Miss Spencer Smith

2017

Byron fell in love with Mrs. Spencer Smith, and they had an affair. He gave her his diamond ring, which he refused to miss Cordova. He wrote about her with enthusiasm to his mother "September 15 1809...This letter is committed to the charge of a very extraordinary woman, whom you have doubtless heard of, Mrs. Spencer Smith, of who escape the Marquis de Salvo published a narrative a few years ago - travels in the year 1806, from Italy to England through the Tyrol.....Containing the particulars of the liberation of Mrs.Spencer Smith from the hands of the french police. She has since been shipwrecked, and her life has been from its commencement so fertile in remarkable incidents that in a romance, they would appear improbable. She was born in Constantinople, where her father, Hebert, was the Austrian ambassador; married unhappily, yet has never been impeached in point of character; excited the vengeance of Buonaparte by a part in some conspiracy; several times risked her life; and is not yet twenty five."