Nicolo or Nicolas Giraud ( – after 1815) was a friend of English Romantic poet Lord Byron. The two met in 1809 while Byron was staying in Athens. Giraud, who at that time of their relationship was a fourteen-year-old majordomo and then student at the Capuchin monastery in Athens, reportedly taught Byron Italian, and was his travel companion in Greece. Byron paid for Giraud's education and left him £7,000 (about £ in ) in his will. Years after they parted company, Byron changed his will to exclude Giraud. Other than his involvement with Byron, little is known of Giraud's life.
The relationship between Byron and Giraud has become a topic of interest among scholars and biographers of Byron. Some believe that the pair's interaction was platonic, while others, citing contemporary opinion and correspondence between Byron and his friends, argue that Byron engaged in sexual activity with Giraud. The earliest textual claim of a sexual relationship comes from the anonymous 19th-century poem Don Leon, believed to have been written by someone in Byron's social circle, in which the poet is the principal character and Giraud is portrayed as his liberator from the sexual prejudices in Britain.
Life
Nicolas Giraud was born in Greece to French parents; the name by which he is most commonly known, Nicolo, was given to him by Byron. Giraud may have been the brother-in-law of Giovanni Battista Lusieri, a Roman painter and broker for Lord Elgin. Demetrius Zograffo, Byron's guide in Greece, informed Byron that the 60-year-old Lusieri was unmarried, and was courting two women, each of whom believed that Lusieri was to marry her. Lusieri certainly had a close relationship with Giraud, so it is possible that the two were related in another way, perhaps as father and son.
Byron met Giraud in Athens in January 1809 when he was fourteen, and later paid for Nicolo to study at the Capuchin monastery in Athens. In 1810, Giraud began to teach Byron Italian. The two spent their days studying and swimming, while Byron intermittently composed poetry. In a letter to John Hobhouse, dated 23 August 1810 and written at the Capuchin monastery of Mendele near Athens where he was residing, Byron states:
In 1809, Giraud developed a dangerous fever and Byron took him to visit Charles Lewis Meryon, an English doctor who recounted the visit in his memoirs and noted Byron's vivid interest in the boy. Afterwards, one of Byron's Albanian servants, Vassily, claimed that Meryon diagnosed Giraud with internal injuries and early signs of septicaemia resulting from an anal rupture, an injury consistent with sexual abuse. Meryon was the private physician of Lady Hester Stanhope, who was at that time travelling with Michael Bruce, a friend of Byron's from Cambridge. Accounts from Bruce and Howe Browne, both witnesses to Byron's interactions with Giraud, provided confirmation of the relationship to Byron's early biographer Thomas Moore.
In mid-1810, Giraud acted as Byron's majordomo on their travels to the Peloponnese, and took care of Byron during his illness while at Patras, eventually becoming ill himself. After recovering, although still weak, the pair continued on their travels, arriving at Athens on 13 October. By November they were joined by Lusieri, Louis François Sébastien Fauvel, who was a French consul, and a group of German academics.
Byron and Giraud parted in Valletta, Malta. Byron saw to Giraud's education by paying for his schooling in a monastery on the island. The two stayed in contact by letter, and after a year Giraud left the monastery, telling Byron that he was tired of the company of monks. Shortly after Giraud left Malta, Byron drew up for him in his will a bequest of £7,000 (£ in ), almost twice as much as he later lent for refitting the Greek Navy. The will read: "To Nicolo Giraud of Athens, subject of France, but born in Greece, the sume of seven thousand pounds sterling, to be paid from the sale of such parts of Rochdale, Newstead or elsewhere, as may enable the said Nicolo Giraud ... to receive the above sum on his attaining the age of twenty-one years." Byron later removed Giraud from his will (as he did with John Edleston – who predeceased him – and other boy companions).
Giraud wrote to Byron in January 1815:
Byron had not been responding to Nicolo's letters, which Nicolo mentions in the letter: "It is now almost three years that I am at Athens; and have sent you many letters, but I have not received any answer". It is possible that Byron did not respond because he was married and, according to the 20th-century Byron biographer Phyllis Grosskurth, "Nicolo was the last person he would have wanted to hear from."