Part 3

’Tis vain--upon my heart, my brow, Broods grief no words can tell, But grief itself more idle now-- Loved one, fare thee well.”

But notwithstanding her grief and sorrow, Lady Caroline could not live without admirers, and for a space young Bulwer came under her spell. His first acquaintance with her commenced in his childhood. A poor man was injured in a crowd, and with her usual impulsiveness she had him placed in her carriage and took him to his home. Bulwer heard of the incident, and touched by it wrote some childish verses on it, and sent them to Lady Caroline. Brocket, it should be remembered, was not far from Knebworth, where the boy was living with his mother. Lady Caroline, pleased with the verses, asked Mrs. Bulwer to bring the child to see her. Lady Caroline took a fancy to him, and painted his portrait as a child nearly nude, seated on a rock in the midst of the sea, with under it the motto, “Seul sur la terre.” Such a visit was made once or twice a year in the time that followed.

But when Bulwer was twenty-one he was destined to come into closer intimacy with Lady Caroline, with whose remarkable powers of conversation he was thoroughly fascinated. She was eighteen years older than he was, but looked much younger, a fact due probably to her slight rounded figure and a childlike mode of wearing her pale golden hair in close curls. Bulwer describes her appearance, and it is interesting to see how she must have retained nearly all the features and qualities she possessed as a girl. She had large hazel eyes, capable of much varied expression, exceedingly good teeth, a pleasant laugh, and a musical intonation of voice. She had to a surpassing degree the attribute of charm, and never failed to please if she wished to do so. Her talk was, according to Bulwer, wildly original, “combining great and sudden contrasts, from deep pathos to infantine drollery; now sentimental, now shrewd, it sparkled with anecdotes of the great world and of the eminent people among whom she had lived. Ten minutes after, it became gravely eloquent with religious enthusiasm, or shot off into metaphysical speculations--sometimes absurd, sometimes profound--generally suggestive and interesting.”

Bulwer delighted to listen to what she could tell him about Byron. Lady Caroline, of course, was pleased to imagine herself in love with Bulwer, and the young man’s vanity was hugely flattered. On his return to Cambridge the pair corresponded, and a third person reading the letters might have thought that they were actually lovers, but that was not the case.

Lady Caroline fell ill, and when she was somewhat recovered sent for Bulwer to tell him that she felt she had acted wrongly in loving him, and was endeavouring to overcome her feeling. He was to be her dearest friend, or like a son might be to her, but in no way her lover. Bulwer, still fascinated, agreed, and went away more in love than ever.

Later on he was invited to Brocket for the purpose of attending a ball at Panshanger. He arrived at three or four in the afternoon and found the house full of company. He did not see Lady Caroline until dinner. To his surprise and chagrin she avoided speaking to him, and did not allow him to drive to the ball in her carriage. She had, in the meantime, found another admirer in the person of Mr. Russell,[9] a natural son of the Duke of Bedford, a very handsome man, very fashionable, in the prime of life. She took no notice of Bulwer until the end of the evening, and by that time he was furiously angry. As they all went up to bed he said to her, “I shall be gone to-morrow before you are up. Good-bye.” About nine o’clock the next morning she sent a little note to his room imploring him not to go till he had seen her. He then went to her room, and was received with affection. Lady Caroline wept, entreated forgiveness, and finally persuaded Bulwer to stay on. He went out riding with her and Mr. Russell, but felt so miserable he soon returned to the house, retired to his room, and gave way to his feelings. In this state she found him, and again tried to pacify him. On rejoining the party downstairs he noticed that Mr. Russell was wearing a ring which Byron had given Lady Caroline, and which she only allowed those she loved to wear. Bulwer had had the privilege of wearing it; Lady Caroline had even wanted him to accept it, but he would not on account of its costliness. Bulwer’s resentment increased. The rest must be told in his own words: “After dinner I threw myself upon the sofa. Music was playing. Lady Caroline came to me. ‘Are you mad?’ said she. I looked up. The tears stood in my eyes. I could not have spoken a word for the world. What do you think she said aloud? ‘Don’t play this melancholy air. It affects Mr. Bulwer so that he is actually weeping.’ My tears, my softness, my _love_ were over in a moment. I sprang up, laughed, talked, and was the life of the company. But when we broke up for the evening, I went to her and said: ‘Farewell for ever. It is over. Now I see you in your true light. Vain and heartless, you have only trifled with my feelings in order to betray me. I despise as well as leave you. Instead of jealousy I only feel contempt. Farewell. Go, and be happy.’”

Bulwer records that a fever ensued and that he lost twenty ounces of blood, but that he endeavoured and with success to forget the whole episode, an easy feat since his feeling had chiefly been a mixture of vanity and imagination. He also testified to Lamb’s kindness to him. “I think he saw my feelings. He is a singularly fine character for a man of the world.”

The episode, however, left a deep impression on Bulwer, for he drew her in several of his early sketches for novels.[10] He also described her in a satirical sketch of Almack’s, which expresses Bulwer’s belief that her attachments were as innocent as they were fickle:

“But all thy woes have sprung from feeling; Thine only guilt was not concealing; And now mine unforgotten friend, Though thou art half estranged from me, My softened spirit fain would send One pure and pitying sigh to thee.”

For a time Lady Caroline continued to correspond with him, and her letters give a picture of her life at Brocket. “Happy, healthy, quiet, contented, I get up at half-past four, ride about with Haggard, and see harvest men at work in this pretty, confined green country, read a few old books, see no one, hear from no one, and occasionally play at chess with Dr. Goddard, or listen to the faint high warblings of Miss Richardson. This contrast to my sometime hurried life delights me. Besides, I am well. And that is a real blessing to one’s self and one’s companions.”[11] She also says that she now, in her soothed and chastened spirit, detests wit and humour and satire. Bulwer seems to have made Lady Caroline his confidante in his love affair with Rosina Wheeler, the haughty, brilliant, and beautiful girl whom he married. For a time she sat at Lady Caroline’s feet, and in some ways resembled her model in temperament.

Lady Caroline affected or more probably sincerely imagined that she possessed a love of literature, and frequented the literary salons of the day, and was to be seen at Lady Cork’s, Lady Charleville’s, Miss Spence’s, and Miss Lydia White’s. Again, any one who had known Byron possessed a passport to her favour. Thus she made the acquaintance of Isaac Nathan, the musical composer who had been intimate with Byron, and for whom Byron wrote the “Hebrew Melodies” for Nathan to set to music, and asked him to come and sing to her. “Come,” she writes, “and soothe one who ought to be happy but is not.” Nathan composed the music to many of her own verses, which he published in 1829 in a curious little volume entitled _Fugitive Pieces_. It contains the lines written by Lady Caroline that form a strange comment on her husband’s well-known inveterate and incurable habit of decorating his conversation with oaths:

“Yes, I adore thee, William Lamb, But hate to hear thee say God d----: Frenchmen say English cry d---- d----, But why swear’st thou? thou art a _Lamb_.”

Hobhouse went to see her at Melbourne House, in 1824, and had a two hours’ talk with her, and found her furious at what she considered the misrepresentation of her and of her attachment to Byron in Medwin’s _Conversations with Byron_. She wrote Medwin a long letter which, making allowance for her vivid imagination, may be regarded as her _apologia_. She also sent Hobhouse sixteen quarto volumes of journals kept by her since 1806, which he returned, assuring her that no purpose would be served by their publication.

Another literary acquaintance was a man she was pleased to call a rising poet, Wilmington Fleming. His works have not survived, and judging by the verses he wrote describing the eccentric fashion in which Lady Caroline celebrated her wedding-day at Brocket, the world is scarcely the loser. He may have helped Lady Caroline to some extent, probably in the capacity of secretary, with her own literary work. For this assistance she seems to have paid him when she had any money,--she was the most extravagant of women, her father-in-law always called her “Her Lavishship,”--and there is a curious letter in which she tells Fleming, who has evidently asked for payment: “I received no money but just what the servants got for their food. I have been much too ill to write or see you.” She evidently tried to help him to get his poems published.

But Lady Caroline’s health was shattered, and despite the separation she turned more and more to her husband as her best protector and truest friend. The last years were spent at Brocket, and under wise surveillance, or more probably on account of enfeebled vitality, she had grown calmer and more reasonable. In November 1827 she underwent an operation, and in the middle of December alarming symptoms set in, and she was brought from Brocket to London (to Melbourne House) in order to have better medical assistance. She herself was in a state of calmness and resignation, complaining little, and unwilling to see many people. Her husband had been appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland in May, and was of course resident at Dublin. He was kept informed of her condition. She knew she had no chance of recovery, and was only anxious to live long enough to see Lamb again. He was summoned in time, and she was able to talk to him and enjoy his society. She died peacefully about nine o’clock on Sunday evening, 26th January 1828, and was buried at Hatfield. Lamb felt her death deeply, and her influence over him never quite died away. Years later he used to ask, “Shall we meet in another world?”

* * * * *

Something must be said of Lady Caroline Lamb as a writer. She published three novels, of which _Glenarvon_ is the most important, and some fugitive verse.

_Glenarvon_ was published by Colburn anonymously--though uncontradicted rumour attributed it to her--in three volumes in 1816. An Italian translation appeared in Venice in 1817, and it was reprinted in one volume in London in 1865 under the title of _The Fatal Passion_. It is an autobiographical novel, of which the hero is Byron (Glenarvon) and the heroine herself (Lady Calantha Avondale), whose character she thus describes:

“Her feelings, indeed, swelled into a tide too powerful for the unequal resistance of her understanding; her motives appeared the very best; but the actions which resulted from them were absurd and exaggerated. Thoughts swift as lightning hurried through her brain; projects, seducing but visionary, crowded upon her view; without a curb she followed the impulse of her feelings, and those feelings varied with every varying interest and impression.

“Calantha turned with disgust from the slavish followers of prejudice. She disdained the beaten track, and she thought that virtue would be for her a safe, a sufficient, guide ... a fearless spirit raised her, as she fondly imagined, above the common herd.”[12]

She actually printed in the novel, without alteration or disguise, the farewell letter that Byron had sent her, but in other directions her portrait of Byron is a mere caricature. In a letter to Moore he said: “The picture can’t be good. I did not sit long enough.” Lady Holland is introduced into the story as the Princess of Madagascar, Rogers as the pale poet, William Lamb as Lord Avondale, Lord and Lady Melbourne as Sir Richard and Lady Mowbray, Lady Oxford as Lady Mandeville. Barbary House is Holland House, and Monteith House, Brocket Hall. It is a rhapsodical tale, sentimental and melodramatic, yet written with eloquence and vivacity. The scene in which one of the women characters commits suicide by wrapping her cloak over her horse’s eyes and calmly riding over the cliff is almost fine. The novel contains a song, “The Waters of Elle,” that is the best poem Lady Caroline wrote.

In 1822 she published, also anonymously, in two volumes, her second novel, _Graham Hamilton_, in which she endeavours to show the difficulties and dangers involved in weakness and irresolution. The manuscript was placed in Colburn’s hands two years earlier, with the injunction not to publish it then or to name the author. It contains the following verses, which had been written many years before:

“If thou couldst know what ’tis to weep, To weep unpitied and alone, The livelong night, whilst others sleep, Silent and mournful watch to keep, Thou wouldst not do what I have done.

If thou couldst know what ’tis to smile, To smile whilst scorn’d by every one, To hide, by many an artful wile, A heart that knows more grief than guile, Thou wouldst not do what I have done.

And oh! if thou couldst think how drear, When friends are changed, and health is gone, The world would to thine eyes appear, If thou, like me, to none wert dear, Thou wouldst not do what I have done.”

Her last excursion into fiction was _Ada Reis_, published in three volumes in 1823, a fantastic Eastern tale, very Byronic in character. Her husband, somewhat disturbed by his wife’s literary labours, wrote to John Murray severely criticising this book before publication, and begging him to prevail on the author to amend it. It contains two songs, one of which, beginning, “Weep for what thou’st lost, love,” is accompanied by the music specially composed for it by Isaac Nathan. Another edition of the book, in two volumes, was published the next year in Paris.

In “A New Canto,” published anonymously in 1819, she made an attempt at satire, obviously on the Byronic model. The poem describes the end of the world, and opens thus:

“I’m sick of fame--I’m gorged with it--so full I almost could regret the happier hour When northern oracles proclaimed me dull, Grieving my Lord should so mistake his power-- E’en they, who now my consequence would lull, And vaunt they hail’d and nurs’d the opening flower Vile cheats! He knew not, impudent Reviewer, Clear spring of Helicon from common sewer.”

All Lady Caroline’s works, both prose and verse, are forgotten and repose unread on the topmost shelves of old libraries. But they form an index to her mind and character, and should be studied side by side with her recorded actions. It is usual to dismiss her as mad and unaccountable for her actions. That is the easiest way, but is it the justest? Her gifts were by no means inconsiderable, but in the circle into which she was born there was, in the early nineteenth century, no outlet for the special activities and for the original turn of mind she possessed. Even her capacity for feeling degenerated into sentimentality. She lacked training. Under wise, skilful, and gentle guidance she would most probably have developed into a fine woman. As it was, she certainly did not help and probably retarded her husband’s political career. But vivacity, high spirits, originality, courage combined with sensibility, are not too common in this world, and when such qualities run to waste, it is an irreparable loss out of life.

II

LADY PEEL

“... thou upon the statesman’s path hast cast The quiet sunshine of domestic gladness.”

Julia Floyd, the third child and second daughter of General Sir John Floyd, Bart., K.B., was born in India, on 19th November 1795. Her father had a distinguished military career and came of a family of soldiers.--Documentary evidence points to a certain Thomas Floyd as an ancestor of the family who obtained a commission in the 1st Dragoon Guards in 1680. His son John became a captain in the same regiment and was present at the battle of Minden on 1st August 1759, and died on duty in Germany in the following September. He left two sons, John and Thomas, and two daughters, Elizabeth and Caroline. Thomas went into the Navy, and as a midshipman volunteered for the expedition to the North Pole in 1773 under the command of Captain Constantine Phipps. Horatio Nelson, also as a midshipman, took part in the expedition. Thomas Floyd kept a journal of his adventures in the Arctic regions.[13] He told his brother that “it was always his opinion that in favourable years--and at the proper season--it was very possible to approach much nearer the Pole than they did.” Thomas died in 1778.

Of the daughters, Elizabeth never married, and Caroline became the wife of John Christopher Rideout of Banghurst House, Hants.

In accordance with the custom in the eighteenth century, John Floyd received his commission as Cornet in Elliott’s Light Horse in 1760, when he was only twelve years old. He had lost his father two years before. He saw active service that year, having his horse shot under him at the battle of Emsdorf, and was only saved from death at the hand of a French dragoon by the intervention of Captain (afterwards General) Ainslie. The boy then had two years’ leave of absence and finished his education at Utrecht under Lord Pembroke’s care, who saw to it that he should also become proficient in horsemanship. He was gazetted Lieutenant in 1763 and Captain-Lieutenant in 1770. He made the grand tour of Europe, 1777-79, with Lord Herbert. In 1781 he was appointed Lieutenant-Colonel of the 23rd (afterwards the 19th) Light Dragoons, the “glorious old XIXth” of Indian history. In February 1782 the regiment sailed for India, arriving at Madras eight months later; Floyd wrote a long and most interesting letter describing the voyage to Lady Pembroke. Warren Hastings was Governor-General of India.

John Floyd’s letters are delightful and instructive reading. They reveal a highly intelligent and observant man, a keen soldier, possessing great gentleness of character and a strong affection for his family and friends. He describes the country, its flora and fauna, and writes himself down a pre-Darwinian when he tells Lord Pembroke, “The monkeys are far the most innocent part of the _human species_--for I hope you do not doubt that they are a branch of our family.” He was not wholly dissatisfied with his life in India, though he longed for active service. “When I am to return to England God only knows; I endeavour to avoid thinking of it. I am sensible the chances are against my returning at all. I aim indeed at a little fame, and I would fain return so as to venture to marry.”

When in 1790 he was at length ordered to the field, he writes to his sister Elizabeth that he has made all provision for her, “but I do not think I shall die a bit the sooner on this account, for I propose marrying when I go back to England, and having a prodigious number of children.”

Floyd commanded the cavalry with distinguished ability during the Mysore campaigns of 1790, 1791, 1792, and 1799. It had always been his opinion that the first military miracle to be performed in India would be wrought by cavalry, that a small body of well-disciplined Europeans on horseback, judiciously led, would defeat and destroy myriads of Indian enemies.

During the lull between the campaigns of 1790 and 1791 Floyd found time to carry out the wish that had long been in his heart. He was now forty-three years of age, and had fallen in love with Rebecca Juliana, the beautiful daughter of Charles Darke, a free merchant of Madras. The wedding took place at Madras, 29th January 1791, and in February Floyd was in the field again. There were four children of the marriage, all born in India, three girls--Miranda born in 1792, Julia (the future Lady Peel) in 1795, and Flavia in 1797--and one boy, Henry, born in 1793. Both parents were devoted to their children. Mrs. Floyd attended to them entirely herself, and would not allow a native servant to go near them, for her husband writes: “She unfortunately dislikes all natives, from His Highness the Nawab to the meanest of them.” The children were all healthy and good looking. Mrs. Floyd used to send her husband affectionate little notes about herself--her health was not good--and the children, referring to Julia as a delightful little kitten. These notes, in accordance with the regulations then in force for private letters sent to the army in the field, had to be 2 inches wide by 6-3/8 inches long, and to be rolled, not folded.

In 1798 Floyd, who was now a Major-General, began to wish to return to England as soon as all was quiet, and he could be spared, but it was July 1800 before, with his wife and four children, he reached England. Julia, with Miranda and Henry, were placed with the Rev. M. Sketchley at Parson’s Green, while a permanent abode for the family was searched for and made ready for their reception. Floyd was prepared to spend a sum of £10,000 to £15,000 on the purchase of a suitable country house. He took the very greatest interest in his children’s education from their earliest years, and when Miranda was only seven we find his wife telling him that she is trying all possible ways to bring her on in her reading, and that she sketches quite prettily, and turns a letter with her pen better than her mother can do. Floyd’s letters to his children when he was separated from them are delightful. In May 1801--he had become Lieutenant-General in January--he went to Tunbridge Wells with his wife and little daughter Flavia, and his sister Elizabeth, and wrote to Miranda:

“Harry’s[14] desire was told his mamma that she should buy him a wife, but as that is thought to be an affair of great consequence, Harry must be very exact in describing the sort of wife he would like, whether long or short, thick or thin, young or old. Handsome, no doubt. There are some sweet creatures in a pastry-cook’s shop from three inches to a matter of six inches tall. But if one of these wives is sent I am afraid he will be so fond that he will quite eat her up. In the meantime, he may consider the matter....

“You must read my letters to Harry and Julia, for though I address them to you as a young lady considerably advanced in her education, they in part belong to you all, for I love you all most tenderly.”