For a time Lady Caroline continued to correspond with him, and her letters give a picture of her life at Brocket. “Happy, healthy, quiet, contented, I get up at half-past four, ride about with Haggard, and see harvest men at work in this pretty, confined green country, read a few old books, see no one, hear from no one, and occasionally play at chess with Dr. Goddard, or listen to the faint high warblings of Miss Richardson. This contrast to my sometime hurried life delights me. Besides, I am well. And that is a real blessing to one’s self and one’s companions.”[11] She also says that she now, in her soothed and chastened spirit, detests wit and humour and satire. Bulwer seems to have made Lady Caroline his confidante in his love affair with Rosina Wheeler, the haughty, brilliant, and beautiful girl whom he married. For a time she sat at Lady Caroline’s feet, and in some ways resembled her model in temperament.
Lady Caroline affected or more probably sincerely imagined that she possessed a love of literature, and frequented the literary salons of the day, and was to be seen at Lady Cork’s, Lady Charleville’s, Miss Spence’s, and Miss Lydia White’s. Again, any one who had known Byron possessed a passport to her favour. Thus she made the acquaintance of Isaac Nathan, the musical composer who had been intimate with Byron, and for whom Byron wrote the “Hebrew Melodies” for Nathan to set to music, and asked him to come and sing to her. “Come,” she writes, “and soothe one who ought to be happy but is not.” Nathan composed the music to many of her own verses, which he published in 1829 in a curious little volume entitled Fugitive Pieces. It contains the lines written by Lady Caroline that form a strange comment on her husband’s well-known inveterate and incurable habit of decorating his conversation with oaths:
“Yes, I adore thee, William Lamb,
But hate to hear thee say God d——:
Frenchmen say English cry d—— d——,
But why swear’st thou? thou art a Lamb.”
Hobhouse went to see her at Melbourne House, in 1824, and had a two hours’ talk with her, and found her furious at what she considered the misrepresentation of her and of her attachment to Byron in Medwin’s Conversations with Byron. She wrote Medwin a long letter which, making allowance for her vivid imagination, may be regarded as her apologia. She also sent Hobhouse sixteen quarto volumes of journals kept by her since 1806, which he returned, assuring her that no purpose would be served by their publication.
Another literary acquaintance was a man she was pleased to call a rising poet, Wilmington Fleming. His works have not survived, and judging by the verses he wrote describing the eccentric fashion in which Lady Caroline celebrated her wedding-day at Brocket, the world is scarcely the loser. He may have helped Lady Caroline to some extent, probably in the capacity of secretary, with her own literary work. For this assistance she seems to have paid him when she had any money,—she was the most extravagant of women, her father-in-law always called her “Her Lavishship,”—and there is a curious letter in which she tells Fleming, who has evidently asked for payment: “I received no money but just what the servants got for their food. I have been much too ill to write or see you.” She evidently tried to help him to get his poems published.
But Lady Caroline’s health was shattered, and despite the separation she turned more and more to her husband as her best protector and truest friend. The last years were spent at Brocket, and under wise surveillance, or more probably on account of enfeebled vitality, she had grown calmer and more reasonable. In November 1827 she underwent an operation, and in the middle of December alarming symptoms set in, and she was brought from Brocket to London (to Melbourne House) in order to have better medical assistance. She herself was in a state of calmness and resignation, complaining little, and unwilling to see many people. Her husband had been appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland in May, and was of course resident at Dublin. He was kept informed of her condition. She knew she had no chance of recovery, and was only anxious to live long enough to see Lamb again. He was summoned in time, and she was able to talk to him and enjoy his society. She died peacefully about nine o’clock on Sunday evening, 26th January 1828, and was buried at Hatfield. Lamb felt her death deeply, and her influence over him never quite died away. Years later he used to ask, “Shall we meet in another world?”
* * * * *
Something must be said of Lady Caroline Lamb as a writer. She published three novels, of which Glenarvon is the most important, and some fugitive verse.
Glenarvon was published by Colburn anonymously—though uncontradicted rumour attributed it to her—in three volumes in 1816. An Italian translation appeared in Venice in 1817, and it was reprinted in one volume in London in 1865 under the title of The Fatal Passion. It is an autobiographical novel, of which the hero is Byron (Glenarvon) and the heroine herself (Lady Calantha Avondale), whose character she thus describes:
“Her feelings, indeed, swelled into a tide too powerful for the unequal resistance of her understanding; her motives appeared the very best; but the actions which resulted from them were absurd and exaggerated. Thoughts swift as lightning hurried through her brain; projects, seducing but visionary, crowded upon her view; without a curb she followed the impulse of her feelings, and those feelings varied with every varying interest and impression.