Lord Byron the boxer - his road rage incident in Venice

July 8th 1817 - Lord Byron is slumming it in debauched lordly splendour in a Venetian palace while running up the enormous debts that would soon force him to sell Newstead Abbey.

A letter he writes to his solicitor back in England reveals a curious case of road rage he has out riding from Dolo to La Mira. He may have looked like an angelic innocent abroad but Byron was an enthusiastic bare-knuckle boxing fan and as we'll see was not averse to using his fists himself when the opportunity arose...

Byron had this boxing-themed dressing screen made of cut-out boxing pictures

LETTER CCLXXXVII.
TO MR. MURRAY.

“La Mira, near Venice, July 8th, 1817.

“The other day, I had a squabble on the highway as follows: I was riding pretty quickly from Dolo home about eight in the evening, when I passed a party of people in a hired carriage, one of whom, poking his head out of the window, began bawling to me in an inarticulate but insolent manner. I wheeled my horse round, and overtaking, stopped the coach, and said, ‘Signor, have you any commands for me?’ He replied, impudently as to manner, ‘No.’ I then asked him what he meant by that unseemly noise, to the discomfiture of the passers-by. He replied by some piece of impertinence, to which I answered by giving him a violent slap in the face. I then dismounted (for this passed at the window, I being on horseback still), and opening the door desired him to walk out, or I would give him another. But the first had settled him except as to words, of which he poured forth a profusion in blasphemies, swearing that he would go to the police and avouch a battery sans provocation. I said he lied, and was a * *, and, if he did not hold his tongue, should be dragged out and beaten anew.—He then held his tongue. I of course told him my name and residence, and defied him to the death, if he were a gentleman, or not a gentleman, and had the inclination to be genteel in the way of combat. He went to the police, but there having been bystanders in the road,—particularly a soldier, who had seen the business,—as well as my servant, notwithstanding the oaths of the coachman and five insides besides the plaintiff, and a good deal of paying on all sides, his complaint was dismissed, he having been the aggressor;—and I was subsequently informed that, had I not given him a blow, he might have been had into durance.

“So set down this,—‘that in Aleppo once’ I ‘beat a Venetian;’ but I assure you that he deserved it, for I am a quiet man, like Candide, though with somewhat of his fortune in being forced to forego my natural meekness every now and then.

“Yours, &c.
“B.”

The 29-year-old Byron while living in scandalous exile in Venice in the spring of 1817.

Byron's boxing-themed dressing screen made from cut-out boxing pictures glued and varnished together can still be seen at Newstead today. “Gentleman” Jackson, Byron’s boxing coach, stands out on the fourth panel, fully attired and arranged with cheeky humour, his hat covering the groin of the boxer positioned near him as if ready to deliver a blow.

Lord Byron slumming it at the Palazzo Mocenigo, Venice