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Authors: Elizabeth Mahon

Tags: #General, #History, #Women, #Social Science, #Biography & Autobiography, #Biography, #Women's Studies

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BOOK: Scandalous Women: The Lives and Loves of History's Most Notorious Women
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Caroline had a chaotic upbringing, alternately running wild with her cousins at Devonshire House or restrained during her stay with her grandmother, the austere Lady Spencer. From early childhood, Caroline showed a vivid and volatile nature, high-spirited and fearless. She was also nervous and hyperactive, asking questions incessantly, sometimes the same question over and over again even after it had been answered, and getting on everyone’s last nerve. To calm her down, she was given liquid opium. While most kids outgrow the inclination to say whatever comes into their heads, Caroline never did.
In 1805 Caroline married William Lamb, heir to Viscount Melbourne, after a three-year courtship. At the reception, Caroline broke into tears at leaving her family and had to be carried out by William to the waiting carriage. It was a sign of things to come. The couple was forced to move in with his family, occupying the upper floor of the mansion in Whitehall, because William’s father refused to increase his allowance after their marriage. It was an uneasy fit. While her family was sophisticated and tolerant, the Lambs were a rowdy, boisterous family devoted to practical jokes. They made fun of her and jeered at William’s devotion to his wife. His sister Emily in particular took against her and did her best to come between them.
If living with her in-laws wasn’t bad enough, it was soon clear that the couple was incompatible. Darkly handsome, William was easygoing, with a mocking smile and an air of cultivated bored indifference. Caroline, on the other hand, was high-strung and childish. Although William loved her, he was also reserved, unable to give Caroline the petting and coddling she desired. He soon set about disabusing her of what he thought of as her old-fashioned notions, in particular her belief in God. She once remarked that William “amused himself with instructing me in things I need never have heard of or known.” The physical side of marriage shocked Caroline as well, who probably had learned very little about sex before she was married.
After suffering two horrible miscarriages, Caroline finally gave birth to a son, Augustus, in 1807. Unfortunately, it soon became apparent that he was not only mentally handicapped but suffered from epilepsy as well. Caroline refused to send him away, ignoring the pleas of her family and her in-laws. Despite his affliction, she was devoted to him, but there would be no more children.
As her husband spent more time away from home on parliamentary business, Caroline grew bored and resentful. To provoke him and to be noticed, she wore risqué dresses cut almost to the nipple and flirted outrageously. Her behavior caused comment. “The Ponsonbys are always making sensations,” one caustic observer wrote, referring to Caroline’s family. She had a brief, publicly flaunted affair with Sir Godfrey Webster. Lady Melbourne was appalled, not because of the affair, but because Caroline committed the cardinal sin of being indiscreet. Not only did she accept jewelry and a puppy from Webster, but she also confessed the affair to her husband, who forgave her. She later admitted, “I behaved a little wild, riding over the downs with all the officers at my heels.”
In March 1812, Caroline read an advance reading copy of Byron’s
Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
and wrote him an anonymous fan letter. Her friend Samuel Rogers told her that Byron had a club foot and bit his nails but she replied, “If he is as ugly as Aesop, I must see him.” Byron at this time had yet to become the rock star of the Regency that he was soon to be. He’d had some verses published in 1806 and 1807, but
Childe Harold
made his reputation after the first two cantos were published. Caroline wrote him an anonymous poem in iambic pentameter à la
Childe Harold
.
Byron later described Caroline to a friend as “the cleverest, most agreeable, absurd, amiable, perplexing, dangerous, fascinating little being that lives now or ought to have lived two thousand years ago.” Caroline was beautiful and charming but, in the words of one of her friends, “had a restless craving after excitement.” Byron received hundreds of what were essentially fan letters from women. But when he received Lady Caroline’s poem, he was impressed, particularly when he discovered that the anonymous writer was the aristocratic and eccentric Lady Caroline Lamb. When she first saw him at a party at Lady Westmorland’s, surrounded by beautiful women, she turned on her heel and declined to be presented, which intrigued the poet. That night in her journal she wrote, “That beautiful pale face will be my fate.”
Soon after, while out riding, she placed an impromptu call on Lord and Lady Holland. When she was told that Byron was expected as well, she protested that she couldn’t meet him dusty and disheveled. She ran upstairs to freshen up and when she came downstairs, Byron was entranced by the elfin creature before him, with her bobbed golden curls and boyish figure. Bending toward her, he whispered, “The offer was made to you before. Why did you resist it?”
She couldn’t resist it now. What followed was an affair that lasted only nine months, but the repercussions continued for years. Caroline was totally besotted with Byron and, initially, he was equally smitten by her, although she wasn’t his usual type; he normally preferred voluptuous, uncomplicated women. It was not just a sexual attraction but also an intellectual attraction. They shared a love for dogs, horses, and music. They wrote constantly to each other, sometimes every day. By the end of their affair, around three hundred letters had exchanged hands.
The public nature of the romance presented no problem to Caroline. Most of her family, including her mother-in-law, had little regard for fidelity, but they kept their liaisons quiet. This was not Caroline’s style. She enjoyed making scenes, and with Byron, there was ample opportunity. Caroline didn’t care about other people’s opinions, a trait that Byron admired. She also had no use for the hypocrisy of the times, where as long as one was discreet, one could get away with anything. At first Byron was charmed by her enthusiasm, but eventually he got bored. He preferred the chase. As he summed it up, “Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart, / ’Tis woman’s whole existence.” On the other hand, he also wanted all her love and devotion solely for him. It killed him when Caroline admitted that she loved her husband, and that she wouldn’t tell him that she loved him more than William. The more he demanded of her, and the more she gave, the less he wanted her once the initial thrill was gone.
Byron soon pulled back, wounding Caroline, who wanted him to admit that the relationship mattered to him. Her infatuation became obsessive. She begged to be invited to suppers where she knew he was going to be. If she wasn’t invited, she would wait in the garden. She made friends with his valet, in order to gain admittance to his rooms in St. James, where she rifled through his letters and journals. Hostesses began ridiculing her behind her back, as they smugly gossiped over tea.
His friends advised him that his affair with Caroline was ruining his reputation. He removed himself to his country estate, where Caroline bombarded him with letters he didn’t answer. But Caroline persisted. She became that woman we all fear becoming, the crazy ex-girlfriend, unable to walk away with her dignity intact when it was clear that he was no longer interested. She sent him some of her pubic hair tinged with blood and dressed herself in a page costume to smuggle herself into his rooms. The campaign was so intense that Byron would refuse to attend social engagements for fear of meeting her. Byron’s passive-aggressive behavior didn’t help matters. He couldn’t—or wouldn’t—just end things. And William refused to play the outraged husband and demand she end the affair.
Byron detested “scenes” unless he was the one making them and he finally found the intensity all too much. He eventually broke off the affair, but Caroline wouldn’t give up. She claimed that she and Byron intended to elope. Her father-in-law called her bluff, telling her, “Go and be damned! But I don’t think he’ll take you.” Caroline ran off, her family panicked, and her mother had a stroke. It was left to Byron to bring her back, but she would only go after William promised to forgive her. Her parents eventually whisked her off to Ireland, where Caroline tried to forget Byron and repair the damage to her marriage.
While she was gone, Byron took up with Lady Oxford, an older woman with six children, who was also a friend of Caroline’s. Lady Oxford encouraged her lover’s disdain for Caroline, effectively ending their friendship. When Caroline wrote to Byron from Ireland, he would compose his replies to her with Lady Oxford’s help. As she was arriving back in London, she received a letter from Byron, sealed with Lady Oxford’s initials, that read: “I am no longer your lover; and since you oblige me to confess it, by this truly unfeminine persecution,—learn that I am attached to another; whose name it would be of course dishonorable to mention.”
The shock made Caroline physically ill; she lost weight, and her behavior became increasingly erratic. During Christmas, she held a dramatic bonfire at Brocket Hall. While village girls danced in white, Caroline threw copies of Byron’s letters into the fire, while a figure of the poet was burned in effigy. She forged a letter from Byron to his publisher, John Murray, in order to take possession of a portrait of him that he had long refused her. She would visit at inappropriate hours, once leaving a note in one of his books on his desk: “Remember me!”
At a party at Lady Heathcote’s, as they exchanged barbed remarks about dancing the waltz, suddenly Caroline took a knife and slashed her arms. Horrified guests tried to stop the bleeding; someone offered a glass of water. Caroline broke the glass and tried to gash her wrists with the slivers. Finally Byron felt the only way to truly end Caroline’s obsession was to tell her that not only had he slept with his half sister Augusta but that he’d also had affairs with men, hoping to turn her desire to disgust.
The nineteenth-century term for what ailed Caroline was “erotomania,” dementia caused by obsession with a man. More likely Caroline was bipolar. Nowadays, she’d be given Prozac or lithium to balance out her moods, but back then the only treatment was laudanum, a concoction derived from opium and alcohol. It was used for everything from menstrual cramps to nervous ailments, from colds to cardiac diseases. The problem was that it was also addictive. Caroline began to use laudanum and alcohol indiscriminately to ease her nerves and the sting of Byron’s betrayal.
Byron married Lady Melbourne’s niece Annabella Milbanke in 1815, but after their first child was born, a daughter named Ada Augusta, the couple separated in 1816. Caroline at first was on Team Byron, writing to him, urging him to reconcile with his wife or to give her a large settlement so that a scandal could be avoided. If Caroline was hoping for a big thank-you from Byron, she was mistaken. All bets were off when she learned from John Murray that Byron had been so violent and cruel that Annabella feared for her life. Caroline swore to have no more communication with Byron. She also informed Annabella that he had confessed to an incestuous relationship with Augusta at their last meeting, although she begged Annabella not to tell Byron that she was the one who told her. When Annabella spread the word, Byron was forced to leave England.
Caroline got her own revenge of a sort in 1816 with the publication of her novel
Glenarvon
, a thinly disguised account of her relationship with Byron. She even quoted one of his letters in the novel. A gothic melodrama, her husband, William, also appears in it as the heroine’s cynical husband who destroys his young wife’s faith, while Byron is the hero/villain accredited with every crime from murder to incest to infanticide. The roman à clef also satirized the Holland House set so perfectly that twenty years after the book appeared, friends still called Lady Holland the Princess of Madagascar, after the character modeled on her, behind her back. Although the book was published anonymously, the ton were aware of the author and began to shun her. To Caroline’s delight and everyone else’s dismay the book sold out. When Byron heard the news, he told his publisher John Murray, “Kiss and tell, bad as it is, is surely somewhat less than f*** and publish.”
The reviews of
Glenarvon
were encouraging enough for Caroline to continue to write, but the only opinion that she cared about was Byron’s. She took other lovers but they could never replace Byron in her heart. The affair made her life afterward seem dull by comparison. In 1820, she appeared at a masquerade ball dressed like Don Juan, after the first cantos of Byron’s now classic poem had been published. Four years later, she had a nervous breakdown after accidentally encountering Byron’s funeral cortege as it passed through Welwyn, near Brocket Hall. As her health declined, she began abusing alcohol and laudanum and gave up regular meals and all semblance of order.
William’s parents had encouraged him for years to formally separate from Caroline for the good of his career. They had even gone so far as to try and have her committed. However, every time he took steps to do so, they would reconcile. Despite her bad behavior, he continued to love her, although her tantrums and affairs took a toll on him. Finally in 1825, after William dithered about the separation one too many times, his sister Emily viciously and aggressively attacked Caroline, threatening a public trial. Caroline agreed to the separation.
By 1827, she was an invalid, under the full-time care of a physician. William had been given the post of Secretary for Ireland and was away when she took a turn for the worse. Despite the past, he was still devoted enough to her that he came back from Ireland in inclement weather to be by her side when she died on January 26, 1828. She was only forty-two years old. After her death, William never remarried. He told Lady Brandon, soon to become his mistress, that he felt “a sort of impossibility of believing that I shall never see her countenance or hear her voice again.”
BOOK: Scandalous Women: The Lives and Loves of History's Most Notorious Women
11.05Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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