byron and Lady Hardy exchanged letters about James and Frances Webster. Lady Hardy was being courted by James, which she did not welcome. At the same time, James asked Byron to help him reconcile with Frances. In a letter from June 10, 1823, Byron notes that “[Frances], poor thing, has made a sad affair of it altogether. I had the melancholy task of prophesying as much many years ago…without names and allusions and with a false date” (Gore). Byron goes on to confide that Frances is the subject of “When We Two Parted” and includes an excised concluding stanza of the poem in his letter:

Then fare thee well, Fanny,

Now doubly undone,

To prove false unto many

As faithless to one.

Thou art past all recalling

Even would I recall,

For the woman once falling

Forever must fall (Gore).

Byron critiques his own writing: “There’s morality and sentiment for you in a word’s worth, but I was very tender hearted in those days” (Gore). This helps prove that the poem wasn’t written in 1808 as he claimed, but after the time Frances and Wellington were gossiped about.