New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1905-03-19
LADY CAROLINE LAMB.
The Use Made of Her History by
Mrs. Humphry Ward.
THE MARRIAGE OF WILLIAM ASHE. BY
Mrs. Humphry Ward. Illustrated by Albert
Steiner PIP. 563 Harper & Brothers

( to Julie de Lespinasse succeeds Lady Caroline
Lamb. This new novel of Mrs. Wards draws
/ its inspiration, like its predecessor, from the
social annals of the past, only instead of adapt
! ing French motive to an English background,
as in the earlier book, she has gone to her own
country for her material. The personalities and
| events with which she deals belong little fur
Their back in history than the implied date of
/ the opening of The Marriage of William Ashe,''
but this is a detail. The main point is that the
! hero is obviously drawn from William Lamb,
second Viscount Melbourne, and the heroine
/ from his wife. Lady Caroline Lamb whose in
1 fatuation for Lord Byron is of the well re-
membered episodes in modern English letters.
/ To move the fabric of her story on into the
earlier decades of the Victorian era has been
simple matter for Mrs Ward. She knows well
/ how to Join her fats" and the drama which
she unfolds is deftly constructed, vivid, and in
teresting.
Lady Caroline Lamb with all her faults. was
| an adorable creature-hoW adorable may be
judged from the famous anecdote of her meet
ing with her husband the day appointed for
the signing of a deed framed to separate them
forever. The family solicitor brought the docu-
ment to Melbourne House and sat waiting in the
library while Lamb went to say goodby to his
wife. He waited a long time. Finally some
one was sent upstairs to investigate, and there
found Lady Caroline seated in all amity by her
husband, and feeding him with tiny scraps of
transparent bread and butter 1t took num-
Der of years more to bring about the actual sep
aration, and even after that was arranged the
love between the two was so strong that Lamb
came TO make her happy by holding her in his
arms when she died Long afterward the tears
would spring TO his eyes when he talked of her.
Mrs Ward has remembered all this, and her
aim throughout is to make her Lady Kitty
adorable. In a measure she succeeds Lady
Kitty is like her prototype than the hero
inc of Lady Roses Daughter is like hers; we
are not asked TO take ali her charms on faith,
but are enabled to realize her at many moments
a veritably engaging person At the same
time. the book, taken a whole, seems
dramatization Of incidents rather than of char
acter: though Lady Kitty is alive, it is not with
the life of one of those figures in fiction whose
experiences flow with an inevitable naturalness
from the depths of the soul. The drama does
not move because Of Lady Kitty; Lady Kitty
moves because of the drama. Mrs. Ward as
we have indicated is very skilful, but she pays
the penalty Of the novelist who sticks close
. enough to history 10 recall one recorded fact
after another and at the same time takes liber-
ties with the past which are only successful
when genius makes itself responsible for them.
The result is that the reader is confused by the
heroine: to carry conviction she ought to be all
OF piece. but often Lady Kitty becomes so
strangely composite creature, like Lady
Caroline Lamb and yet unlike her, that we
doubt after all, her essential reality
The illustrative incidents all there The
bread and butter episode, to which we have al
ready alluded, is duly brought in. In place of
Byron we have Godfrey Clife, a Byronic poet
and adventurer, and the well known anecdotes
are freely adjusted to the eXigencies of the text
Rogers has told how he saw Lady Caroline half
I entering Byron's carriage in order to talk to
the poet. The story may be found, worked over,
at page 241 of this novel. AS Lady Caroline
/ Lamb ma le a confagration of her souvenirs of
Byron, so Lady Kitty burns her souvenirs Of
Cliffe. That Lady Caroline wrote "Glenarvon
with its indiscreet personalities, is an excuse
for Lady Kitty's writing novel, Politics and
disturb the peace of mind Of everybody thinly
disguised in its pages. It is cleverly done. The
story, as a story, holds the attention until the
end. But It never leaves US quite satisfied with
the leading personages, or fully persuaded that
any authentic interplay of character is going on.
Incidentally we find ourselves wondering if Mrs
Ward has been quite fair to the people whom
she has dragged out of their graves to serve her
purpose novelist
| Her hero is not the that William Lamb
was; he lacks substantially. Lady Caroline
| ruHarad enough before she died to make US feel