Byron’s well-known stanzas, ‘Farewell! if ever fondest prayer,’ were said to have been addressed to Lady Caroline when he left England for ever, having quarrelled with his wife as well as with his friend. The poem was not calculated to conciliate the lady, and it was not long before she heard from a third person that Byron had spoken slightingly of her to Madame de Staël and others. She accordingly sat down, and wrote him a long account of the childish revenge she had taken, by burning his effigy in a bonfire, with her own hands.
In her Diary she gives a touching account of her useless endeavours to pique or persuade her poor boy into cheerfulness, and how, when he saw her look of disappointment, he would come and sit beside her, take her hand, and look wistfully into her face. She had consulted many physicians, she said, and now she would consult a metaphysician. Some time ago she had met Godwin, the author, and taken one of her sudden fancies for him. She now sat down and asked him to come and pay her a visit at Brocket; she wished to have some conversation with him about her son, and indeed about her own unsettled and discontented state of mind. ‘When I saw you last under painful circumstances, you said it rested with myself to be happy. I fear you can only think of me with contempt. My mind is overpowered with trifles. Would you dislike paying me a little visit? I hold out no allurements; if you come, it can only be from friendship. I have no longer the excuse of youth and inexperience for being foolish, yet I remain so. I want a few wise words of advice. No one is more sensible of kindness from a person of high intellect. I have such an over-abundance of activity, and nothing to do. I feel as if I had lived five hundred years, and am neither better nor worse than when I began. I conduce to no one’s happiness; on the contrary, I am in the way of many. All my beliefs and opinions are shaken as with small shocks of moral earthquake; it is as if I were in a boat without chart or compass.’ Surely she was not wise in her selection of a navigator.
Godwin obeyed the summons, but, as might have been expected, brought no consolation in his train. Lady Caroline would often in her correspondence eulogise her husband in very high terms, and call him her guardian angel, and there is no doubt she was proud of him; but his very forbearance and good-humour were often a source of irritation, and she would upbraid him with treating her as a child, though, in reality, nothing flattered her more than to be so considered, and in some of her early caricatures (for she often amused herself in that way) she represents herself carried about in Mr. Lamb’s arms as a little girl. Her father-in-law, easy-going as he was, blamed her for her extravagance, and called her ‘her laviship.’ ‘Indeed I think I am a good housewife,’ she writes to Lady Morgan, ‘and have saved William money; but he says, “What is the use of saving with one hand if you scatter with the other?” What is the use—that is what I am always saying—what is the use of existing at all?’
This unwholesome excitement tended to increase the natural irascibility of her character. In her Diary she records petty quarrels with her servants and other inmates of the house. She at length took to authorship as a consolation, and gives an odd account of the manner in which her literary labours were carried on. She had a companion, who began by acting as her amanuensis, but after a time she decided on having an expert copyist. Even so commonplace an arrangement must be carried out in a melodramatic manner. She wrote the book, unknown to all, except to Miss Welsh, in the middle of the night. ‘I sent for old Woodhead to Melbourne House. I dressed Miss Welsh elegantly, and placed her at my harp, while I sat at the writing-table, disguised in the page’s clothes. The copyist naturally took Miss Welsh for Lady Caroline, and expressed his astonishment that a schoolboy of that age (I looked about fourteen) could be the author of Glenarvon. Next time he came I received him in my own clothes, and told him William Ormond, the young author, was dead. When the book was finished, I sent it to ‘William, who was delighted.’ (Query.) Glenarvon disappointed the public, not so much on account of its literary shortcomings, which might have been anticipated, but from its lack of sufficient allusions to the separation of Lord and Lady Byron, though there was no scarcity of abuse of the hero. The story was too feeble and vapid to cause much sensation, yet the authoress found publishers willing to accept further works from the same pen, and Graham Hamilton and Ada Reis followed.
Lord Byron, writing from Venice, speaking of Glenarvon, says: ‘I have seen nothing of the book but the motto from my “Corsair”:—
“He left a name to all succeeding times
Linked with one virtue and a thousand crimes.”
If such be the posy, what must the ring be?—the generous moment selected for the publication! I have not a guess at the contents.’ A little while after, Madame de Staël lent him the book, when he went to see her at Coppet. ‘It seems to me that if the author had told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, the romance would not only have been more romantic, but more interesting. The likeness is not good; I did not sit long enough.’
Besides her novels, Lady Caroline sent contributions to Annuals and Magazines, breathing eternal love and dire remorse:—
“Weep for what thou’st lost, love,