CHAPTER XII
Lady Caroline Lamb. Mrs. Shelley
It is impossible to comprehend the Byronic craze which swept cool-headed England off her feet during the regency. Childe Harold was the fashion, and many a hero of romance, even down to the time of Pendennis, aped his fashions. Disraeli and Bulwer were among his disciples. Bulwer's early novels, Falkland and Pelham, were influenced by him; and Vivian Grey and Venetia might have been the offspring of Byron's prose brain, so completely was Disraeli under his influence at the time.
The poorest of the novels of this class, but the one which gives the most intimate picture of Byron, is Glenarvon, by Lady Caroline Lamb. Its hero is Byron. The plot follows the outlines of her own life, and all the characters were counterparts of living people whom she knew. Calantha, the heroine, representing Lady Caroline, is married to Lord Avondale, or William Lamb, better known as Lord Melbourne, at one time Premier of England. Lord and Lady Avondale are very happy, until Glenarvon, "the spirit of evil," appears and dazzles Calantha. Twice she is about to elope with him, but the thought of her husband and children keeps her back. They part, and for a time tender billets-doux pass between them, until Calantha receives a cruel letter from Glenarvon, in which he bids her leave him in peace. Other well-known people appeared in the book. Lord Holland was the Great Nabob, Lady Holland was the Princess of Madagascar, and Samuel Rogers was the Yellow Hyena or the Pale Poet. The novel had also a moral purpose; it was intended to show the danger of a life devoted to pleasure and fashion.
Of course the book made a sensation. Lady Caroline Lamb, the daughter of Earl Bessborough, the granddaughter of Earl Spencer, related to nearly all the great houses of England, had all her life followed every impulse of a too susceptible imagination. Her infatuation for Lord Byron had long been a theme for gossip throughout London. She invited him constantly to her home; went to assemblies in his carriage; and, if he were invited to parties to which she was not, walked the streets to meet him; she confided to every chance acquaintance that she was dying of love for him. Yet, as one reads of this affair, one suspects that this devotion was nothing more than the infatuation of a high-strung nature for the hero of a romance. In writing to a friend about her husband, she says, "He was privy to my affair with Lord Byron and laughed at it." On her death-bed she said of her husband, "But remember, the only noble fellow I ever met with was William Lamb."
A month after her death, Lord Melbourne wrote a sketch of her life for the Literary Gazette. In this he said:
"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 changes.... 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 accusation and reproach."
How far Byron was in earnest in this tragicomedy is more difficult to determine. In one letter to her he writes: "I was and am yours, freely and entirely, to obey, to honour, to love, and fly with you, where, when, and how yourself might and may determine." That Byron was piqued when he read the book, his letter to Moore proves: "By the way, I suppose you have seen Glenarvon. It seems to me if the authoress had written 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." It was not pleasing to Lord Byron's vanity to appear in her book as the spirit of evil, beside her husband, a high-minded gentleman, ready to sacrifice for his friends everything "but his honour and integrity."