“Calantha turned with disgust from the slavish followers of prejudice. She disdained the beaten track, and she thought that virtue would be for her a safe, a sufficient, guide ... a fearless spirit raised her, as she fondly imagined, above the common herd.”[12]
She actually printed in the novel, without alteration or disguise, the farewell letter that Byron had sent her, but in other directions her portrait of Byron is a mere caricature. In a letter to Moore he said: “The picture can’t be good. I did not sit long enough.” Lady Holland is introduced into the story as the Princess of Madagascar, Rogers as the pale poet, William Lamb as Lord Avondale, Lord and Lady Melbourne as Sir Richard and Lady Mowbray, Lady Oxford as Lady Mandeville. Barbary House is Holland House, and Monteith House, Brocket Hall. It is a rhapsodical tale, sentimental and melodramatic, yet written with eloquence and vivacity. The scene in which one of the women characters commits suicide by wrapping her cloak over her horse’s eyes and calmly riding over the cliff is almost fine. The novel contains a song, “The Waters of Elle,” that is the best poem Lady Caroline wrote.
In 1822 she published, also anonymously, in two volumes, her second novel, Graham Hamilton, in which she endeavours to show the difficulties and dangers involved in weakness and irresolution. The manuscript was placed in Colburn’s hands two years earlier, with the injunction not to publish it then or to name the author. It contains the following verses, which had been written many years before:
“If thou couldst know what ’tis to weep,
To weep unpitied and alone,
The livelong night, whilst others sleep,
Silent and mournful watch to keep,
Thou wouldst not do what I have done.
If thou couldst know what ’tis to smile,
To smile whilst scorn’d by every one,
To hide, by many an artful wile,
A heart that knows more grief than guile,
Thou wouldst not do what I have done.
And oh! if thou couldst think how drear,
When friends are changed, and health is gone,
The world would to thine eyes appear,
If thou, like me, to none wert dear,
Thou wouldst not do what I have done.”
Her last excursion into fiction was Ada Reis, published in three volumes in 1823, a fantastic Eastern tale, very Byronic in character. Her husband, somewhat disturbed by his wife’s literary labours, wrote to John Murray severely criticising this book before publication, and begging him to prevail on the author to amend it. It contains two songs, one of which, beginning, “Weep for what thou’st lost, love,” is accompanied by the music specially composed for it by Isaac Nathan. Another edition of the book, in two volumes, was published the next year in Paris.
In “A New Canto,” published anonymously in 1819, she made an attempt at satire, obviously on the Byronic model. The poem describes the end of the world, and opens thus:
“I’m sick of fame—I’m gorged with it—so full
I almost could regret the happier hour
When northern oracles proclaimed me dull,
Grieving my Lord should so mistake his power—
E’en they, who now my consequence would lull,
And vaunt they hail’d and nurs’d the opening flower
Vile cheats! He knew not, impudent Reviewer,
Clear spring of Helicon from common sewer.”
All Lady Caroline’s works, both prose and verse, are forgotten and repose unread on the topmost shelves of old libraries. But they form an index to her mind and character, and should be studied side by side with her recorded actions. It is usual to dismiss her as mad and unaccountable for her actions. That is the easiest way, but is it the justest? Her gifts were by no means inconsiderable, but in the circle into which she was born there was, in the early nineteenth century, no outlet for the special activities and for the original turn of mind she possessed. Even her capacity for feeling degenerated into sentimentality. She lacked training. Under wise, skilful, and gentle guidance she would most probably have developed into a fine woman. As it was, she certainly did not help and probably retarded her husband’s political career. But vivacity, high spirits, originality, courage combined with sensibility, are not too common in this world, and when such qualities run to waste, it is an irreparable loss out of life.