The Young Melbourne & Lord M

by The Young Melbourne

  Such tributes were extremely gratifying. But they did not give much cause for encouragement. To be Prime Minister, to be a Minister of any kind, William required a party with which he could associate himself. And the prospect of any such party coming into power looked small indeed. The Tories seemed more safely in the saddle than ever. For the country, terrified by the ominous threat of revolution that muttered round the horizon, were more than ever suspicious of any administration likely to embark on a forward policy. And anyway the Whigs were in no condition to take office. Till they were prepared to adopt a progressive programme publicly they had no alternative to offer to the existing government. And so far from agreeing on such a policy, they were more divided than ever. The Grenvillites, now merely a fossilized remnant of eighteenth-century aristocratic domination, were against all reform. The Foxites, at heart nervous of change, said they must wait till the respectable classes of the community showed themselves anxious for it; headed by Lord Grey, they had pretty well retired from politics. The more active younger group had disintegrated into a rout of quarrelling factions. Some rushed to the extreme left; others, led by Brougham, bustled agitatedly about, now flirting with the extremists, now devising elaborate programmes of moderate change, now courting Canning’s favour—all in vain effort to find some effective cry with which to rally party and country to their support. As for a Canningite Coalition, there seemed little chance of that. The Government was mainly composed of die-hard Tories like Lord Eldon and the Duke of Wellington. And they felt themselves too strong to need to concede anything to the more liberalizing elements in public life.

  What was poor William to do? With an ironical smile and a despondent heart, he did as little as he could. Frustration and disappointment found expression in a prevailing mood of inertia. He was lax in his attendance at the House; when he was there he seldom made a speech. It was pleasanter and more profitable to stay at Brocket looking through old family letters, walking out with a gun after duck, and reading Sophocles in the library. As the years passed and no prospect of political influence appeared, his indolence grew stronger. Hope deferred maketh the heart lazy. He now sat for the local borough of Hertford: by the election of 1825, he found himself almost unable to face the effort required to ingratiate himself anew with his constituency. “William,” said the irritated Emily, “canvasses very idly and says constantly that it won’t do; sees everything in the light of his adversaries so that he disheartens all his own friends; and yet does not make up his mind to give up, but is always shilly shally.” It was thought at first that the seat would be uncontested. But suddenly the opposition put up a disreputable young rake called Duncombe, who plunged into the fray, scattering guineas on all sides, accusing William in a striking metaphor, drawn from the racecourse, of “being unsound in both forelegs,” and seeking to discredit his personal character by raking up the hoary scandals of his married life. With relief William seized the opportunity to retire from the fight. In the summer of 1826 London saw him once more a man of leisure. “In very good spirits,” it was noted, “at being out of things again.”

  It might have been expected that his frustrated energy would have found some other outlet. And in fact he did toy with the idea of literary composition. He contributed an occasional review to the Literary Gazette; and when in 1819 it was proposed to him to write the life of Sheridan, he accepted; began studying documents, making notes, and sketching out preliminary plans for chapters. However, within a year he had resigned the task to Tom Moore. History gives no reason. It seems likely to have been self-distrust. “I have read too much and too little,” he notes in his commonplace book somewhere about this time, “so much, that it has extinguished all the original fire of my genius, and yet not enough, to furnish me with the power of writing works of mature thinking and solid instruction.” Moreover, it was late for a man of his indolent temperament to set himself to learn a new profession. Politics might not be the occupation that best suited him; but he had been immersed in them for fifteen years. By now it needed the pressure of public life to make him concentrate on a given task. To keep his mind to the effort of sustained literary composition sufficiently to achieve anything like the standard required by his exacting taste, was perhaps beyond him. At all events, after giving up Sheridan’s biography he attempted nothing more. The period is as barren of literary achievement as it is of political.

  Meanwhile his private life pursued a grey and unprofitable course. Here indeed there had been changes. But time had made them, not William. The eighteenth century was a memory by now: and by 1826 the last of the figures which had irradiated its setting with so incomparable a splendour, had followed it into the shadow. Lady Bessborough had died suddenly in 1821, from a chill caught while travelling in Italy. Worn out by a life of tempest and disillusion, she was glad enough to quit the world; and though racked with pain, met her end with a gentle serenity, only ruffled a little by anxiety, lest her departure might distress those whom she loved. Three years before, she had been preceded to the grave by Lady Melbourne. Her end was melancholy and unlooked for. Up till 1816 her matchless vitality had shown no signs of flagging: indomitable as ever she continued to direct her household, entertain her friends, and plot her children’s advancement. Then suddenly a change came. She, who had triumphed relentlessly over so many enemies, fell herself a victim to the relentless force of mortality. Miserable, horribly fat, and doped with laudanum, she lay, at last deaf to the enticements of the world, in the clutches of a fatal disease. Only on her deathbed did the clouds lift to reveal a glimmer of her old self. She summoned Emily, now launched on a career of romance as varied as her own, to her bedside; and besought her as a last request to be true—not to her husband Lord Cowper, Lady Melbourne had too much sense to expect that—but to her first and most distinguished admirer, Lord Palmerston. And with her last breath she sought to fire William with the energy needed to achieve the great position for which from childhood she had designed him. What were his feelings, as he looked on her features, fixed in the enigmatic stillness of death? What ironical epitaph, mingling love and regret and disenchantment, rose to his lips as he took a last farewell of her who had played the chief part in moulding his disillusioning destiny? . . . No expression of his thoughts is recorded at the time; probably they were of a kind best kept to himself. Only as a very old man at Brocket, he was once found, lost in meditation, before her portrait. “A remarkable woman,” he murmured to himself, “a devoted mother, an excellent wife—but not chaste, not chaste.”

  Lady Melbourne’s place in the family was taken by Emily. Her personality was less compelling than her mother’s. Bewitchingly pretty in a soft dark style, she was a charming sunshiny worldling, born with an instinctive shrewdness and social accomplishment, but spontaneous and warm-hearted, moved by no fiercer ambition than to make life as pleasant as possible for herself and everyone else. As a hostess, however, she was equally successful. Panshanger, her country seat, was as famous a fashionable centre as Melbourne House had been: and life there carried on the same tradition, disorderly and elegant, brilliant and unedifying, “full,” says a visitor, “of vice and agreeableness, foreigners and roués.” Emily had also inherited her mother’s family sense. It was natural to her to gather her brothers round her, to keep an eye on their healths, their careers, and their affairs of the heart. William, she did find a little hard to manage; he was, she complained, so lazy and undecided—besides he ate too much. But she was devoted to him, and delighted in his company. He on his side took great pleasure in her; the beauty and success of “that little devil Emily” remained, all through life, his pride and joy. Even when he was sixty-one and she fifty-three he could not forbear asking Queen Victoria if she did not think Emily was wearing “a very dashing gown.” And when the Queen expressed her admiration, “she beats any of them now,” he broke out, “she was always like a pale rose.” After his mother died, he spent much of his time at Panshanger: lounging, arguing and being late for meals, as in a second
home.

  He needed one. There was little domestic amenity to be enjoyed at his own house. Glenarvon and Lady Heathcote’s ball between them had done for Caroline. Admiration had grown to be as necessary to her as air; nothing had any interest to her except in so far as it helped her to make an impression on other people. The fact that she was now an outcast dependent solely on solitary and impersonal interests for her satisfaction meant that the backbone of her life was broken. There was nothing for her to do but disintegrate into oblivion.

  Alas, it was a slow and painful process. For she was too vital to accept defeat. Instead, with the fitful energy of despair, she cast about for any means by which she might once more compel the attention and applause of mankind. Like an actress who has outlived her popularity, she continued, with unquenchable hope, again and again to try her luck before the footlights. Sometimes she appeared as a woman of intellect. During this period she published two novels and a number of poems, notably one to her husband which opened with the surprising couplet

  “Oh, I adore thee, William Lamb,

  But hate to hear thee say God damn.”

  She also presented herself to the public as a sportswoman. At the time of George IV’s Coronation she wrote offering her services as riding master to the official champion, whose task it was to ride into Westminster Hall, and fling down a challenge to anyone who might dispute the King’s right to his throne. At home, Caroline sought to make an impression by playing the more modest role of efficient housewife. Fashionable visitors to Brighton one spring were astonished to see Lady Caroline Lamb on horseback in the public street spiritedly haggling with the grocer about the price of cheese: her table at Brocket was piled with elaborately worked-out schemes for the economical regulation of her household. The elections of 1819 gave her a chance to blossom forth in yet another character, that of political woman. George Lamb was standing for Westminster; and Caroline, though protesting that she was at death’s door, at once drove up to London and invaded the local taverns, where she diced and drank with the voters in order to win them to the good cause. One day driving through the streets in her carriage, she was assaulted with a volley of stones by a mob of angry opponents. Here was an opportunity indeed for a heroine to display her quality. Stepping out with head held high, “I am not afraid of you,” cried Caroline magnificently, “I know you will not hurt a woman—for you are Englishmen!”

  In other moods she studied less to discover effective roles, than to collect an appreciative audience. Within a few months of the publication of Glenarvon we find her inviting her cousin Harriet Granville to pay her a visit of reconciliation at Melbourne House. “I went yesterday to Whitehall,” writes Harriet, “and followed the page through the dark and winding passages and staircases. I was received with rapturous joy, embraces and tremendous spirits. I expected she would put on an appearance of something, but to do her justice she only displayed a total want of shame and consummate impudence, which whatever they may be in themselves are at least better or rather less disgusting than pretending or acting a more interesting part. I was dragged to the unresisting William and dismissed with a repetition of embrassades and professions. And this is the guilty broken-hearted Calantha who could only expiate her crimes with her death!”

  In later years Caroline made sporadic attempts to recover her place in London society; wrote beseeching the Duke of Wellington to use his influence to get her re-admitted to Almack’s, suddenly sent out invitations for an evening party at Brocket. But for the most part she fought shy of her old friends. And, like many other people who have failed to obtain a footing in fashionable society, she fell back on intellectual. It was not the great world that was deserting her, so she put it to herself, it was she who was leaving the great world, in pursuit of the higher satisfactions of the spirit. Accordingly, she made friends with Godwin, the philosopher, with Lady Morgan, the novelist, and Miss Benger, the historian: and was to be found, an exotic figure, at little reunions up three pairs of stairs, where, refreshed by cups of tea carried in by the solitary maidservant, the genteel intelligentsia of the Metropolis discoursed to one another on Truth and Beauty. In return she took the opportunity to display herself in the agreeable character of fairy god-mother; showered her new friends with unexpected gifts of fruit and opera tickets, and invited them to Melbourne House. There on her sofa she would lie, swathed in becoming folds of muslin and surrounded by souvenirs of Lord Byron, talking by the hour of the great people she had known, and the ardours and endurances of her life of passion.

  Sometimes she asked her new friends to meet her old. There is a comical account of a dinner she gave in 1820 consisting of a number of artists and writers—notably William Blake and Sir Thomas Lawrence—some humble country acquaintances and a few persons of ton, whom she had managed to entice into her house. It was not a success. Naïve Blake, it is true, was happy enough. “There is a great deal of kindness in that lady,” he said looking at Caroline. But the ambitious Lawrence was not at all pleased at being seen by his fashionable patrons in such dingy-looking company: while the grandees, after taking one look at the extraordinary people they had been asked to meet, relapsed into disgusted silence. Caroline herself added to the general awkwardness by commenting loudly and unfavourably on the rest of her guests, to whichever one of them she happened to be talking to.

  Friends, however, had never been enough for her; to be a queen of hearts remained her most cherished aspiration; and she snatched at the slightest chance of a love affair. They were not glorious chances. She was now too notorious and eccentric to attract anyone much worth attracting. The wife of William Lamb, the lover of Byron, had to make do with hardened roués, ready to take up with any woman, or callow youths, glad to have their names connected with so celebrated a personality. However, beggars cannot be choosers. And Caroline set all her powers to the task of making the best of a bad job; represented the most trivial intrigue to herself as a passionate romantic drama; and threw herself into it with an extravagance of melodramatic gesture all the more preposterous by contrast with the ignominious unreality of the emotions involved. Every few months saw the repetition in caricature of the Byron love affair. The old limelight was switched on: the old tricks played out: she swooned, she rhapsodized, she pounded the organ all night; she made scenes of jealousy and scenes of reconciliation. Each lover, during the period of his reign, was awarded the privilege of wearing a ring, given her by Byron. For the most presentable of her conquests, the twenty-one year old Bulwer Lytton, she even staged a death scene, summoning him to her bedside, where with pathetic faltering accents she sought to move him by a last declaration of love.

  Such exhibitions could not be kept secret. Caroline did not wish them to be; besides, the sort of men she was now entangled with liked to brag of their conquest. By 1821 her reputation had sunk so low that she was suspected of an intrigue with any man she was seen with, down to her son’s tutor and the family doctor, Mr. Walker. One of her stockings, so ran scandalous rumour, had been found at the end of Mr. Walker’s bed. This seems to have been a libel; but London society was only too pleased to accept any evidence justifying their hostility towards her. While the Lamb family believed everything against her, and were proportionately disgusted. “It is such a low-lived thing to take a Scotch doctor for a lover,” commented Emily viciously.

  Nor did her affairs afford Caroline herself much compensating satisfaction. The old romantic properties were grown dreadfully faded by this time; in the hands of inferior players, the Byronic drama showed fustian indeed. She pursued her quarries with the effrontery of desperation. But try as she might she could not recapture the thrill of the past; and she quickly tired of the chase. Within a short time she dropped it; and, restless and disappointed, turned in search of some new victim to persecute with her feverish attentions.

  But indeed, poor Caroline, any effort she made to mend her broken life ended equally in disaster. Each new part she appeared in was a failure. Her later novel
s made no hit: the Coronation champion preferred to employ a more conventional instructor: and her electioneering vagaries merely made her the laughing-stock of London. Her housewifely activities were also unsuccessful—“What is the use of saving on the one hand, if you squander all away on the other?” exclaimed William in despair. While the only effect of her intricate domestic schemes was to make the servants leave. “The servants at Brocket,” says Emily, “still continue to pass through, like figures in a magic lantern. A new cook whom Haggard,5 was delighted to secure from her great character and fifty guineas wages, stopped only a week . . . Haggard, talking of Caroline, is so good. He says she cannot get any worse, so one hopes she may get better.”

  Caroline did not succeed in making friends either. The beau monde had done with her for good. Emily, out of affection for William, got her readmitted to Almack’s: but the doors of the great houses remained closed. As for her evening party at Brocket, it was a fiasco. The rooms shone with a galaxy of candles; the tables were spread with supper for eighty people; Caroline sent her own carriage to fetch those guests who lived far off. But only ten people came. Her excursions into other social spheres were less openly disastrous. Then, as always, the intelligentsia were susceptible to the charms of rank and fashion; while Caroline was delighted at first to find people who gazed at her with awe, and believed every word she said. All the same there was a gulf between them and her that no amount of snobbery on their part, or vanity on hers, could overspan. Serious, stiff and middle class, they were bewildered alike by the splendour of her surroundings, the candour of her confidences and the modish effusiveness of her manners. She was equally at sea with them. That Lady Morgan should not be able to afford to keep a groom of the chambers!—Caroline had not imagined that such sordid poverty was possible. And she con-sternated Miss Benger, by suddenly bursting in on her one morning, while she was occupied in the plebeian task of counting the washing. Poor Miss Benger! she thought she would die of shame when Lady Caroline’s dog pulled out a heap of dirty handkerchiefs and stockings from under the sofa, where she had hastily shoved them on the arrival of her distinguished visitor. Moreover, after the first fun of impressing them was over, Caroline was bored with her new friends. Intellectual persons for the most part are less socially accomplished than fashionable ones; their conversation may have more stuff in it, but it is not so graceful. Caroline, accustomed to Devonshire House, grew conscious of this. “These sort of people,” she confided to a friend, “are not always agreeable, but vulgar, quaint and formal. Still I feel indebted to them, for they have one and all treated me with kindness . . . when I was turned out.” In plain words she only associated with them, because those she liked better would have nothing to do with her. It was the devastating truth, and she recognized it.