His career at the bar was brief and uneventful, and by the death of his elder brother he shortly became heir-apparent to his father’s title and property.
We now come to a most important event—important to all men—in his case particularly so, and attended with almost unmitigated evil.
On June 3, 1805, was solemnised the marriage of William Lamb and Lady Caroline Ponsonby. It is heartless, unnecessary, and altogether wrong to expose the dreariness, the pain, and the ridicule of an ill-assorted marriage. Too many particulars of this unhappy union have already found their way into print. Lady Caroline was a woman of ability, and, I suppose, a certain amount of charm; but nobody who reads her works, or her letters, or the accounts of her conduct, can doubt that she was partially insane. Of her husband it is enough to say that whatever his faults may have been of over-indulgence at certain times—and perhaps an occasional outbreak of passionate temper at others—he was, on the whole, singularly tender, kind, and considerate. He was always honourable and gentlemanlike, and he bore his burden with a brave and manly spirit. But for twenty years his life was embittered, his ability depressed, and even his credit with the world temporarily impaired.
I have said that the evil which attended his marriage was almost unmitigated; but there was one compensation. He was driven into seclusion. Whole days were passed in his library, and it was during these years that he acquired habits of reading which were never afterwards abandoned, and that he accumulated much of that vast store of learning—that large knowledge of all subjects, ancient and modern, sacred and profane—which formed a continual subject of astonishment to those who knew him in later life.
After endless quarrels and reconciliations, they were regularly separated in 1825; but he occasionally visited her, and was with her at her deathbed two years later, when they were finally reconciled, to quarrel no more.
Though he was member of the House of Commons for many years, and occasionally spoke, he cannot be said to have acquired any distinction in that assembly; but his abilities had always been recognised by leading men, as is shown by the fact that he twice refused office during that period.
His public career began in 1827, when he accepted, in Canning’s Administration, the post of Chief Secretary in Ireland.
It is difficult to form a just opinion of him as he appeared to his contemporaries at this time. Mr. M’Culloch Torrens has done justice to his high character, his clear intellect, and his broad, sound, and sensible views of men and things. Lord Melbourne’s relations must always feel grateful to Mr. Torrens for so clearly bringing forward this side of his nature, and perhaps also for not attempting to delineate those characteristics which require to be touched with a more delicate hand. The uncontrolled flow of humour, of originality and mischief, might easily have been perverted in the description into buffoonery or jauntiness, from which no man was ever more free. The paradoxes might have appeared as an ambitious effort to astonish and to draw attention, when considered separately from the simple and spontaneous manner in which they were uttered. They were saved from this, as all good paradoxes are, not only by the manner, but by each one of them containing some portion of the truth, which is generally overlooked, and which was then, for the first time, presented to the mind in a striking and unexpected way.
But though any attempt to describe the charm of Lord Melbourne’s society would probably lead to disastrous failure, and must not, therefore, be attempted, it is important to bear in mind that this extraordinary charm was the one great feature that remained impressed upon the minds of all who had communication with him.
Sparkling originality, keen insight into character, a rich store of information on every subject always at hand to strengthen and illustrate conversation, exuberant vitality, and, above all, the most transparent simplicity of nature, these, from what I have heard, must have been his principal characteristics. I am bound to add that he often shocked fastidious people. He seldom spoke without swearing, and he was often very coarse in his remarks. There was, indeed, in his language and in his whole character, not only a wayward recklessness which was natural to him, but a touch of cynical bitterness that contrasted strangely with the nobleness and generosity of the original man. The nobleness and generosity were, I say, original. The scenes which surrounded him in his early years, and still more, that unhappy married life to which I have already alluded, may account for the remainder.