Elizabeth Lamb, Viscountess Melbourne (1751-1818)

Elizabeth Lamb, Viscountess Melbourne from
The Three Witches from Macbeth by Daniel Gardner (1775)
© National Portrait Gallery

Profile

Lady Melbourne (baptised 15 October 1751 - 6 April 1818) was a leading Whig hostess, the intimate friend of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire and Lord Byron, a mistress of George IV and the mother of the Prime Minister, William Lamb, Viscount Melbourne, and his sister Emily, Lady Cowper, one of the patronesses of Almack's Assembly Rooms.

Family life

Elizabeth Milbanke was baptised on 15 October 1751, the only daughter of Sir Ralph Milbanke, a Yorkshire landowner and politician, and his wife, Elizabeth Hedworth. She married Sir Peniston Lamb, 2nd Baronet, a wealthy Whig politician, on 13 April 1769, at the age of seventeen.

Sir Peniston was made an Irish peer, Lord Melbourne, Baron of Kilmore, on 8 June 1770, and then Viscount Melbourne on 11 January 1781. Later, in 1815, he was made a peer of the United Kingdom, Baron Melbourne of Melbourne.

Elizabeth Lamb, Viscountess Melbourne

by Braun, Clement & Co, after John Hoppner

© National Portrait Gallery, London

Whig hostess

Elizabeth was beautiful and vibrant and ambitious for the advancement of her family. She helped increase her husband’s political visibility, becoming the leading Whig hostess of the time. From 1770, she entertained in the white and gold magnificence of Melbourne House in Piccadilly, designed by William Chambers. Her regular visitors included some of the keenest minds of the day: Charles James Fox; Richard Brinsley Sheridan; Granville Leveson-Gower, 1st Earl Granville; Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire; Harriet Ponsonby, Countess of Bessborough; and the sculptor, Anne Seymour Damer.

Lady Melbourne by Anne Seymour Damer (1784)
in an exhibition at Strawberry Hill

The Duchess of Devonshire

In 1774, the Duke of Devonshire married Georgiana Spencer and Lady Melbourne saw at once that she was in danger of losing her place as leading Whig hostess. But rather than compete with the Duchess, Lady Melbourne chose to embrace her potential rival and became her indispensable friend. They were opposites in character and temperament, but Lady Melbourne’s disposition made her the ideal confidante for the troubled Duchess.

Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire,
from a miniature by Antonio Fattori

from Lord Granville Leveson Gower,

 private correspondence 1781 to 1821 (1916)

Lady Melbourne’s character

Lady Melbourne was a brilliant conversationalist who was a master of the art of being a delightful companion to gentlemen. She was easy going and good humoured, a willing confidante and advisor who rarely talked about herself. Melbourne House was a comfortable place for gentlemen to go, where they could speak freely without fear of shocking their hostess.

On the other hand, she was cynical, hard-hearted and somewhat coarse, and she seemed to delight in making cutting remarks. Her moral standards were low and she did not seem to care what people did, provided they were discreet. She believed that:

When anyone braves the opinion of the world, sooner or later they will feel the consequences of it.1

Ambition was paramount and she was always prepared to make sacrifices to achieve it. When Frederick, Duke of York expressed a fancy for her Piccadilly home, she agreed to part-exchange it for his home in Whitehall. 2

Melbourne House, Piccadilly,
by Thomas H. Shepherd c1830

Family

Lady Melbourne had six children: Peniston (1770), William (1779), Frederick (1782), George (1784), Emily (1787) and Harriet (1789), who did not survive childhood. Of these, only Peniston was definitely Lord Melbourne’s child; William was almost certainly Lord Egremont’s and George, the son of the Prince of Wales.

She was devoted to all her children who spent most of their time at the family’s country home in Hertfordshire, Brocket Hall. Here they rode and played together and took part in theatricals as well as learning. When the boys went to Eton, she often visited them, encouraging the development of their tastes and characters.

William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne
from The History of White's
 by Hon Algernon Bourke (1892)

Romantic liaisons

Within a year of their marriage, Elizabeth’s husband began an affair with the actress Sophia Baddeley. Elizabeth appeared to be unbothered. She did not expect men to be monogamous, though she strongly believed in family responsibility. Having produced an heir, she had her own romantic liaisons, though she made sure she never put her husband in an awkward position.

Lady Melbourne’s name was linked variously with Lord Coleraine3; Francis Russell, 5th Duke of Bedford; George, Prince of Wales, the future George IV; and George Wyndham, 3rd Earl of Egremont.

The Earl of Egremont

From 1779, Lady Melbourne’s most favoured intimate friend and advisor was George Wyndham, 3rd Earl of Egremont. It was the most serious and long-lasting of her attachments, though not monogamous on either side; Egremont kept a number of mistresses and their children at Petworth House. Egremont was almost certainly William’s father and possibly Frederick and Emily’s as well.

Lady Melbourne learned much from Egremont who was an agriculturalist and canal enthusiast. She encouraged her husband to invest in the Cromford Canal and introduced agricultural innovations in Hertfordshire.

George Wyndham, 3rd Earl of Egremont
by Samuel William Reynolds, after Thomas Phillips (1826)
 © National Portrait Gallery, London

The Prince of Wales

Lady Melbourne’s friendship with the Prince of Wales began in 1782 and their names were linked together until around 1786. He is generally believed to be the father of her fourth son, George, and stood as his godfather.

Through her relationship with the Prince, Lady Melbourne secured the position of Gentleman of the Bedchamber for her husband in 1783.

George, Prince of Wales
from Huish's Memoirs of her late
royal highness Charlotte Augusta (1818)

William and Caroline

Lady Melbourne soon realised that William’s abilities were superior to those of his siblings and he became the focus for all her ambitions. After the death of her eldest son, Peniston, in 1805, William embarked on a career in politics. He also married Lady Bessborough’s daughter, Lady Caroline Ponsonby. Lady Melbourne was not keen on the match or the influence that Caro and her mother had on William. On her side, Lady Bessborough disliked Lady Melbourne and referred to her as “The Thorn”.

Lady Caroline Lamb
from Wives of the Prime Ministers
  (1844-1906)

It was with some frustration that Lady Melbourne saw William failing to reach the heights which she sought for him. He was hedonistic and lazy, loyal to people rather than policies, and did not advance as she had hoped, and his deteriorating relationship with Caroline was not helping.

Lady Melbourne had no sympathy with Lady Caroline’s highly strung nature and was disgusted when, in 1812, she had a very public affair with Lord Byron. Lady Melbourne was keen to bring it to a close and became Lord Byron’s confidante, suggesting her own niece, Annabella Milbanke, as a wife for him.

Illness and death

Lady Melbourne became ill with rheumatism and died at Melbourne House, Whitehall, on 6 April 1818, after a painful illness of four months. She was buried on 14 April in Hatfield, Hertfordshire. Even on her death bed, she encouraged her children’s ambitions, telling Emily to be faithful, not to her husband, Lord Cowper, but to her lover, Lord Palmerston.

Lady Melbourne's legacy

Lady Melbourne did not live to see that her ambitions for her children were indeed fulfilled: William became Prime Minister to William IV and then Queen Victoria, and Emily married Lord Palmerston, who later became another of Queen Victoria’s Prime Ministers.

Rachel Knowles writes clean/Christian Regency era romance and historical non-fiction. She has been sharing her research on this blog since 2011. Rachel lives in the beautiful Georgian seaside town of Weymouth, Dorset, on the south coast of England, with her husband, Andrew.

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Notes

(1) From a letter to Lady Caroline Lamb 13 April 1810.

(2) The agreement to the exchange was concluded on 25 December 1791 although the comment made by the Duke of York to which Lady Melbourne assented may have been made some time before. The Duke took residence of Melbourne House the following year, renaming it Albany House.
(3) The relationship with Lord Coleraine is referred to in Cecil's book Melbourne. Based on the dates quoted, I am assuming that it is John Hanger, 2nd Baron Coleraine, with whom Lady Melbourne had an affair.

Sources used include:
Cecil, Lord David, Melbourne (1939, 1954)
Gross, Jonathan David, Lamb, Elizabeth, Viscountess Melbourne (1751-1818) Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn May 2008, accessed 12 Nov 2012)
Huish, Robert, Memoirs of her late royal highness Charlotte Augusta (1818)
Lee, Elizabeth, Wives of the Prime Ministers 1844-1906 (1918)
Leveson-Gower, Lord Granville, Lord Granville Leveson-Gower, Private correspondence 1781-1821, ed by Castalia, Countess Granville (John Murray, 1916, London)
Shepherd, FHW, Survey of London (1963, British History online, accessed 7 February 2013)

Photographs © RegencyHistory.net

Lady Caroline Lamb (1785-1828)

Lady Caroline Lamb
from Wives of the Prime Ministers (1844-1906)

Profile

Lady Caroline Lamb (13 November 1785 - 26 January 1828) was a prominent member of Regency society and the author of the scandalous novel, Glenarvon. She was the wife of William Lamb, later Viscount Melbourne and British prime minister, and had a very public affair with the poet Lord Byron.

A temperamental child

Caroline Ponsonby was born on 13 November 1785, the only daughter of Frederick Ponsonby, 3rd Earl of Bessborough, and Henrietta Spencer, younger sister of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire.

Henrietta, Countess of Bessborough
from La Belle Assemblée (1810)

Caroline was brought up in the shadow of her parents’ unhappy marriage, influenced by the unrestrained decadence of the Devonshire House set. In person, she was slight and agile; in character, unconventional, intense and highly temperamental. She liked to gallop bareback and dress up in trousers, was frequently lost in day dreams and subject to mood swings. Her austere grandmother, Lady Spencer, into whose care she was frequently placed, found her unmanageable.

'The Fairy Queen'

In 1802, Caroline made her debut and became the most vibrant personality in London. She was a captivating conversationalist with ethereal good looks that led to her being nicknamed 'the Sprite' and 'the Fairy Queen, Ariel'. On the other hand, she was highly volatile and often flew into rages. However, such was the bewitching intensity about Caroline that people were always ready to forgive her exasperating behaviour.

A love match

Amongst the men that Caroline captivated was William Lamb, second son of Lord Melbourne, but he could not propose marriage because, as a younger son, he was not a good enough match. However, in January 1805, his fortunes changed with the death of his elder brother, Peniston, and as soon as the initial period of mourning was over, he proposed and was accepted.

William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne
from The History of White's
 by Hon Algernon Bourke (1892)

William and Caroline were married on the evening of 3 June 1805 in Cavendish Square, London. But the day did not pass without incident. At the end of the service, the increasingly hysterical Caroline flew into a rage and had to be carried from the room. This outburst of emotion caused William to become very protective of his new wife, screening her from anything that might upset her.

Augustus

Childbearing was not easy for Caroline and she had only one surviving child, a son, Augustus, who was born on 29 August 1807(1). It soon became apparent that he had learning difficulties, a fact that his father never really came to terms with. He remained with a mental age of about seven until his death in 1836.

A craving for attention

At first, the Lambs seemed to be an ideal couple, always flirting with each other, spending their time either at Brocket Hall in Hertfordshire or in London. But their idyllic happiness was short-lived. Caroline saw life as a drama in which she was the heroine and when life did not match up to her ideals, she reinvented it, living in a world of unreality. William was naturally lazy and peace-loving and did not believe in Caroline’s idealism. He failed to live up to her romantic notion of what a lover should be like. Their marriage became a sequence of arguments and reconciliations.

By 1810, the couple were living separate lives. William devoted himself to his parliamentary work, whilst Caroline developed friendships which would feed her ego. These included two with women of dubious reputations, Lady Wellesley and Lady Oxford, as well as intellectuals such as Monk Lewis. She also had a violent and very public flirtation with Lady Holland’s son, Sir Godfrey Webster.

Lord Byron

Lord Byron
from The Life of Lord Byron
 by Thomas Moore (1844)

In March 1812, the first part of Childe Harold was published, and Lord Byron became famous overnight. After seeing him for the first time, Caroline wrote in her diary that he was “Bad, mad and dangerous to know.” Later she added: “That beautiful pale face will be my fate.”

Caroline pursued Byron, whom she saw as the sinfully romantic hero of Childe Harold and not the sulky man with the face of an angel and a lame leg. Their affair was conducted very publicly, each passionately jealous for the other’s attentions.

But Byron soon tired of Caroline’s obsessive behaviour and turned to less demanding companions: Caroline’s mother-in-law, Lady Melbourne, who became his confidante and Lady Oxford, his mistress. William did nothing, but waited for Caroline’s game to be played out.

The Byron obsession

When Byron wrote to end their relationship, Caroline’s sanity showed signs of collapse. She dressed her menservants in new livery with buttons saying “Ne crede Byron” (do not believe Byron) and ceremonially burnt his gifts to her on a bonfire.

On 5 July 1813, Byron and Caroline met for the first time since the end of their relationship, at a ball given by Lady Heathcote. Caroline broke a glass and started slashing her arms with the pieces, causing a tremendous scandal. She had taken a step too far and society shunned her.

But Caroline could not let Byron go. He had become a fixation with her. She wrote to him and kept turning up at his London rooms, often dressed as a page. On 2 January 1815, Byron married Anne Isabella Milbanke, William’s cousin. Caroline predicted that it would fail. It did.

Glenarvon

Caroline’s behaviour became increasingly unpredictable and in 1816, she was threatened with being sent away. In desperation, she wrote Glenarvon, a strange Gothic tale of fashionable society whose characters were based on real people. It was published anonymously on 9 May 1816 and met with instant success. But Caroline’s authorship was an open secret and the scandal was enormous. Lady Jersey rescinded Caroline’s voucher for Almack’s and even her cousins eschewed her.

Though William’s initial reaction to the novel was that he would never see her again, perversely, when people began to cut her, he relented and stood by his deranged wife: “We will stand or fall together.”

Opening page of Glenarvon
 by Lady Caroline Lamb (1816)

Insanity

Caroline was desperate for admiration but was now an outcast from polite society. She had a number of literary friends, such as Lady Morgan, and some very unfashionable admirers, the most presentable of whom was Bulwer Lytton. William did not seem to be jealous. He pitied any man who was caught in his wife’s toils and saw them as fellow sufferers.

When Caroline learned that Lord Byron was dead, she fell into a hysterical fever. Later, she accidentally met with his funeral procession, and collapsed on discovering whose wake it was. She frequently had violent moods where she broke things or galloped wildly round the park. Her appearance became unkempt, she ate erratically and she frequently resorted to laudanum and brandy.

William looked after Caroline, soothing her nerves and helping her with her novels - Graham Hamilton (1822), Ada Reis (1823) and Penruddock (1823). But caring for Caroline took its toll on William, and in 1825, it was decided they should separate. However, after just a few months apart, he relented, and Caroline was back living at Brocket. Though William lived in London, he often visited.

Illness and death

Soon Caroline’s health began to fail. She was weary of life, and at last, became calmer. Now, it seemed, her affection was all for her husband. William was away, having been appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland, but the letters between them were tender and affectionate.

By October 1827, Caroline was dangerously ill with dropsy. In mid-January, she asked: “Send for William. He is the only person who has never failed me.” A few days after William’s arrival at Melbourne House, on 26 January 1828, Caroline died. She was buried in Hatfield churchyard on 7 February.

Note
(1) Some sources say 11 August.

Sources used include:
Cecil, Lord David, Melbourne (1939, 1954)
Franklin, Caroline, Lamb, Lady Caroline (1785-1828), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Oct 2005, accessed 28 Nov 2012)
Lee, Elizabeth, Wives of the Prime Ministers 1844-1906 (1918)
Moore, Thomas, The Life of Lord Byron (1844)