The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals Volume II Part 35

Dallas found him, shortly after his introduction to the prince, "in a full-dress court suit of clothes, with his fine black hair in powder,"

prepared to attend a levee. But the levee was put off, and the subsequent avowal of the authors.h.i.+p of the stanzas rendered it impossible for him to go ('Recollections', p. 234).]

242.--To Lady Caroline Lamb.

[August, 1812?]

MY DEAREST CAROLINE, [1]--If tears which you saw and know I am not apt to shed,--if the agitation in which I parted from you,--agitation which you must have perceived through the _whole_ of this most _nervous_ affair, did not commence until the moment of leaving you approached,--if all I have said and done, and am still but too ready to say and do, have not sufficiently proved what my real feelings are, and must ever be towards you, my love, I have no other proof to offer. G.o.d knows, I wish you happy, and when I quit you, or rather you, from a sense of duty to your husband and mother, quit me, you shall acknowledge the truth of what I again promise and vow, that no other in word or deed, shall ever hold the place in my affections, which is, and shall be, most sacred to you, till I am nothing. I never knew till _that moment_ the _madness_ of my dearest and most beloved friend; I cannot express myself; this is no time for words, but I shall have a pride, a melancholy pleasure, in suffering what you yourself can scarcely conceive, for you do not know me. I am about to go out with a heavy heart, because my appearing this evening will stop any absurd story which the event of the day might give rise to. Do you think _now_ I am _cold_ and _stern_ and _artful_? Will even _others_ think so? Will your _mother_ ever--that mother to whom we must indeed sacrifice much, more, much more on my part than she shall ever know or can imagine? "Promise not to love you!" ah, Caroline, it is past promising. But I shall attribute all concessions to the proper motive, and never cease to feel all that you have already witnessed, and more than can ever be known but to my own heart,--perhaps to yours. May G.o.d protect, forgive, and bless you. Ever, and even more than ever,

Your most attached,

BYRON.

P.S.--These taunts which have driven you to this, my dearest Caroline, were it not for your mother and the kindness of your connections, is there anything on earth or heaven that would have made me so happy as to have made you mine long ago? and not less _now_ than _then_, but _more_ than ever at this time. You know I would with pleasure give up all here and all beyond the grave for you, and in refraining from this, must my motives be misunderstood? I care not who knows this, what use is made of it,--it is to _you_ and to _you_ only that they are _yourself (sic)_. 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.

[Footnote 1: Lady Caroline's infatuation for Byron, expressed in various ways--once (in July, 1813) by a self-inflicted stab with a table-knife, or a broken gla.s.s--became the talk of society.

"Your little friend, Caro William," writes the d.u.c.h.ess of Devons.h.i.+re, May 4, 1812, "as usual, is doing all sorts of imprudent things for him and with him."

Again she writes, six days later, of Byron:

"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"

(The 'Two d.u.c.h.esses', pp. 362, 364). But Lady Caroline's extravagant adoration wearied Byron, who felt that it made him ridiculous; Lady Melbourne gave him sound advice about her daughter-in-law; and he was growing attached to Miss Milbanke, and, when rejected by her, at first to Lady Oxford, and later to Lady Frances Wedderburn Webster. When Lady Bessborough endeavoured to persuade her daughter to leave London for Ireland, Lady Caroline is said to have forced herself into Byron's room, and implored him to fly with her. Byron refused, conducted her back to Melbourne House, wrote her the letter printed above, and, as she herself admits, kept the secret. In December, 1812, Lady Caroline burned Byron in effigy, with "his book, ring, and chain," at Brocket Hall. The lines which she wrote for the ceremony are preserved in Mrs. Leigh's handwriting, and given in Appendix III., 2.

From Ireland Lady Caroline continued the siege, threatening to follow him into Herefords.h.i.+re, demanding interviews, and writing about him to Lady Oxford. At length Byron sent her the letter, probably in November, 1812, which she professes to publish in 'Glenarvon' (vol. iii. chap.

ix.). The words are acknowledged by Byron to have formed part at least of the real doc.u.ment, which is here quoted as printed in the novel:

"Mortanville Priory, November the 9th.

"LADY AVONDALE,--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 dishonourable 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 upon others; and leave me in peace.

"Your most obedient servant,

"GLENARVON."

The first effect of this letter and her unrequited pa.s.sion was, as she told Lady Morgan, to deprive her temporarily of reason, and it may be added that, when she was a child, her grandmother was so alarmed by her eccentricities as to consult a doctor on the state of her mind. The second effect was to render her temper so ungovernable that William Lamb decided on a separation. All preliminaries were arranged; the solicitor arrived with the doc.u.ments; but the old charm rea.s.serted itself, and she was found seated by her husband, "feeding him with tiny sc.r.a.ps of transparent bread and b.u.t.ter" (Torrens, 'Memoirs of Lord Melbourne', vol. i. p. 112). The separation did not take place till 1825.

Throughout 1812-14 Lady Caroline continued to write to Byron, at first asking for interviews. Two of her last letters to him, written apparently on the eve of his leaving England, in 1816, are worth printing, though they increase the mystery of 'Glenarvon'. (See Appendix III., 4 and 5.)

In Isaac Nathan's 'Fugitive Pieces' (1829), a section is devoted to "Poetical Effusions, Letters, Anecdotes, and Recollections of Lady Caroline Lamb."

Lady Caroline wrote three novels: 'Glenarvon' (1816); 'Graham Hamilton'

(1822); and 'Ada Reis; a Tale' (1823). 'Glenarvon', apart from its biographical interest, is unreadable.

"I do not know," writes C. Lemon to Lady H. Frampton ('Journal of Mary Frampton', pp. 286, 287), "all the characters in 'Glenarvon', but I will tell you all I do know. I am not surprised at your being struck with a few detached pa.s.sages; but before you have read one volume, I think you will doubt at which end of the book you began. There is no connection between any two ideas in the book, and it seems to me to have been written as the sages of Laputa composed their works.

'Glenarvon' is Lord Byron; 'Lady Augusta,' the late d.u.c.h.ess of Devons.h.i.+re; 'Lady Mandeville'--I think it is Lady Mandeville, but the lady who dictated Glearvon's farewell letter to Calantha--is Lady Oxford. This letter she really dictated to Lord Byron to send to Lady Caroline Lamb, and is now very much offended that she has treated the matter so lightly as to introduce it into her book. The best character in it is the 'Princess of Madagascar' (Lady Holland), with all her Reviewers about her. The young Duke of Devons.h.i.+re is in the book, but I forget under what name. I need not say that the heroine is Lady Caroline's own self."

In July, 1824, she was out riding, when she accidentally met Byron's funeral on its way to Newstead. "I am sure," she wrote to Murray, July 13, 1824, "I am very sorry I ever said one unkind word against him." Her mind never recovered the shock, and she died in January, 1828, in the presence of her husband, at Melbourne House. (See also Appendix III., 6.)]

243.--To John Murray.

High Street, Cheltenham, Sept. 5, 1812.

DEAR SIR,--Pray have the goodness to send those despatches, and a No. of the _E.R._ with the rest. I hope you have written to Mr. Thompson, thanked him in my name for his present, and told him that I shall be truly happy to comply with his request.--How do you go on? and when is the graven image, "with _bays and wicked rhyme upon't_," to grace, or disgrace, some of our tardy editions?

Send me "_Rokeby_" [1] who the deuce is he?--no matter, he has good connections, and will be well introduced. I thank you for your inquiries: I am so so, but my thermometer is sadly below the poetical point. What will you give _me_ or _mine_ for a poem [2] of six cantos, (_when complete--no_ rhyme, _no_ recompense,) as like the last two as I can make them? I have some ideas which one day may be embodied, and till winter I shall have much leisure.

Believe me, yours very sincerely,

BYRON.

P. S.--My last question is in the true style of Grub Street; but, like _Jeremy Diddler_ [3], I only "ask for information."--Send me Adair on _Diet and Regimen_, just republished by Ridgway [4].

[Footnote 1: 'Rokeby', completed December 31, 1812, was published in the following year, with a dedication to John Morritt, to whom Rokeby belonged. It was, as Scott admits in the Preface to the edition of 1830, comparatively a failure. In the popularity of Byron he finds the chief cause of the small success which his poem obtained.

"To have kept his ground at the crisis when 'Rokeby' appeared," he writes, "its author ought to have put forth his utmost strength, and to have possessed all his original advantages, for a mighty and unexpected rival was advancing on the stage--a rival not in poetical powers only, but in that art of attracting popularity, in which the present writer had hitherto preceded better men than himself. The reader will easily see that Byron is here meant, who, after a little velitation of no great promise, now appeared as a serious candidate, in the first two cantos of 'Childe Harold'."

On this rivalry Byron wrote the pa.s.sage in his Diary for November 17, 1813. A further cause for the cold reception of 'Rokeby' was its inferiority both to the 'Lay' and to 'Marmion'. In Letter vii. of the 'Twopenny Post-bag', Moore writes thus of 'Rokeby'

"Should you feel any touch of 'poetical' glow, We've a Scheme to suggest--Mr. Sc--tt, you must know, (Who, we're sorry to say it, now works for the 'Row') Having quitted the Borders, to seek new renown, Is coming by long Quarto stages, to Town; And beginning with Rokeby (the job's sure to pay) Means to 'do' all the Gentlemen's Seats on the way.