Since the dreadful weather did not look to lift at all, Byron had decided to have a change of tactics in his carefully laid plans. Despite collaborative attempts, neither poet was inspired by the gloom and damp. Mary also looked strained under the pressure of having to compose something in such pressurized circumstances and poetically exalted company. If the days were uninspiring, then Byron decreed that they would create by night.
So, one chilly evening, Byron ordered the shutters to be closed and the logs piled high in the great open fireplace and all the available candelabra to be lit as the guests gathered in the elegantly proportioned drawing-room. The staff seemed stoical at what might be considered a strange request, evidently now used to the eccentricities of their temporary maste
