What Lord Byron Learned from Lady Caroline Lamb

Abstract

Lady Caroline Lamb fictionalized the Byronic persona in Glenarvon (1816) and gave voice to the female characters that remain largely silent in Byron’s early work. Byron responded to her mimicry and to the female perspective of Glenarvon by creating a feminized hero and strong speaking roles for women in Don Juan, though his stated purpose was to undermine, not uphold, feminine power.

Notes

[1] Leslie Marchand notes that the items cast into the bonfire were undoubtedly fake (Letters 2: 260n).

[2] Lady Caroline Lamb to John Murray, n.d. John Murray Archive.

[3] Bruce Papers, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, MS Eng. C.5753, f. 135–137.

[4] Lady Caroline Lamb to Lord Byron. n.d. (July 1814). John Murray Archive.

[5] I am indebted to Professor Graham Pont’s generosity in sharing his research on the life of Isaac Nathan. The sheet music of “My Life I Love You,” may be found contained in a bound collection of Nathan’s music in the Beinecke Library, Yale University. The setting of “Farewell” occurs in Lady Caroline Lamb’s Glenarvon.

[6] Letter to John Murray, 1813. John Murray Archive. In Caroline’s novel, this verse becomes:  By that smile which made me blest

 And left me soon the wretch you see—

 By that heart I once possest,

 Which now, they say, is given to thee—

 By St. Clara’s wrongs and woes—

 Trust not young Glenarvon’s vows. (Glenarvon 2: 194–195)

[7] Peter Graham precedes me here, in noting Byron’s women would have to become “potent, complex beings” (90, 118).

[8] The poem is titled, strangely, “To Caroline,” and dates from 1805, well before he met Lady Caroline—but she had undoubtedly read it (Poetical Works 1: 135).

[9] Byron’s letter was reproduced as a lithographic facsimile, apparently by Lady Caroline for Medwin, after publication of his Conversations with Lord Byron. Leslie Marchand accepts the letter as undoubtedly Byron’s handwriting, suggesting that it must have been composed on August 12, just after Byron had convinced Caroline to rejoin her husband. (Letters 2: 185).

[10] Hobhouse thought of de Staël’s Works. Jerome McGann suggests a possible alternative in Jane Austen’s Persuasion. See Poetical Works 5: 680n.

[11] Byron wrote “boils” and “curdles” rather than “rushes” in canceled versions of line three, an echo of the volcanism he continued to identify with Lady Caroline (see note to line 1555 in Poetical Works 5: 71).

[12] Childe Harold’s Monitor consisted of sixty‐two pages of couplets and thirty‐two of notes. Henry Colburn published Harold the Exile in September 1819—at three volumes and 21 shillings it was longer than, and twice as expensive as Don Juan.

[13] Monthly Review, second series, 94 (1821): 329.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Paul Douglass

Paul Douglass is the author of Lady Caroline Lamb: A Biography (Palgrave, 2004) and co‐editor with Frederick Burwick of Byron and Nathan’s A Selection of Hebrew Melodies, Ancient and Modern (Alabama, 1992).