The Love Affairs of Lord Byron Part 9

"He cared nothing for my morals," she remarks. "I might flirt and go about with what men I pleased. He was privy to my affair with Lord Byron and laughed at it. His indolence renders him insensible to everything. When I ride, play, and amuse him, he loves me. In sickness and suffering he deserts me."

That protest, however, is wholly unjust, and only partly true. A married woman who has no sooner met a man than she arranges to dine _tete-a-tete_ with him is hardly ent.i.tled to ascribe her flirtation to her husband's contributory negligence. Lady Caroline not only did that, but also, in her wilful way, plunged at once into a compromising correspondence. Her very first letter to Byron, according to Rogers, "a.s.sured him that, if he was in any want of money, all her jewels were at his disposal." In another letter of approximately the same date we find her writing: "The rose Lord Byron gave Lady Caroline Lamb died in despite of every effort made to save it; probably from regret at its fallen fortunes."

Evidently Lady Caroline had thrown herself at Byron's head before William Lamb guessed what was happening. Afterwards, no doubt, he knew what the rest of the world knew. But he also knew--what the rest of the world did not know, and what Lady Caroline herself only imperfectly realised--how froward and changeable were his wife's moods, how great was the risk of hysterical explosions if those moods were crossed, what a "handful" she was, in short, and how very difficult it was to handle her, and so he left things alone.

Leaving things alone, indeed, was William Lamb's regular formula for the solution of the problems alike of public and of private life. He believed that problems left alone tended to solve themselves, just as letters left unanswered tend to answer themselves. On the whole the principle had worked, if not ideally, yet well enough for the practical purposes of domestic life. Things had happened before, and, being left alone, had ceased to happen. In his desk lay a letter relating to some previous ebullition the particulars of which are wrapped in mystery. "I think lately, my dearest William," Lady Caroline had written, three years before, "we have been very troublesome to each other." It was true, and it had not mattered. The fire, if there had been a fire, had burnt itself out. The hysterics--it is not to be doubted that there were hysterics--had subsided with the pa.s.sing of the occasion which had called them forth. The clouds had been dispersed, and the sun had shone again. Why should not this chapter in his domestic history repeat itself? He was very fond of his wife; he hated rows; he wished to take no risks. The best way of avoiding risks was to humour her.

So he humoured her, remembering how she had railed at the bishop on her wedding day, knowing, no doubt, how little a thing might upset her mental balance, and making every possible allowance; and the only attempt at intervention came from Lady Melbourne, who remonstrated, not with Lady Caroline, but with Byron. He struck an att.i.tude, and waived the matter on one side.

"You need not fear me," was his reply. "I do not pursue pleasure like other men; I labour under an incurable disease and a blighted heart.

Believe me she is safe with me."

No one knows whether she was, in the narrow sense of the word, "safe" with him or not. Rogers thought that she was, but admitted that he did not really know. In any case she was not safe from herself, or from the tongue of scandal. She was really in love--her devotion was no pa.s.sing fancy--and she did not care who knew it. Indeed she behaved as if she thought that the more people who knew it, the better. The woman who, at a ball, called upon Byron's friend Harness--that very serious young Cantab just about to take orders--to bear witness that she was wearing no fewer than six pairs of stockings, was not likely to hide the light of a grand pa.s.sion under a bushel. She did not so hide it, but proceeded, as has been said, to _afficher_ herself as if she were inviting the attention of the world to a great spectacular entertainment. She had not known Byron a couple of months before people were beginning to talk.

"Your little friend Caro William," wrote the d.u.c.h.ess of Devons.h.i.+re on May 4, 1812, "as usual is doing all sorts of imprudent things with him.... The ladies, I hear spoil him, and the gentlemen are jealous of him. He is going back to Naxos, and then the husbands may sleep in peace. I should not be surprised if Caro William were to go with him, she is so wild and imprudent."

Rogers, in his "Table Talk," is still more picturesque. He tells us how, when Byron and Lady Caroline quarrelled, she used to plant herself in his (Rogers') garden, waiting to catch him on his return home and beg him to effect a reconciliation; and he continues:

"When she met Byron at a party, she would always, if possible, return home from it in _his_ carriage, and accompanied by _him_: I recollect particularly their returning to town together from Holland House. But such was the insanity of her pa.s.sion for Byron that sometimes, when not invited to a party where he was to be, she would wait for him in the street till it was over! One night, after a great party at Devons.h.i.+re House, to which Lady Caroline had not been invited, I saw her--yes, saw her--talking to Byron, with half of her body thrust into the carriage which he had just entered."

In the midst of, and in consequence of, these spectacles, Lady Melbourne decided to take Lady Caroline to Ireland. She cherished, it seems, the double design of getting her daughter-in-law out of Byron's way and marrying Byron to her niece. Of the success of the latter scheme there will be a good deal to be said in subsequent chapters. Much was to happen, however, both to Byron and to Lady Caroline before it succeeded. They continued to correspond during Lady Caroline's absence; and the correspondence soon reached an acute phase which resulted in a series of violent scenes.

CHAPTER XII

THE QUARREL WITH LADY CAROLINE--HER CHARACTER AND SUBSEQUENT CAREER

"While in Ireland," Lady Caroline Lamb told Lady Morgan, "I received letters constantly--the most tender and the most amusing."

She received one letter in which Byron, after speaking of "a sense of duty to your husband and mother" declared that "no other in word or deed shall ever hold the place in my affections which is, and shall be, most sacred to you," and concluded: "I was and am yours freely and most entirely, to obey, to honour, love--and fly with you when, where, and how you yourself _might_ and _may_ determine." What did he mean?

Apparently he meant to let Lady Caroline down gently--to give her the right of boasting of his undying regard--and to obtain his liberty in exchange. We need not stop to consider whether the bargain would have been a fair one, for Lady Caroline did not agree to it. There were no bounds to her infatuation, and she could not bear the thought that there should be any bounds to his. But there were. "Even during our intimacy," he told Medwin, "I was not at all constant to this fair one, and she suspected as much." It looks as though her suspicions decided her to return to England. At all events she started, and at Dublin, received another letter to which the epithets "tender" and "amusing" were equally inapplicable.

"It was," she told Lady Morgan, "that cruel letter I have published in 'Glenarvon'"--the novel in which, some five years later, she gave the world her version of the liaison. The text of it, as given in 'Glenarvon,'

is as follows:

"I am no longer your lover; and since you oblige me to confess it by this truly unfeminine persecution, learn that I am attached to another, whose name it would, of course, be dishonest to mention. I shall ever remember with grat.i.tude the many instances I have received of the predilection you have shown in my favour. I shall ever continue your friend, if your ladys.h.i.+p will permit me so to style myself. And as a first proof of my regard, I offer you this advice: correct your vanity, which is ridiculous: exert your absurd caprices on others; and leave me in peace."

Byron appears to have admitted to Medwin that "a part" of the letter was genuine. The rest of it--the gratuitously offensive part of it--was doubtless doctored, if not actually fabricated, by the novelist for the purposes of her art. In any case, however, quite enough was written to send Lady Caroline into a fit, from which she only recovered to renew her eccentricities. "I lost my brain," she confesses. "I was bled, leeched; kept for a month in the filthy Dolphin Inn at Rock. On my return I was in great prostration of mind and spirit." And then scenes followed--scene on the heels of scene. It is impossible to be quite sure of arranging them in their proper order; but that matters little.

There was a scene in Brocket Park, where Lady Caroline burnt Byron in effigy. Together with his effigy she burnt copies of his letters, keeping the originals for reference. A number of girls, attired in white, danced round the pyre, chanting a dirge which she had composed for the occasion:

"_Is this Guy Faux you burn in effigy?

Why bring the Traitor here? What is Guy Faux to me?

Guy Faux betrayed his country, and his laws.

England revenged the wrong; his was a public cause.

But I have private cause to raise this flame.

Burn also those, and be their fate the same._"

And also:

"_Burn, fire, burn, while wondering Boys exclaim, And gold and trinkets glitter in the flame.

Ah! look not thus on me, so grave, so sad; Shake not your heads, nor say the Lady's mad._"

Et cetera.

Then there was a scene in Byron's chambers, whither Lady Caroline pursued him in order to obtain confirmation of certain suspicions, thus described by Byron to Medwin:

"In order to detect my intrigues she watched me, and earthed a lady into my lodgings--and came herself, terrier-like, in the disguise of a carman. My valet, who did not see through the masquerade, let her in: when to the despair of Fletcher, she put off the man and put on the woman. Imagine the scene! It was worthy of Faublas!"

After that, according to Medwin, it was agreed that, if they met, they were to meet as strangers; but Lady Caroline did not carry out her part of the agreement. "We were at a ball," the reporter represents Byron as saying. "She came up and asked me if she might waltz. I thought it perfectly indifferent whether she waltzed or not, or with whom, and told her so, in different terms, but with much coolness. After she had finished, a scene occurred, which was in the mouths of everyone." f.a.n.n.y Kemble, however, gives a more sensational version of the story.

"Lady Caroline," she says, "with impertinent disregard of Byron's infirmity, asked him to waltz. He contemptuously replied, 'I cannot, and you nor any other woman ought not.'" Whereupon, the narrator continues, Lady Caroline rushed into the dressing-room, threw up the window, and tried to throw herself out of it, exclaiming with Saint-Preux: "_La roche est escarpee; l'eau est profonde!_" Then, saved by someone who saw her intention and caught hold of her skirts, she asked for water, bit a piece out of the gla.s.s which was handed to her, and tried to stab herself with it, but was ultimately persuaded to return home and go to bed.

Fact and fancy, no doubt, are inextricably woven together in that narrative. All that is quite certain is that Lady Caroline did go home, and that her temper became so ungovernable that William Lamb, who also, in spite of his easy-going ways, had a temper, proposed a separation. The proposal was agreed to, and the family lawyer was instructed to draw up the deed. He drew it up; but when he brought it to the house to be signed, sealed, and delivered, he found Lady Caroline sitting on her husband's knee, "feeding him," says his biographer, "with tiny sc.r.a.ps of transparent bread and b.u.t.ter." His professional tact bade him retire before this unexpected tableau; and the separation was postponed for twelve years.

That is practically the whole of the story, so far as Byron is concerned with it. Lady Caroline was to write him other letters to which it will be necessary to refer as we proceed; but she had now pa.s.sed out of his life, even if he had not pa.s.sed out of hers. Other urgent interests were springing up to occupy him; and he had once more heard the _leit motif_ for which we always have to listen when we find his actions, his letters, and his poems perplexing us.

Society--that is to say, the women of society--blamed him for his conduct; but the blame, if it is to have any sting in it, seems to require the a.s.sumption that every woman has a right to every man's heart if she demands it with sufficient emphasis, and that any man who refuses to honour the demand is, _ipso facto_, "behaving badly." Women, perhaps, are a little more ready to make that a.s.sumption than are philosophers to allow its validity. Granting the a.s.sumption, we shall be bound to admit that Byron did treat Lady Caroline shamefully; but suppose we do not grant it--then, perhaps, our chief task will be to search for excuses for Lady Caroline herself.

The excuses to which she is ent.i.tled are those which were very obviously made for her by her husband and his mother. They did not quarrel with her, though they sometimes lost their temper with her; and--what is more to the purpose--they did not quarrel with Byron. Evidently, therefore, they held the view that Lady Caroline was responsible for Byron's conduct--but could not be held responsible for her own. They had the doctor's word for it that, though she was not mad, she might easily become so. If she was to be kept sane, she must be humoured. In humouring her up to a point, Byron had acted for the best. Neither a husband nor a mother-in-law could blame him for his unwillingness to go beyond that point. His proposal to fly with her may strike one as excessive; but it may perhaps be cla.s.sed with the promises sometimes made to pa.s.sionate children in the hope of keeping them quiet till the pa.s.sion pa.s.ses. There is really no reason to think that either William Lamb or Lady Melbourne regarded it in any other light.

It was "really from the best motives," Byron a.s.sured Hodgson, that "I withdrew my homage." The best motives, as we shall perceive, were mixed with other motives; but they were doubtless there. Byron could justly speak of himself as "restoring a woman to her family, who are treating her with the greatest kindness, and with whom I am on good terms." It was only to be expected that he would be flattered by her attentions when he was twenty-four and new to society. It was equally to be expected that he should execute a retreat when he realised that he had to do with a _detraquee_ whose pursuit at once threatened a scandal and made him as well as her husband look ridiculous.

The proofs that her mind was unhinged are ample. "She appears to me,"

wrote Lady H. Leveson Gower to Lady G. Morpeth, "in a state very little short of insanity, and my aunt describes it as at times having been very decidedly so." That is an example of the direct evidence; and the circ.u.mstantial evidence is even more abundant. The scene at the ball, of which Lady Caroline herself gave a spluttering account in a rambling and incoherent letter to Medwin, is only a part of it. An attempt which she made to forge Byron's signature in order to obtain his portrait from John Murray points to the same conclusion. The inconsistent and inconsequential picture which she draws of herself in her letters and her writings affords the most conclusive testimony of all.

From the correspondence and other doc.u.ments one could not possibly gather whether she preferred her husband to her lover or her lover to her husband; whether she "wors.h.i.+pped" Byron for three years only or throughout her life; whether her attachment to him ceased, or did not cease, after her visit, in men's clothes, to his chambers; whether she did or did not rejoice in the unhappiness of his married life. On all these points she repeatedly contradicted herself with the excessive emphasis of the hysterical. To say that Byron's treatment of her drove her mad would be to talk nonsense. At the most it only gave an illusion of method to her madness, and supplied the monomania for which her unbalanced mind was waiting.

William Lamb humoured her long after Byron had ceased to do so. She knew it, and, in her comparatively lucid intervals, appreciated both his forbearance and his character. "Remember," she wrote to Lady Morgan, "the only n.o.ble fellow I ever met with is William Lamb; he is to me what Sh.o.r.e was to Jane Sh.o.r.e." She also placed "William Lamb first" in the order of the objects of her affection; but, in the very letter in which she did so, she spoke of "Lord Byron, that dear, that angel, that misguided and misguiding Byron, whom I adore." We must make what we can of it; but, in truth, there is nothing to be made of it except that Lady Caroline was mad. Presently she became so obviously mad that she smashed her doctor's watch in a fit of rage and had to be placed in the charge of two female keepers.

There came a day when, riding near Brocket, she met a funeral procession, and was told that it was Byron's. Then she fainted; and it was after that incident that her uncontrollable violence caused the long-postponed separation to be carried into effect. Some verses which she wrote on the occasion are printed among Lord Melbourne's papers:

"_Loved One! No tear is in mine eye, Though pangs my bosom thrill, For I have learned, when others sigh, To suffer and be still.

Pa.s.sion, and pride, and flattery strove, They made a wreck of me; But oh, I never ceased to love, I never loved but thee._"

There are two other--very similar--stanzas. The inadequacy of the expression is, perhaps, the most pathetic thing about them. A child seems to be struggling to utter the emotions of a grown-up person--a clouded mind, to be striving to clear itself under the influence of a sudden shock. And the mind in truth was, at that date, very far from clear. The drinking of laudanum mixed with brandy often helped in the clouding of it; and the end was not very far removed.

The last illness began towards the end of 1827. William Lamb, when he heard of it, hurried to his wife's side; devoted to her, and eager to humour her, in spite of everything, to the last. She was "able to converse with him and enjoy his society," and he found her "calm, patient, and affectionate." She died of dropsy on January 28, 1828; and William Lamb published an article consecrated to her memory in the _Literary Gazette_ in the course of the following month. One gathers from it, reading between the lines, not only that he forgave, but that he understood. Hopes, he admitted, had been drawn from her early years which "her maturity was not destined to realise"; but he concluded: "Her manners, though somewhat eccentric, and apparently, not really, affected, had a fascination which it is difficult for any who never encountered their effect to conceive."

All this, however, though not irrelevant, is taking us a long way from Byron, to whom it is now time to return.

CHAPTER XIII