The Waking Dream

London, Spring 1816 He vividly remembered when he first became aware of a hint of unease, a sense of other-worldly darkness. Before, he had fretful moments of disquiet, but in comparison, they were simply normal daylight concerns. As if from a great distance, John recalled his medical training in the cool gray light of Edinburgh, his careful studies on sleepwalking and the huge effort expended in gaining his qualifications. These now seemed almost childlike matters as if that period in his life had happened fifty years previously, not merely a distance of several months. After a short spell of anxiety at trying to gain a professional position to earn sufficient funds to live, he had an extraordinary blast of good fortune. The gallant knight of Romantic poetry, Lord George Gordon Byron, no less, summoned him for an interview. Despite a jolt of excitement and even a flicker of conceit, Polidori reckoned he had been consulted on impulse or in a fit of aristocratic pique. Byron, no doubt, was tired of his family’s aged physicians’ gloomy prognosis. A quiet country existence and settling down with the aristocratic equivalent of a broodmare were recommended as his best bet for a healthy life. Dismissing these conventional cure-alls, Byron restlessly sought new ways of coping with the lingering effects of a serious childhood illness. When summoned to Byron’s magnificent townhouse and ushered into the grand drawing-room by an immaculate footman, John was met with a drawl of, “Polidori, I presume?” His initial impulse was to flee. Byron was sprawled on a couch, the epitome of aristocratic indolence. That was until he started to move and his face twisted with pain. John’s nervousness of meeting such an important person in splendid surroundings dissipated slightly, once he viewed the great man as a prospective patient with specific symptoms. He examined Byron’s afflicted foot and asked intelligent questions about previous treatments. His mobile face winced in response to the descriptions of torture masquerading as medical science that Byron had been subjected to as a boy, all from old-fashioned theories on weak bones. His initial sympathy and evident acumen had relaxed Byron’s defensiveness, and still stockingless and with his cravat undone, the great lord before him gradually became the impassioned poet. He began to talk of his latest work, and as John eagerly joined in, they started to debate verse and literature as equals, both forgetting about the strictly allotted time that had been given for the interview. As John started to expand on the subject of Dante, his limpid dark eyes aglow with fervor, Byron regarded him with a warmth that hinted at a meeting of minds, despite the social gulf between the two men. They debated Wordsworth and the Revolution in France and the recent war with Napoleon until the light began to fade and the bewigged footmen came in with candles. As Byron called for wine and lazily asked his new friend to join him for a glass, John was dimly aware, without being explicitly told, the role was now his. Even as he sipped the good claret, he knew this post, however grand, was not necessarily easy. Byron was under huge outside pressure that must impact on his health and well-being. Even within the modest surroundings of the Polidori family home in London, the name of Byron had a whiff of glamorous notoriety. John, now established as his lordship’s personal physician, accompanied Byron in exalted circles, became all the more alert to ballroom and club gossip of such socially dangerous scandals. There were the increasingly risque affairs (the ones with women openly talked about, those with men but whispered), the vast debts and a short-lived, unhappy, rapidly unraveling marriage. In the crush of a ball given by some duchess or other, John watched his patient carefully as he failed to disguise his faint limp, a sure sign of tiredness. Despite this, Byron roused himself to his titillated audience of titled admirers and blazed like a star among the glitter of Regency society. On John’s visits to a less distinguished district, his family delighted in his advance into London high society. They had missed him during his voluntary exile to the far north to pursue his studies, but his Italian scholar father and English governess mother had put all their hopes in their oldest son’s brilliance. Now, in return, at least by proxy, he gave them an edited view of a glamorous Haute-ton London beyond the walls of their quiet home. His mama and sisters clamored for descriptions of what the ladies wore, “and is Lord Byron so good looking in reality?” His papa just listened and smiled, so obviously proud of his successful son. Polidori was cynically aware that any entree into society was all due to Byron’s influence, and his new friends would fade away as soon as he left his position, but still, he could not help feeling flattered. Even if he realized that the men who offered him friendship exacted a price, access to Byron or his fortune, John was human enough to relish invitations to join elite clubs. It caused a thrill of excitement to rub shoulders with the great and the good at the gaming tables, or to have a few rounds in the boxing ring at gentleman Jackson’s high society establishment as well automatic access to parties and soirees in exclusive mansions of the very rich. At such elegant social gatherings, it was not only the men who were after Byron’s favor. As his lordship’s confidential retainer, titled ladies approached him coyly. They fluttered their fans meaningfully, giving him speaking glances or even occasionally pressed their delicious, plumply-pale, silk-clad bodies against him for an instant. Even though it was all for Byron, John was man enough to enjoy the attention. He did not think to object to this toadying behavior, for was he not present as Byron’s loyal servant, his faithful chevalier? As well as dazzled admiration, he had grown to feel protective of his patient. For this world-weary man, not much older than himself, was inextricably trapped by a fatal combination of his noble birth and rebelliously poetic genius.