The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1878-07-27
Byron and Lady Caroline Lamb.

Rogers, Moore and Spencer "were
all my lovers" she tells Lady Morgan,
land wrote me up to the skies. Twas
in the clouds" Moore, devoted to his
quiet Betsy, and Rogers to his cynical
bacbelorhood, would have smiled at
this assertion. While she was still 1.-the
exposure of neighboring eyes" Byron
called by Hepworth Dixon "beauti-
full and deadly as night-shade" -re-
turned from Italy. The manuscript of
"Childe Harold was lent to Lady Car
oline by Rogers, and she became crazy
to see the poet HE has club-foot
and bites his nails,'' said Rogers. elf
he is ugly as Esop | must know him."
she answered. Lady Westmoreland
offered to introduce them at ball, but
with an impulse of aversion Lady Car
oline turned away, noting him in her
diary as "mad, bad and dangerous to
know" She changed her opinion
when, on Byron's first call at Mel
bourne House, he held her sleeping
child on his knee for more than an hour
lest by moving he should wake him. For
nearly year his visits were incessant.
He had real regard for Lady Mel
bourne, whom he called 1.-THE best friend
he ever had--a second mother"-yet
played at being in love with her daugh-
eF-in-law. On Lady Caroline'S part it
was not play, but lamentable earnest.
There was much gratiiied vanity at first
on both sides Rank and ton had an
irresistible charm for Byron. To win
the unconcealed devotion of woman
! I'LL l.,l,N I'D,
| follies had never compromised her be-
fore, was Il triumph even for the fash
ionable Apollo whom " the women suf-
located But it was triumph of
which he speedily tired. "These vio-
lent delights have violent ends.n But
the misery brought by this extrava-
gance on her husband and herself was
only too genuine. Byron, with his
mock madness and callous heart, could
pass unscathed through many such en-
tanglements; at the root of Lady Caro-
lines follies lay the germ of real insan-
| ity and the misguided fervor of Il low
ing nature. Byron, in after years, with
his customary cynicism, deliberately
miSstated facts in order somewhat to
eXonerate his own conduct. He said
to Medwin: "She possessed an infinite
vivacity, and an imagination heated by
novel-reading, which made her fancy
herself a heroine of romance, and led
her into all sorts of eccentricities. She
was married, but it was match of
convenience, and no couple could be
more fashionably indifferent to or indie
pendent of one another than she and
her husband" AS regards her crimi-
nality with Byron, out of their own
mouths we might indeed Judge them
guilty; for the exaggerated self-con-
domination in which both so morbidly
INDUCED cannot be forgotten. Rogers
never suspected of too lenient judg-
ments-though describing how Lady
Caroline absolutely besieged'' Byron,
offering him in her first letter "all her
jewels" if he We're in want of money,
and whenever practicable going to and
from parties in his carriage, or, if he
went where she was not invited, wait
ing in the street for his return-de-
clares, Sin spite of all this absurdity,"
his firm belief in their innocence. And
it has been shrewdly remarked that
where so much was on the surface
friends did not suspect anything be-
meath. Nevertheless hundred strange
stories were current about this strange
liaison. Temple Bar.