Lord Byron in his late teenage years (1804-1806) when he would have been attending Harrow. This is an engraving (original artist unknown) from the John Murray collection.
Gentlemen began to replace the tricorne with the top hat at the end of the 18th century. The first silk top hat in England is credited to George Dunnage, a hatter from Middlesex, in 1793. The invention of the top hat is often erroneously credited to a haberdasher named John Hetherington. During the 19th century, the top hat developed from a fashion into a symbol of urban respectability, and this was assured when Prince Albert started wearing them in 1850. On 5 May 1812, a London hatter called Thomas Francis Dollman patented a design for "an elastic round hat" supported by ribs and springs, known as a collapsible top hat. I occasionally wear one myself, but indubitably prefer the traditional design which I find significantly more comfortable. This vintage picture of me (below) in a topper hails from the 1960s and is rare if only because I am sporting a beard.
Although Eton College has now sadly abandoned, along with much else, the top hat as part of its uniform, top hats are still worn by "Monitors" at Harrow School with their Sunday dress uniform. I have always had a closer affiliation with Harrow, needless to say. Lord Byron attended Harrow from 1801 to July 1805, and proved, not unlike myself, to be an undistinguished student and an unskilled cricketer. He nonetheless represented the school during the very first Eton v Harrow cricket match at Lord's in 1805. This was at a time when Harrow enjoyed high subscription and fame under Dr Joseph Drury, headmaster. Byron's time at Harrow was not spent just in idleness or with his friends; he busied himself reading books; history was his primary subject, followed by biography, poetry, philosophy, and other topics. He was originally supposed to be an orator, and he would read various passages out aloud for others. But his attitude caused problems between him and the administration at Harrow (markedly, he led a rebellion among the boys against the new headmaster, the Reverend Dr George Butler) and during the 1804 Christmas holidays, Byron, at Drury's prompting, wanted to leave the school. Carlisle intervened and he stayed on at Harrow until July 1805. Accepted at Trinity College, Cambridge, he went up the following October. At Cambridge, the college authorities told him that pet dogs were banned. So annoyed was he by this rule that he brought a tame bear instead.
He argued that as bears weren’t specifically mentioned in their statutes the college had no legal grounds for complaint. Where he acquired the animal far from clear, but it may have been from a travelling menagerie. Byron won the argument against the college and the bear stayed with him in his lodgings. He would walk the bear around the grounds of Trinity on a chain like a dog, and delighted in the reactions he got from passers-by.
Not finished yet, however, Byron even suggested that he would apply for the bear to join the college. He once wrote: “I have got a new friend, the finest in the world, a tame bear. When I brought him here, they asked me what I meant to do with him, and my reply was, ‘he should sit for a fellowship’.”
Throughout his life, Byron had many pets – some common choices but many unusual ones too. It is reported that as well as dogs and cats, he kept monkeys, a crocodile, peacocks, badgers, and several birds of prey. But the animal he loved most was a Newfoundland dog named Boatswain. His affection for the dog was so strong that when Boatswain caught rabies, Byron nursed him without any concern for his safety of being bitten. When the dog died, he commissioned a monument to Boatswain and wrote in his will that he wished to be buried next to his beloved pet. This, like much else he requested, was ignored.
