来源：《BBC历史》2022年5月号
On 19 April 1824, the poet and libertine Lord Byron died in Greece at the tender age of 36, having succumbed to a raging fever. Less than a month later, his grieving friends committed one of the greatest crimes in literary history. Gathering at the home of his publisher, John Murray, in Albemarle Street, London, they tore apart his memoirs and set them on fire.
1824年4月19日，诗人、浪荡子拜伦勋爵在希腊死于高烧，年仅36岁。不到一个月后，他悲痛的朋友们犯下了文学史上最大的罪行之一。他们聚集在拜伦的出版商约翰·默里位于伦敦阿尔伯马尔街的家中，撕碎了拜伦的回忆录并付之一炬。
How did such a wanton act of destruction come about? Between 1818 and 1821, Byron had compiled his memoirs, giving them to friend and fellow poet Thomas Moore to read. Moore sold them to Murray for 2,000 guineas, with the intention that they be published after Byron’s death – a plan that, in life, the poet was eager to carry out.
这种肆无忌惮的破坏行为是如何发生的？1818年至1821年间，拜伦编辑了他的回忆录，交给他的朋友兼诗人托马斯·摩尔阅读。摩尔以2000几尼的价格把它们卖给了默里，打算在拜伦死后出版这些作品——拜伦生前渴望实现这一计划。
After his demise, though, Byron’s friend John Cam Hobhouse warned that the material within the manuscript was too sexually explicit to be revealed to the world. And on 17 May, Hobhouse and Moore met with Murray at the latter’s home to discuss the memoirs’ fate.
不过，拜伦去世后，他的朋友约翰·卡姆·霍布豪斯警告说，手稿中的内容过于露骨，不宜公之于众。5月17日，霍布豪斯和摩尔在默里的家中与默里会面，讨论回忆录的命运。
During the gathering at Albemarle Street, attended also by the lawyers of both Byron’s widow and his half-sister, Augusta Leigh, the men agonised over the fate of Byron’s unpublished – and possibly most notorious – manuscript. Certainly, they feared that the lewd passages would destroy the poet’s posthumous reputation. It is likely, too, that the memoirs also contained defamatory material about not only Byron himself but also his friends present in that room.
在阿尔伯马尔街的集会上，拜伦的遗孀和他同父异母的妹妹奥古斯塔·利的律师也参加了会议，他们为拜伦未出版的——可能是最名声不好的——手稿的命运苦恼不已。当然，他们担心这些下流的段落会毁了诗人死后的名声。回忆录中也可能含有诽谤性材料，不仅涉及拜伦本人，还涉及他在这个房间里的朋友。
At one point it was suggested that the manuscript should be hidden away, safe from prying eyes. However, it was deemed that the only way to truly secure such scandalous information was to erase it entirely. The pages containing Byron’s memories and incendiary opinions would have to be torn up and tossed in the fire.
曾一度有人认为手稿被藏起来了，以免被人窥探。然而，真正确保这些丑闻信息安全的唯一方法是完全删除这些信息。载有拜伦回忆和煽动性意见的书页必须撕成碎片，扔进火里。
Ever since, conjecture and rumours have swirled around Byron’s lost memoirs and the revelations they may have contained about the poet’s mysterious private life. Some scholars live in hope that a copy of the manuscript still exists somewhere; if so, it is yet to be discovered. Byron’s secrets, it seems, have gone with him to the grave.
从那以后，关于拜伦遗失的回忆录以及回忆录中可能披露的这位诗人神秘的私生活的种种猜测和谣言就纷至沓来。一些学者寄希望于手稿的副本仍然存在于某个地方；如果是这样的话，它还有待发现。拜伦的秘密，似乎已随他进入坟墓。