Book of Secrets 5 - "Bitch"

There's also an Italian name...Biondetta...
Byron's dog's name
Turns out to be his pet name for her

In her own little box on page 3, she says:

"This was a small spaniel Bitch whom Lord Byron took a fancy for as he saw it bounding along in company with a thousand other dogs...it had the furiousness of a Jaguar or mountain cat when angry...but would nestle like a dove in his bosom when carried. It was so happy when thus favoured, that it grew presumptious and would bite and bark at everyone who approached..."

This is her story, this is true

"one day he drew it from his bosom and gave it back to its former owner, kissing it often and promising with tears soon to return - but Biondetta's faults were remembered and all her truth and kindness forgotten from that hour ...

the dog sat and watched for him and would not feed...till it heard that a new favourite filled its place, and then growing furious, it broke its chains...(wish fulfilment coming) and tried to bite and tear to pieces its rival..."

Lord Byron gives the bitch away

"from that hour it sickened and still watching for one kind word from its master..."

A kind word from Byron?
His kind word could only be a poem

And Caroline thought Childe Harold was for her
She thought he was Childe Harold

She thought he would make a poem of her
The way he'd made a poem of himself
She was wrong
So she wanted to die


"it died...the collar around its neck..."

(this handwritten book, maybe...this is the collar
identifying, demeaning,
this is the way she forces herself on him)

She could not make him make her into a poem
She could not die, meaningfully, and thus make a poem of herself

So what could she do
but make herself into a writer
(which she did...in a novel called Glenarvon
Written dressed in a page boy costume
feverishly
night after night for four weeks)

(if you will not make me a poem
I will make a poem...a book..a spectacle
Of myself)

She wanted to be his poem
That was all

"Lord Byron derided Biondetta, and said it was a whelp, a vixen - but whatever it was, none ever lov'd him so before or since"

So she wants Murray to believe...he was actually the one who received and kept this keepsake

She's always looking for an ending, a dying fall, a conclusion and release

but her tragedy was, that like the rest of us, she woke up again next morning and everything was the same