Lady Caroline Lamb Before Byron: The Godfrey Vassal Webster Affair

Abstract

The romance between Lady Caroline Lamb and Lord Byron in 1812 has been told in many forms, from novels like her own Glenarvon (1816) and Disraeli's Vivian Grey (1833), to Robert Bolt's 1972 feature film, recent genre fiction, and even imaginary lost journals. (1) But before Byron, from 1810 to 1811, Caroline had a long, messy affair with Sir Godfrey Vassal Webster, known only through letters, most unpublished, held in the British library, the public records office in Chichester, the private archives of Lord Bessborough and those at Chatsworth and Castle Howard. Because this affair with Sir Godfrey anticipates the one with Byron, the facts of the first have often been conflated with the second, which it resembles in uncanny ways: a titled and unattached young man with an aura of danger, repeated but broken promises to break off the relationship, public displays and uninhibited expressions of her emotional turmoil sometimes in verse. When Caroline met Webster in 1810, he was just twenty, intensely interesting to young women, a hero of the Spanish campaign whose reputation was so bad that even the Whips club, notorious for its low standards, had rejected him. Reputedly, he had brought back the skull of a French soldier which he had converted into a macabre-looking gold-encrusted drinking cup. Caroline was twenty-four and the mother of a two-and-a-half-year-old boy, Augustus, who had begun to have grand mal epileptic seizures and was showing signs of mental retardation. She had been married to William Lamb for five years, residing in Melbourne House in a family that was atheistical, self-consciously blase about morals, and politically ambitious. Beloved by her husband, Caroline was eager to learn, hot-tempered, jealous, and childishly pious. Though she tried to embrace the urbane style and values of the Lambs, Lady Caroline still did not know how to handle the consequences. While her cousin, the Marquis of Hartington (nicknamed Hart, and later the 6th Duke of Devonshire) joked that she simply had no understanding of the proprieties, it was no laughing matter (Lady Caroline Lamb to the Marquis of Hartington. 21 January 1810. Devonshire MSS. Chatsworth [UK], 5th Duke's Group, f. 1966). (2) William was heir to the Melbourne title and estate and needed an appropriate wife. Alas, Caroline could not or would not adapt to the complicated social milieu of Regency London. For example, while most women of social standing avoided introductions to Lady Holland, who, as a divorcee was unwelcome at court, Caroline became her friend. Caroline met Sir Godfrey, Lady Holland's eldest son by her previous marriage, at Holland House, where a circle of political liberals regularly gathered. Thereafter Sir Godfrey gave her many gifts and accompanied her in public. Observing them at a party, Lady Melbourne wrote deriding her daughter-in-law's lack of shame or compunction, and her complete abandonment to Webster who seemed to direct every impulse of Caroline's mind. Yr behavior last night was so disgraceful in its appearances and so disgusting in its motives that it is quite impossible it should ever be effaced from my mind. When one braves the opinion of the World, sooner or later they will feel the consequences of it and although at first people may have excused your forming friendships with all those who are censured for their conduct, from yr youth and inexperience yet when they see you continue to single them out and to overlook all decencys imposed by Society--they will look upon you as belonging to the same class. (Lady Melbourne to Lady Caroline Lamb, 13 April 1810. British Library Add. MS 45546 f. 16.) (3) The affair entered the stream of gossip that always swirled around the Devonshire, Bessborough, and Melbourne families, and it caused her mother, Lady Bessborough, considerable pain. Caroline responded contritely to her mother-in-law, making the first of several promises to break off with Webster: My Dearest Lady Melbourne I must indeed have a heart of iron if it was not most deeply wounded and affected by your letter and conversation[,] (4) by my Mothers sorrow and by the unparalleld kindness and patience of my friends and will you then make me this offer, shall I again be receivd be loved be confided in by you all. …