This chapter talks about the myth of Lord Byron's supposed love of women. An inveterate self-publicist, Byron forged his image through the alter ego of the misanthropic Childe Harold. Louis Crompton concurred: in Byron and Greek Love he noted Byron's ‘heterosexual impulses were fully as real as his homosexual ones and, if one can take his life as a whole, more persistent and significant’. His mythic power as lover continues to linger; the notion of a ‘Byronic lover’ implies a dark, tall stranger whose reputation makes the knees of even the most level-headed female quiver in anticipation. The myth of Byron's supposed love of women is traceable either to his poems or to his publicity machine. So far as the majority of his female conquests were concerned, Byron had no interest in them once the deed was done; they were shown the door and ushered briskly through it.