Alas, there was no doubt about her behaviour to the rest of the world. In spite of William and Miss Webb, Caroline’s condition of mind during the last two years had progressively deteriorated. The disaster at Lady Heathcote’s ball had finally undermined her belief in her illusions; she had realized her failure there, too keenly for her to be able ever again to play the role of heroine with her old confidence in its success. Yet her vanity was too fundamental for her to be able to profit by the stern lessons of experience. She could not face the fact that she was wrong; so she was unable to reform herself. Instead, bewildered, terrified and resentful, she rushed blindly about, seeking, she hardly knew how, to put her shattered day-dreams together again. At times, as we have seen, she made futile efforts to behave with her former self-assurance; chased after the Duke of Wellington, paraded the streets of Brussels half naked. But for the most part, she stayed at home where, surrounded by a swarm of page boys whom she alternately spoiled and bullied, she tried to forget her gnawing sense of shame by indulging every whim of fancy, yielding to every gust of distraught temper. Her eccentricities grew more and more marked, her tantrums wilder than ever before. It became growingly impossible to live with her. The breaking-point was reached in April, 1816, when, provoked by some trifling act of mischief on the part of one of her pages, she flung a ball so hard at his head that it drew blood. “Oh, my Lady, you’ve killed me!” he cried out. “Oh, God!” she yelled, tearing out into the hall, “I have murdered the page.”
As a matter of fact he was hardly hurt. But there was no telling, the Lambs felt, what might happen next time. Caroline was certainly a lunatic, and probably a dangerous one. They made up their minds that it was impossible for William to live with her any longer. In a body they went to William and once more demanded a separation. This time he did not refuse.
Formal separations, however, entail lengthy preliminaries. For three weeks Melbourne House was made hideous by a succession of appalling scenes, in which the Lambs told Caroline, with brutal frankness, that she was mad, and she in return now stormed, now pleaded. Neither was of any avail: the arrangements went inexorably on. Beside herself with fury and despair, Caroline resolved on revenge. Before she was cast out of the house, she would at least publish her story to the world in such a way, as to justify herself and confound her enemies. Accordingly, dressed for some mysterious reason in page’s costume, she proceeded to sit up day and night writing. Some weeks later an old copyist called Woodhouse was summoned to Melbourne House, where, to his astonishment, he was confronted by what he took at first to be a boy of fourteen, who presented him with the manuscript of a novel. Before the end of May this novel, Glenarvon, made its appearance on the book-sellers’ tables.
It is a deplorable production: an incoherent cross between a realistic novel of fashionable life and a fantastic tale of terror, made preposterous by every absurd device—assassins, spectres, manacled maniacs, children changed at birth—that an imagination nurtured on mock-Gothic romance could suggest. But it has its interest, as revealing the way that Caroline contrived to reshape her story so as to please her vanity. She appears as Calantha, a heroine, noble, innocent, fascinating, but too impulsive for success in a hard-hearted world. Her husband, Lord Avondale, otherwise William, in spite of the fact that he too is unusually noble-hearted, neglects her, and corrupts her morals by his cynical views. In consequence, she yields to the temptations of a depraved society and finally, though only after heroic resistance on her part, is seduced by Byron, here called Glenarvon. He is Byronism incarnate; beautiful and gifted beyond belief, but driven by the pangs of a conscience burdened with inexpiable crimes, to go about betraying and ruining people in a spirit of gloomy desperation. Though Calantha is the love of his life, he deserts her out of pure devilry. The heartless world turns against her; she dies of a broken heart: Avondale dies shortly afterwards out of sympathy. For Glenarvon a more sensational fate is reserved. He jumps off a ship into the sea after sailing about for days, pursued by a phantom vessel manned by revengeful demons of gigantic size.
The tension of this dramatic tale is relieved by some thinly veiled satirical portraits of the Lamb family, the Devonshire family, Lady Oxford, Lady Holland, and a number of other leading social figures, notably the influential Lady Jersey. Its moral is that Caroline’s misfortunes were Byron’s fault, William’s fault, society’s fault—anyone’s fault, in fact, but her own.
The world did not accept this view. Glenarvon had a success of scandal; three editions were called for within a few weeks. But it dealt the death blow to what remained of Caroline’s social position. Ever since Lady Heathcote’s ball she had kept it on sufferance; certain people had continued to countenance her out of affection for her relations. Now she had set out deliberately, and in print, to insult these last of her supporters. It is not surprising that they too turned against her. In desperate bravado she had continued to go into society, at the time the book was appearing; only to find that her cousins avoided her, Lord Holland cut her dead, and Lady Jersey scratched her name off the list of Almack’s Club. At last she had succeeded in putting herself completely outside the pale. And she was never to get inside it again.
As for the Lambs, they were almost out of their minds. For many years, so they not unjustifiably considered, they had endured Caroline’s goings-on with singular patience. And in return she had chosen to wound them in their two tenderest points, family loyalty and regard for appearances. To people brought up with Lady Melbourne’s tradition of discretion, no worse torment can be imagined, than to have the intimacies of family life displayed in public. And in such an unfavourable light! What cause for odious triumph would the book not give to that dowdy and envious section of society which had always maligned them? While, when they thought what their beloved William must be feeling as he saw Glenarvon lying open on the tables of every house he entered, their fury almost suffocated them.
Caroline was impenitent. William, she asserted, had enjoyed the book very much. That she should have succeeded in persuading herself of this, is the most extraordinary of all her extraordinary feats of self-deception. In fact William was utterly crushed. He had heard nothing of the book till the morning of its appearance. “Caroline,” he said, coming into her room, “I have stood your friend till now—I even think you were ill-used: but if it is true that this novel is published—and as they say against us all—I will never see you more.”
That all the long-concealed shames and sorrows of his marriage should be dragged out for the world to see, was torture to a man of his sensitive reserve; it was also acutely distressing that one, closely connected with him, should behave with such treacherous ingratitude to those he loved. Sunk in black gloom he sat all day in Melbourne House; “I wish I was dead,” he muttered. “I wish I was dead.” And to his old friends the Hollands he wrote off such halting words of apology as he could find:
“Dear Holland,
It must have appeared strange to you that I have not been to see you. And you may perhaps put a wrong construction on it—it is nothing but the embarrassment which the late events have not unnaturally revived. They have given me great trouble and vexation, and produced an unwillingness to see anybody and more particularly those who have been the objects of so wanton and unprofitable an attack. I did not write, because, what could I say? I could only exculpate myself from any previous knowledge, the effect of which must be to throw a heavier burden on the offending party—I am sure you will feel for my situation. I should like to see you some morning. Yours W.L.”
The grounds for separation seemed stronger than ever. Indeed, several people wrote to William saying that if he did not now break with Caroline, they would consider it a sign that he connived at her book. By the middle of the summer the arrangements were pretty well completed. The evening before the final signature, William, leaving Caroline, as he thought, in safe hands, went down to Brocket for a night’s quiet. What was his dismay, while he was undressing, to hear a scuffing noise outside his room. It was Caroline, who had escaped, followed him down, and was preparing to make a last desperate effort to melt his stony heart by spending the night stretched out on his door-mat. What transpired between them is unknown. But next morning the lawyers, arriving with the papers, found her sitting on his knee in fits of laughter, feeding him with small scraps of bread and butter. The Deed of Separation was a dead letter.
What was the reason for this surprising change of heart? Caroline no doubt thought it was simply love. And it is true that all his sufferings at her hands had not succeeded in driving her image wholly from William’s heart. The same incurable immaturity of spirit which made her behave so childishly, also kept her charm fresh. When for a moment the storm clouds of hysteria parted, it sparkled out as waywardly captivating as ever: and against his will, William responded to it. But it would seem that his volte-face was due primarily to other and more complex motives. Dislike of the unpleasant had something to do with it; he could not bring himself to face the agonizing ordeal of a final scene of farewell. He felt guilty too; at the back of his mind lurked an uneasy feeling that his carelessness during the early days of their marriage was partly responsible for her present collapse. But strangely enough, he was most of all affected by Glenarvon. He might say, in the first heat of anger, that he never meant to see her again: but when the full storm broke, when he saw everyone cutting her, when he read the outrageous personal attacks on her published in the newspapers, his mood underwent a revulsion. Bad as Caroline might be, she was not so bad as to deserve such persecution. Besides, if he had felt it shabby to leave her before, how much more now! Except for him, she had not a friend in the world. Every chivalrous instinct, every touching memory of his old love, revolted against deserting her in such a plight. Once more personal obligation showed itself the one strong motive for action in his frustrated nature. “Caroline,” he told her, “we will stand or fall together.”
Most likely they would fall. It is not to be imagined that William entered on this new chapter of his wedded life with rosy expectations. However, he had long ago given up expecting much of anything. Drama, as usually happens in real life, had ended not in tragic denouement, but in lassitude and anti-climax. In pity, in exasperation, in ironical apathy, he settled down to his accustomed round.
Elsewhere also he was beginning to pick up old threads again. In the spring he had re-entered the House of Commons. Ever since he had left, his friends had been urging him to come back; and in 1815 Lord Holland had written offering him a seat. But for the time being William had lost his zest for Parliamentary life. The more philosophical outlook afforded by the windows of Brocket library made the bustle of party politics look a futile waste of energy. Anyhow, he did not want to come back as a Holland House man. Since peace had been signed, the Foxites had shown themselves more academically out of touch with reality than ever. Though Europe was still shaking, they wanted most of the Army dismissed at once, for fear it might lead to a Cromwellian military despotism; they worried lest by helping to restore the French king, the English Government had implied belief in the divine right of kings. Worst of all in William’s eyes, at a time when every sensible person was longing only for peace and quiet, they were toying with subversive schemes of reform. The detachment in which William had been living made him more confident in his independent views. In a letter of refusal to Lord Holland, he made his position thoroughly clear. “In the present state of politics with no one in either House of Parliament whom I should choose to follow, with questions, certain to occur, so numerous and so various, so perplexed by circumstances and complicated in the detail, that it is almost impossible for any two persons to come to the same conclusion upon all of them, it would be very disagreeable and embarrassing for me to have a seat in the House of Commons which should not allow me the fullest and most unquestioned liberty of acting upon any subject according to my own particular opinion—I cannot also conceal from myself that the having been three years without taking any part in public affairs has had the natural effect to a certain degree of diminishing the eagerness of the interest which I once felt in them; and consideration and reflection have had the equally natural effect of altering and, in my view, amending some of the opinions which I fancied myself to hold . . . In Europe I am for an immediate settlement even though that settlement be full of errors and imperfections; because I cannot but think I perceive that every fresh struggle and convulsion in France or Spain or elsewhere, only terminates in impairing and diminishing justice, liberty and all real rights, or rather the real interests of mankind. Such being my opinions . . . I apprehend they will force you to come to the same conclusion as myself, that such a political connection would only lead to mutual dissatisfaction and reproach . . . my principles are I believe the Whig principles of the Revolution; the main foundation of these is the irresponsibility of the crown, the consequent responsibility of Ministers, the preservation of the power and dignity of Parliament as constituted by Law and Custom. With the heap of modern additions and interpolations I have nothing to do—with those who maintain those principles and against those who either do or appear to be ready to sacrifice them, I shall always act: but I must always lament when I see the advocates of freedom injure their own cause by raising objections which are inapplicable or extravagant or impracticable as I do beg you to consider . . . ‘τα λιαυ δημοτικα αττολμει την δηοκρατιαιυ’.”
However, when a year later he was offered a seat at Northampton that did not commit him to strict party orthodoxy, he accepted it. He had nothing else to do; his family wanted him to; and a vague rumour was afloat that Canning might at last be coming into office.
A doubtful flicker of light illuminated the political horizon. All the same, looked at as a whole, his situation was a cheerless one. And he felt it. This period, and still more the four years preceding it, were the most melancholy of his active life. Brooding aimlessly in the book-lined seclusion of Brocket library, pacing the turfy solitudes of its park in the fading summer twilight, he would be overwhelmed by a leaden sensation of failure, of emptiness, of the fleeting vanity of things human, his own existence most of all. It is not surprising. He was now thirty-seven; and the perspective of his past life that met his eyes as he turned to survey it from the gathering shadows of middle age was, for all its surface glitter, a profoundly disheartening spectacle. The world, and his own weaknesses, victorious over him in early years, had now in his maturity more decisively defeated him. He had yielded to the inhibiting pressure of convention and tradition; his creative individuality had forced for itself no outlet; the conflict that lay at the root of his nature had ended by effectively frustrating his power of action. He had indeed gone into Parliament and married. But his marriage, so far from providing him with an independent base from which his personality might develop unhampered, had merely served to sap his spirit and confirm his cynicism. Love had turned out the most painful of all his disillusionments. Further, the misfortunes of his wedded life had intensified that morbid self-protectiveness, that propensity at all costs to avoid trouble, which was a major defect of his character. Nor was his political career a more encouraging subject of contemplation. The most valuable part of him had found no means of expression in the atmosphere of Parliament: while, though he sympathized too little with his Party to combat usefully in its cause, he shrank too much from wounding his friends to leave them, and throw in his lot openly with that leader in whom at heart he believed. Alike in public and in private life, he recognized himself as a failure: and there seemed no reason to suppose he would ever be anything else.
It is true that in neither had he ostensibly given up the struggle. He had gone back into the House of Commons: he had reconciled himself with Caroline. But these acts are evidence of his defeat rather than of his fighting spirit. For he was not proposing to attack his old problems with new vigour and by new methods. It was just that he lacked sufficient faith in himself, or in anything else, to try and rebuild his life on fresh lines. Better, in a world of deception and disappointment, to acquiesce in the line of least resistance. If Caroline wanted him, he would stay with her; if Lady Melbourne liked him to be a member of Parliament, a member of Parliament he would be. A distinguished creative intelligence, he resigned himself, unless fortune changed, to live the unfertile life of a commonplace man of his rank. An onlooker in youth, in middle age he settled down to be an onlooker, if need be, for the rest of his days.
Only not with the old zest. He had not lost his curiosity about the world: he could entertain himself with the passing moment pleasantly enough. But with the dissolution of his youthful dreams and aspirations, had vanished also the keen savour of his youthful joys. The rapture of first love, the burning, exultant thirst for truth, the stir of the heart quickened by the tumult and trumpet call of great events—where were they now? Nor had life supplied him with any compensating source of happiness to take their place. William still scribbled verses to wile away a vacant hour: and in a paraphrase from the Latin, made apparently about this time, we may catch a hint of the emotions that welled up in his tired spirit as, pausing at this sad milestone of his life’s pilgrimage, he mused on times gone by:
’Tis late, and I must haste away,
My usual hour of rest is near;
And do you press me, youths, to stay—
To stay and revel longer here?
Then give me back the scorn of care
Which spirits light in health allow;
And give me back the dark brown hair
Which curled upon my even brow.
And give me back the sportive jest
Which once could midnight hours beguile,
The life that bounded in my breast,
And joyous youth’s becoming smile!
And give me back the fervid soul
Which love inflamed with strange delight,
When erst I sorrowed o’er the bowl
At Chloe’s coy and wanton flight.
’Tis late, and I must haste away,
My usual hour of rest is near;
But give me these and I will stay—
Will stay till morn—and revel here!
With regret, with resignation, with hopeless bittersweet yearning, he gazed back at his memories of the irretrievable past. There seemed nothing much worth looking at in the future.