Born Nov. 13, 1785; died at Melbourne House, Whitehall, Jan. 26, 1828. An English novelist, daughter of Frederick Ponsonby, third earl of Bessborough. In 1805 she married William Lamb (afterward Lord Melbourne), from whom she was separated in 1825. She was involved in intrigues with Byron, who left her in 1813. She wrote “Glenarvon” (1816), which contained a caricature of Byron, “A New Canto” (1819), “Graham Hamilton” (1822), “Ada Reis; a Tale” (1823).
Personal
If there is anything more delightful than another to witness, it is the spontaneous outbreak of a good kind heart, which, in serving and giving pleasure to others, obeys the instinctive impulse of a sanguine and genial disposition—waiting for no rule or maxim—not opening an account for value expected—doing unto others what you wish them to do unto you. This, in one word, is Lady Caroline Lamb; for if she does not always act wisely for herself, she generally acts only too well towards others.
“What do you think of Mrs. Felix Lorraine, Miss Manvers?” asked [Vivian Grey.] “Oh, I think her a very amusing woman, a very clever woman, a very—but—” “But what?” “But I can’t exactly make her out.” “Nor I; she is a dark riddle; and although I am a very Œdipus, I confess I have not yet unravelled it.”
There are many yet living who drew from the opening years of this gifted and warm-hearted being hopes which her maturity was not fated to realise. To these it will be some consolation to reflect that her end at least was what the best of us might envy, and the harshest of us approve…. Her character it is difficult to analyse, because, owing to the extreme susceptibility of her imagination, and the unhesitating and rapid manner in which she followed its impulses, her conduct was one perpetual kaleidoscope of change…. To the poor she was invariably charitable—she was more: in spite of her ordinary thoughtlessness of self, for them she had consideration as well as generosity, and delicacy no less than relief. For her friends she had a ready and active love: for her enemies no hatred: never perhaps was there a human being who had less malevolence: as all her errors hurt only herself, so against herself only were levelled her accusations and reproach…. Her manners, though somewhat eccentric, and apparently, not really, affected, had a fascination which it is difficult for any one who never encountered their effect to conceive.
Several women were in love with Byron, but none so violently as Lady Caroline Lamb. She absolutely besieged him. He showed me the first letter he received from her; in which she assured him that, if he was in any want of money, “all her jewels were at his service.” They frequently had quarrels; and more than once, on coming home, I have found Lady C. walking in the garden, and waiting for me, and beg that I would reconcile them.—When she met Byron at a party, she would always, if possible, return home from it in his carriage, and accompanied by him: I recollect particularly their returning to town together from Holland House.—But such was the insanity of her passion for Byron, that sometimes, when not invited to a party where he was to be, she would wait for him in the street till it was over! One night, after a great party at Devonshire House, to which Lady Caroline had not been invited, I saw her,—yes saw her,—talking to Byron, with half of her body thrust into the carriage which he had just entered. In spite of all this absurdity, my firm belief is that there was nothing criminal against them. Byron at last was sick of her. When their intimacy was at an end, and while she was living in the country she burned, very solemnly, on a sort of funeral pile, “transcripts” of all the letters which she had received from Byron, and a copy of a miniature (his portrait) which he had presented to her; several girls from the neighbourhood, whom she had dressed in white garments, dancing round the pile, and singing a song which she had written for the occasion, “Burn, fire, Burn,” &c.—She was mad; and her family allowed her to do whatever she chose.
Lady Caroline Lamb was then between thirty and forty, but looked much younger than she was; thanks perhaps, to a slight rounded figure and childlike mode of wearing her hair (which was of a pale golden colour) in close curls. She had large hazel eyes, capable of much varied expression, exceedingly good teeth, a pleasant laugh, and a musical intonation of voice, despite a certain artificial drawl, habitual to what was called the Devonshire House Set. Apart from these gifts, she might be considered plain. But she had, to a surpassing degree, the attribute of charm, and never failed to please if she chose to do so. Her powers of conversation were remarkable. In one of Lord Byron’s letters to her, which she showed me, he said, “You are the only woman I know who never bored me.” There was, indeed, a wild originality in her talk, combining great and sudden contrasts, from deep pathos to infantine drollery: now sentimental, now shrewd, it sparkled with anecdotes of the great world, and of the eminent persons with whom she had been brought up, or been familiarly intimate; and, ten minutes after, it became gravely eloquent with religious enthusiasm, or shot off into metaphysical speculations—sometimes absurd, sometimes profound—generally suggestive and interesting. A creature of caprice, and impulse, and whim, her manner, her talk, and her character shifted their colours as rapidly as those of a chameleon. She has sent her page the round of her guests at three o’clock in the morning, with a message that she was playing the organ that stood in the staircase at Brocket, and begged the favour of their company to hear her.
Lady Caroline Lamb I never saw, but from friends of mine who were well acquainted with her I have heard manifold instances of her extraordinary character and conduct. I remember my friend Mr. Harness telling me that, dancing with him one night at a great ball, she had suddenly amazed him by the challenge—“Gueth how many pairth of thtockingth I have on.” (Her ladyship lisped, and her particular graciousness to Mr. Harness was the result of Lord Byron’s school intimacy with and regard for him). Finding her partner quite unequal to the piece of divination proposed to him, she put forth a very pretty little foot, from which she lifted the petticoat ankle high, lisping out, “Thixth.”
Lady Caroline Lamb possessed other qualities than those of high birth and physical beauty. Nature had endowed her with a multiplicity of gifts, any one of which would have rendered a less volatile woman distinguished. She painted in water colours, drew spirited caricatures, played the harp, composed music, wrote poems, recited odes, rode bare-backed horses, and delighted in polishing Derbyshire spar. Her conversation was as sprightly as her accomplishments were numerous; her ideas being clad in sentences that struck the ear by their quaintness of expression, and pleased the fancy by their singular wit.
Lady Caroline was a clever, generous, and impulsive woman, inordinately vain, and excitable to the verge of insanity. In person she was small and slight, with pale, golden-coloured hair, “large, hazel eyes, capable of much varied expression, exceedingly good teeth, and a musical intonation of voice.” Her powers of conversation were remarkable, full of wild originality and combining great and sudden contrasts, while her manners “had a fascination which it is difficult for any who never encountered their effect to conceive.” Lord Lytton has left on record a curious account of his brief and sentimental attachment to her. She is supposed to have been the original of Mrs. Felix Lorraine in “Vivian Grey,” of Lady Monteagle in “Venetia,” of Lady Melton in “De Lindsay,” Lady Clara in “Lionel Hastings,” and of Lady Bellenden in “Greville.”
General
By the way, I suppose you have seen “Glenarvon.” Madame de Staël lent it me to read from Coppet last autumn. It seems to me that if the authoress had written the truth, and nothing but the truth—the whole truth—the romance would not only have been more romantic, but more entertaining. As for the likeness, the picture can’t be good. I did not sit long enough.
Lady Caroline Lamb was the authoress of three works of fiction, utterly worthless in a literary point of view, but which, from extrinsic circumstances, were highly popular in their day. The first, “Glenarvon,” was published in 1816, and the hero was understood to “body forth” the character and sentiments of Lord Byron. It was a representation of the dangers attending a life of fashion…. The history of Lady Caroline Lamb is painful.
While the scandal of Lord Byron’s separation from his wife was still recent, the story of “Glenarvon” was announced, which uncontradicted rumour ascribed to Lady Caroline Lamb. Curiosity was on tip-toe to peep through a window so unexpectedly opened into the home of youth, beauty, and fame prematurely and mysteriously abandoned. The good and the bad, the wise and the unwise, were equally eager to read the book. All were alike disappointed. It was merely a rhapsodical tale, published before any one was aware who could have prevented its appearance, and which owed its brief celebrity to the portrait it was expected to contain of Byron as he was in social life…. That its perusal could have had any other effect upon Lamb than that of exciting his pity is inconceivable, and to suppose, as its erratic authoress did, that it justified to him her extravagant demeanour where the poet was concerned, is simply impossible. Whatever was blameworthy in her predilection for Byron or her manner of evincing it, it was far eclipsed by the infatuation and incoherence of “Calantha;” while the incidents of fashionable dissipation are thrown into the shade by a grotesque combination of foppery and Whiteboyism. It was not surprising that all who felt concerned for her reputation and welfare should have concurred to depreciate the notion of her again trying her hand in fiction. But “Glenarvon,” in spite of its defects, had had a sort of success which makes a publisher ready to advise a second venture; and before long she was busily engaged in weaving the plot of another story, which made its appearance in due time…. None of her compositions attained high commendation from the critics of the day. “Glenarvon,” “Graham Hamilton,” and “Ada Reis” were the only novels acknowledged as the productions of her pen, though others were ascribed to her authorship. In the Annuals are to be found not a few stanzas of merit.
“Ada Reis,” Lady Caroline’s third, sometimes called her best, novel, happened, at all events; and a very “high fantastic” flowery performance it is, though exhibiting some power and only too much imagination. The “Good Spirit” she afterwards declared was intended for Bulwer; adding, “I fear he is not so good now.”
Except for her romantic attachment to the author of “Childe Harold,” who seems not only to have impressed her feelings, but fired her imagination for literary work, the world would probably have heard little of her in the domain of letters, though her name might have survived for a generation in the circles of fashionable society. But her extraordinary infatuation for Lord Byron, and the difficulties to which it led, together with her sketches of his lordship and her confessions, have invested her personal history and her literary efforts with a singular attractiveness.
