LADY CAROLINE LAMB
.
Lady Caroline Ponsonby Lamb, was the daughter of the earl of Bessborough and Henrietta Ponsonby, and the niece of the duchess of Devonshire.
As a child she was a tomboy, and her spirit of recklessness and disdain for convention, never left her.
Caroline had no formal education, and was unable to read until late adolescence.
But she was intelligent and witty, and as an adult, she wrote poetry and and drew portraits.
Caroline married William Lamb when she was 17 and the union began happily enough.
But the death of one child and the health problems of another, as well as Williams growing interest in a political career, caused a rift between the couple.
There is also some evidence that William was sexually promiscuous, and made disturbing demands upon his wife.
In 1810, in a letter to a friend, Caroline writes ~
"He called me prudish said I was strait-laced, amused himself with instructing me in things I need never have heard or known & the disgust that I at first felt for the worlds wickedness I till then had never even heard of in a very short time this gave way to a general laxity of principles, which little by little unperceived of you all has been undermining the few virtues I ever possessed."
Caroline met Lord Byron in 1812.
Byron was 24 years old and already famous as a melancholy writer.
Caroline was 27 years old, married and mother of an autistic son.
She was the first woman of Byrons class to captivate the poet completely.
He treated Caroline badly, after the grand infatuation faded.
But while it lasted, he was demanding and possessive, goading her to admit she loved him more than her husband.
Byron, of course, always preferred women he had to pursue.
She was not his usual type, tall and very thin, with short, curly blonde hair and hazel eyes.
Caroline was a vivacious and flirtatious woman and Byron suspected she wanted him too.
Byron pursued her with abandon, once planning to flee England with her.
They became passionate lovers, and shocked London with their affair through much of April and May 1812.
But such passion never lasts.
Byron was a victim of his own contradictory personality he loved to pursue women but, once captured, he longed to leave them.
Byron led Caroline to believe he loved her, and Carolines reaction to their break-up is understandable.
It was her sad fate to discover Byrons interpretation of love a mad, passionate obsession which is abandoned as soon as curiosity and desire, are sated.
On 9th August, she sent him a letter enclosed with a very personal gift her pubic hair.
The letter read:
"I asked you not to send blood but Yet do because if it means love I like to have it.
I cut the hair too close & bled much more than you need do not you the same & pray put not scissors points near where quei capelli grow sooner take it from the arm or wrist pray be careful."
They did continue to write, and Caroline kept his 'Goodbye letter' until her death.
Later, Caroline traveled with her husband to Paris and Brussels where she continually humiliated her husband by pursuing various army officers, including the Duke of Wellington.
<3 Yet Byron remained the greatest passion of her life.
She wrote a novel about him called Glenarvon, an open condemnation of his character, which revealed her continuing obsession.
Carolines last years found her increasingly melancholy and restless. She wrote two more novels and separated from her husband in 1825.
But she and William remained close and he was at her bedside when she died in 1828.
adex3g
