Lord Byron is a statue depicting Greece in the form of a woman crowning Byron. The statue is by the French sculptors Henri-Michel Chapu and Alexandre Falguière. Since 2008, the anniversary of Byron's death, 19 April, has been honoured in Greece as "Byron Day". Upon his death, the barony passed to Byron's cousin George Anson Byron, a career naval officer. Byron described his first intense feelings at age eight for his distant cousin, Mary Duff: My mother used always to rally me about this childish amour, and at last, many years after, when I was sixteen, she told me one day, 'O
Lord Byron her. The offer was not accepted. Byron made his way to Smyrna, where he and Hobhouse cadged a ride to Constantinople on HMS "Salsette". While "Salsette" was anchored awaiting Ottoman permission to dock at the city, on 3 May 1810 Byron and Lieutenant Ekenhead, of "Salsette"s Marines, swam the Hellespont. Byron commemorated this feat in the second canto of "Don Juan". He returned to England from Malta in July 1811 aboard . Byron became a celebrity with the publication of the first two cantos of "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" (1812). "He rapidly became the most brilliant star in the dazzling world