"I was a most unpopular boy," he told Moore, "but _led_ latterly." The latter statement has been generally accepted by his biographers; but not all the stories told in support of it stand the test of inquiry. There is the story, for instance, accepted even by Cordy Jeaffreson, that he led the revolt against Butler's appointment to the headmastership, but prevented his followers from burning down one of the class-rooms by reminding them that the names of their ancestors were carved upon the desks. "I can certify," wrote the late Dean Merivale of Ely, "that just such a story was told in my early days of Sir John Richardson;" so that Byron seems here to have got the credit for another hero's exploits.
There are the stories, too, of his connection with the first Eton and Harrow cricket match. Cordy Jeaffreson goes so far as to express doubt whether he took part in the match at all; but that is exaggerated scepticism, which research would have confuted. The score is printed in Lillywhite's "Cricket Scores and Biographies of celebrated Cricketers;" and it appears therefrom that Byron scored seven runs in the first innings and two in the second, and also bowled one wicket; but even on that subject the Dean of Ely, who went to Harrow in 1818, has something to say.
"It is clear," the Dean writes, "that he was never a leader.... On the contrary, awkward, sentimental, and addicted to dreaming and tombstones, he seems to have been held in little estimation among our spirited athletes. The remark was once made to me by Mr. John Arthur Lloyd (of Salop), a well-known Harrovian, who had been captain of the school in the year of the first match with Eton (1805): 'Yes,' he said, 'Byron played in the match, and very badly too. He should never have been in the eleven if my counsel had been taken.'"
And the Dean goes on, picturing Byron's awkwardness:
"Mrs. Drury was once heard to say of him: 'There goes Byron' (Birron she called him) 'straggling up the hill, like a ship in a storm without rudder or compass.'"
Byron's influence at Harrow, in short, was exercised over his juniors rather than his contemporaries. It pleased him, when he was big enough, to protect small boys from school tyrants. One catches his feudal spirit again in his appeal to a bully not to lick Lord Delawarr "because he is a fellow peer"; but he was also ready to intervene in other cases in which that plea could not be urged; and he had the reward that might be expected. He once offered to take a licking for one of the Peels; and he became a hero with hero-worshippers--titled hero-worshippers for the most part--sitting at his feet. Lord Delawarr, Lord Clare, the Duke of Dorset, the Honorable John Wingfield, were the most conspicuous among them. It was from their adulation that he got his first taste of the incense which was, in later years, to be burnt to him so lavishly.