Temple Theaters Presents
ARCADIA
By Tom Stoppard
February 11-21, 2015
Lady Caroline Lamb
Had Lady Caroline Lamb never crossed paths with Lord Byron, it's very possible her name would have been lost to history. The only daughter in an aristocratic family, Caroline was spirited and intelligent, but also prone to neurosis and nervous fits. In 1812, after reading an advance copy of Lord Byron's breakthrough poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Caroline wrote to the poet, resulting in a brief but tumultuous affair. When Byron broke it off, Caroline responded in a fitting manner - by publishing a novel, Glenarvon, based on the affair, as well as satires of Byron's poems.
Early Life
Born on November 13, 1875, Caroline was the only daughter of Frederick Ponsonby, Lord Duncannon (later the 3rd Earl of Bessborough) and Henrietta Ponsonby, later the Countess of Bessborough. Henrietta and her sister Georgiana, the Duchess of Devonshire, were daughters of the Spencer family, making her an ancestor of the late Princess Diana.
Reports of Caroline's youth vary. She is described varingly as unruly and tomboyish, exhibiting a great need for attention, as well as intelligent and talented, capable of speaking French and Italian at age five and playing the harpsichord by age six.
After her debut in 1802, Caroline took her place in London society, where she met and fell in love with the Hon. William Lamb, later the 2nd Viscount Melbourne. While Caroline's family, particularly her mother and grandmother, had misgivings about the match, William's mother, Elizabeth Millbanke Lamb, Viscountess Melbourne, encouraged it, as it would be in her family's interest to ally themselves with the more powerful Lambs. Social manuerving aside, Caroline and William developed genuine feelings for each other, and married in 1805. Following two miscarriages, Caroline gave birth to a son, George Augustus Frederick, in 1807. Their child suffered from epilepsy and was mentally handicapped (possibly autistic) but he remained in the care of his parents, unusual for a time when children who suffered such problems were typically sent to institutions.
Though the marriage got off to what was described as an "idyllic" start, William's political ambitions began to draw him away from home (he would eventually become Prime Minister under Queen Victoria); Caroline, as a headstrong, lively woman, was not content to sit at home and wait for him. She embarked on an affair with Sir Godfrey Vassal Webster, was caught, and confessed to William, who forgave her (as he always would, as we will see.
Affair with Lord Byron
In early 1812, Caroline was given an advance copy of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, the narrative poem written by Lord Byron during his two-year Grand Tour of the Mediterranean. The work was generating a considerable amount of buzz, and Byron was quickly becoming a literary celebrity. His work seemed to captivate Caroline as well; after reading Childe Harold, she wrote him a fan letter. Despite her admiration for his work, the affair that followed did not seem a given. Upon their first face-to-face meeting, Caroline was apparently not impressed; it was at that point that she created the lasting epitaph for Byron - "Mad, bad and dangerous to know." (It should be noted, of course, that controversy surrounds the quote, as there is no conclusive evidence other than Caroline's word that she created the phrase at that time - another mystery lost to the ravages of time). Whether or not Caroline used those exact words, getting the brush-off did not faze Byron. He continued to pursue Caroline throughout the spring of 1812, and it wasn't long before she returned his advances.
Their affair was both passionate and public. In a letter to Caroline, Byron praises her as " the cleverest, most agreeable, absurd, amiable, perplexing, dangerous, fascinating little being that lives now." Meanwhile, in her diaries, Caroline documents Byron's urgings for the two of them to run away together. Despite the fact that she was married, Caroline did not trouble herself to hide the affair; there are accounts of her waiting for him outside of parties to which she was not invited. Her early misgivings quite forgotten, Caroline was desperately, almost obsessively, in love with Byron.
This made it all the more difficult when Byron broke off the affair in August 1812. The reasons remain unclear - the scandal may have become too public, Caroline may have become too attached, or he simply got bored and moved on, as was his wont - but one thing is certain. Caroline was not ready for the end of the affair. Her family, humiliated by her behavior, packed her off to Ireland to get her out of the public eye and keep her out of trouble, but Caroline continued to write letters to Byron. He finally sent a letter ending it once and for all, telling Caroline he had taken another lover. She did not take the news well, resorting to a number of theatrical outbursts, including making a bonfire out of gifts and letters from him; forging a note as his publisher to acquire a portrait of him; and using a broken wine glass to try to slash her wrists after being publicly insulted by him at a party. In a more productive expression of her pain, anger and frustration, Caroline took to writing, dramatizing the affair in a novel, Glenarvon.
Literary Career and Later Life
Released in May 1816, Glenarvon, quickly became a bestseller, although it was likely as much from Caroline's noteriety as her writing ability, if not more. The book was a thinly-disguised account of her affair with Byron, complete with a rakish charmer, Lord Ruthven (Byron); a cuckolded husband, Lord Avondale (William) and in the middle, a tragic victim of circumstance, Calantha (Caroline herself). Beyond implicating herself in the scandalous affair, Caroline also included in Glenarvon a number of unflattering and easily recognizable references to other members of the social circles in which she moved. These descriptions put the final nail in Caroline's social coffin, so to speak; she was unilaterally shunned from London society afterwards. William's family pressured him to divorce Caroline, but he resisted. Their marriage never fully recovered from the Byron debacle, and he and Caroline led increasingly distant lives, until they finally separated formally in 1825, with Caroline taking up permanent residence in her family's home, Brockett Hall.
Byron left England permanently in 1816, after his own failed marriage, but his absence did little to erase the mark he left on Caroline. She continued to write, often satirizing his work. In 1819, she responded to his Don Juan with "A New Canto," in which she impersonated Byron "sick of fame...gorged with it." Two years late, she published Gordon: A Tale, also in response to Don Juan. Reportedly she was most perturbed by references to her in Don Juan ("Some play the devil - and then write a novel."). Although Byron did read Glenarvon, it is unknown if he read Caroline's poetry aimed at mimicking and mocking him; at any rate, he never publicly responded. Caroline also published two other novels, Graham Hamilton (1822) and Ada Reiss (1823).
After her separation from William in 1825, Caroline's health deteoriated. She struggled with mental instability, exacerbated by alcohol and laudanaum abuse, and died on January 26, 1828 at the age of forty-six.
The opinion of Caroline's work expressed by Bernard Nightingale in Arcadia ("A Romantic waffle on wheels with no talent") seems representative of the attitude towards her writing by her contemporaries and modern literary critics. Despite its sales, Glenarvon was dismissed by contemporary reviewers as "tiresome," "tawdry" and "revolting," although it may have had more to do with her unflattering assessment of London society's behavior, as well as judgements against her own behavior. In modern times, there are those who, in the spirit of Hannah Jarvis, seek to give Caroline more of her due as an early practicioner of the Gothic style. In 2009, the first critical edition of her works, a three-volume set, The Works of Caroline Lamb was published by Pickering and Chatto. The set seeks to separate Caroline's works from their Byron influence, and present her as an author in her own right, as well as place her within the greater context of the Romantic literature movement.
Sources/Futher Reading
The Lady Caroline Lamb Website
The Regency Collection - Caroline Lamb
"Twisty Little Passages - The Several Editions of Lady Caroline Lamb's 'Glenarvon' by Paul Douglass
The Works of Caroline Lamb - Pickering & Chatto Publishers
The Works of Caroline Lamb Review by Lindsey Eckert