Lord Byron had a gift for stormy relationships. The poet of Don Juan wrote to his publisher John Murray, from Venice in August 1819 (Byron: Selected Prose, Penguin 1972): “We were overtaken by a heavy Squall, and the Gondola put in peril – hats blown away, boat filling, oar lost, tumbling sea, thunder, rain in torrents, night coming and wind increasing.”
His Venetian mistress waited on open steps on the Grand Canal, “with her great black eyes flashing through her tears, and the long dark hair, which was streaming drenched with rain, over her brows and breast.
“She was perfectly exposed to the storm; and the wind blowing her hair and dress about her thin figure, and the lightning flashing around her, with the waves rolling at her feet, made her look like Medea alighted from her chariot, or the Sibyl of the tempest that was rolling around her, the only living thing within hail at that moment except ourselves.
“On seeing me safe, she did not wait to greet me, as might be expected, but calling out to me - Ah! can’ della Madonna, e esto il tempo per andar’ al’ Lido? (Ah! Dog of the Virgin, is this a time to go to Lido?) ran into the house and solaced herself with scolding the boatmen…”
