#lady caroline lamb

[majestativa]

She no longer had any illusions about him; she knew he was, like Lord Byron, “mad, bad, and dangerous to know.” Now, her task was to figure out if he was worth keeping.

— Anna Biller, Bluebeard’s Castle, (2023)

[hotmonkeelove]

It's my birthday, bitches!

[j-august]

Antonia Fraser, Lady Caroline Lamb

[artemismatchalatte]

Researching even more about Lord Byron, Glenarvon, The Lambs (Caro and William), and other studyblr/gradblr adjacent activity.

Here have a picture of Caro and William Lamb too, while we're here.

Yeah, so that thesis I was dreaming of and joking about years ago is a reality now. Get used to hearing about my weird ranting about Byron, his ex girlfriend and her husband because I know too much about these people. :P

BONUS: There will also be related Wuthering Heights and Emily Bronte ranting too. Because my project also involves her too. :)

[literate-bitch-boy]

One of Lord Bryon’s lovers - namely, Lady Caroline Lamb - called him ‘mad, bad, and dangerous to know’ and if that’s not life goals idk what is.

[almost-born-in-1893]

So... Have you heard about this hottie?

This is Lady Caroline lamb, who is best known for making this goofball

sound actually attractive and not just like a dumb frat bro when she described him as "mad, bad and dangerous to know".

Oh, this is Lord Byron btw. An idiot playboy who was constantly broke because of his excessive lifestyle as a gambling, drinking and home-wrecking whore. Of course nowadays he's just known as a "poet", because God forbid aristocratic white men ever face any degradation in their status for their own actions.

Anyway, "Caro" as Byron called her, was also his mistress while being married herself and did some crazy shit to get his attention after he moved on to his next conquest, like sending him some of her pubes, threatening to kill herself with a broken whine glass at a party and also breaking into his home and writing "remember me" in one of his books.

To which he responded with a poem of course (why be an adult about it if you can do angsty shit like make rhymes).

"Remember thee! Remember thee!; Till Lethe quench life's burning stream; Remorse and shame shall cling to thee, And haunt thee like a feverish dream! Remember thee! Ay, doubt it not. Thy husband too shall think of thee! By neither shalt thou be forgot, Thou false to him, thou fiend to me!"

Sure, dude, it's not like you knew she was married. As if you had a problem with that, but go off I guess...

So, what's the point of this story? I don't really have one. Both of them seem like dumb-asses, but we just love gawking at the affairs and scandals of rich, hot people, don't we, folks?

I'm just enamoured with the more human side of history and this certainly is some shit we'd see from celebs today. It brings earlier times a little closer and even though I don't really care for celebrity drama today for some reason I eat up stories like this when it's aristoracy in Regency England. Must be my Jane Austen mind virus.

[colemansdimple]

💜Cry for what you lost, for what you did, for what you didn't do and for what you should have done.

💜But don't cry forever, there's no way to change the past. Have courage to forget.

💜And strengthen your mind for the future, instead.

[footprintsldn]

Contrasting Cousins

  Michael Duncan gives us a sample of some of the characters from his Style and Scandal in St James’s tour which he will next be running on 8th October. There is a link at the bottom of the post if you want to join him to hear more! If you take a walk round St James’s, the Spencer family seems to pop up everywhere. The beginning of their association with the area came with the building Spencer…

[writervblavender]

Chapter 1. Part 1. William Lamb

"...Brocket Hall was dark and lonely that night, even the silent shadows seemed menacing. The Lambs still weren’t used to the darkness of the countryside and it would take some adjustment. Their family had recently moved their household back to their country estate, Brocket Hall, to quiet the suggestions of an affair between Lady Caroline Lamb and the upstart poet, Lord Byron..."

-V. B. Lavender, To Be The Hunter or the Hunted via Youtube (it's an audiobook)

There are subtitles available too on the videos. This will be an ongoing project posting to YouTube every so often.

[radedneko]

[With Lord Byron,] Caroline Lamb had found the great love, with poetry entwined around its very heart, for which her unfulfilled romantic nature craved. And she had also, equally importantly for her own satisfaction, found a situation with immense dramatic possibilities for the future.

~Lady Caroline Lamb: A Free Spirit by Antonia Fraser

[burningvelvet]

It's funny you say that because this observation came up with at least one of his lovers, the eccentric Lady Caroline Lamb. They had an intense relationship and for various reasons he was compelled by everyone to break it off with her, which she retaliated against in increasingly bizarre ways. Byron writing to his friend Lady Melbourne about Lamb, Jan 4 1813:

"She is perfectly at liberty to dispose of her necklaces &c. to "Grimaldi” [a well known Italian clown of the time] if she pleases, & to put whatever motto she may devise on her “livery buttons” this last she will understand but as you probably may not – it is as well to say that one of her amusements by her own account has been engraving on the said “buttons” Ne “Crede Byron” an interesting addition to the motto of my family which thus atones for its degradation in my acquaintance with her."

As proof, here is a locket he gave her which originally beared the motto before she had it re-engraved with "ne crede Byron." Before that, she had inserted a copy of a portrait of his into it and engraved the blank side with a loving note, as described in the below excerpt from Lamb's 2015 biography by Douglass. Also, note that Lamb and Byron got back together after all of this... because that's exactly the type of crazy, dramatic, aristocratic, Romantic era writers they were!

Some of the surviving clothes and personal belongings of Lord Byron (1788 - 1824)

1) a favorite white waistcoat originally belonging to King George II (1683 - 1760) bearing their shared initials; Byron wore this on his wedding day

2) a red embroidered jacket from Albania

3) a green fur-lined jacket given to him by Edward Trelawny

4) a linen undershirt of his which Lady Byron kept after their separation

5) a gold embroidered vest from Albania

6) a ring, thought to be his engagement ring

7) a pocket-watch bearing the Byron family crest

8) pair of boxing gloves; pugilism was big in 1800s london & like many male aristocrats at the time, Byron took lessons at the academy of famous boxing champion John Jackson

9) a small infant’s orthopedic boot; one of the many unsuccessful attempts to treat the congenital deformity of his leg & lifelong limp

10) a 32in/83cm belt with the head of Nike/Victory worn in his last months in Greece during the Revolution; a popular symbol during the war.

[j-august]

Antonia Fraser, Lady Caroline Lamb

[proselles]

107,680 minutes.

[eternal--returned]

Cynthia Grow ֍ Love Letters - Lord Byron to Lady Caroline Lamb, April 1812 (2024)

[colemansdimple]

💜Glenarvon was Lady Caroline Lamb's first novel.

🟣It created a sensation when published on 9 May 1816. Set in the Irish Rebellion of 1798, the book satirized the Whig Holland House circle, while casting a sceptical eye on left-wing politics.

🟣Its rakish title character, Lord Glenarvon, is an unflattering depiction of her ex-lover, Lord Byron.

🟣It is the first novel to make notable use of the vampire figure. The novel contains no actual vampire characters but suggests that its title character has vampiric characteristics.

🟣The novel never explicitly creates supernatural events until the final dramatic chapter, but it continually suggests how the supernatural is born of the psychological terror an individual experiences as the result of transgression and guilt.

🟣The novel focuses upon two distinctive Gothic wanderers: Glenarvon, who is based on Lord Byron, and the female heroine, Calantha, based upon Caroline Lamb. She depicts Glenarvon as a type of vampire damned beyond hope while Calantha is redeemed and forgiven her transgressions.

🟣The most supernatural aspect of Glenarvon’s nature is his metaphorical vampiric ability to drain life from his female victims. While he does not literally drink his victims’ blood, he nevertheless drains energy from them, as Byron drained the women he loved and then abandoned them.

[bitterkarella]

Midnight Pals: Ladies of Llangollen

Mary Shelley: sup fuckers Shelley: what's going on here Lord Byron: [tossing hair] ah mary what a vision you are Lord Byron: [tossing hair] percy and i were just about to visit the ladies of llangollen Shelley: why are my boyfriends sneaking around together behind my back

Mary Shelley: what the hell is this ladies of llangollen bullshit Lord Byron: [tossing hair] ah see mary it's a most curious thing Byron: [tossing hair] two women living together Byron: [tossing hair] science simply can't explain it Mary Shelley: they're lesbians byron

Byron: [tossing hair] no see it's these 2 women living together Byron: [tossing hair] and their lady servant too Byron: [tossing hair] explain that! Mary Shelley: what's so hard to understand? it's a fuckin polycule Mary Shelley: we're literally in one

Lord Byron: [tossing hair] lesbians? Byron: [tossing hair] oh ho ho only cuz they haven't met me yet! Byron: [tossing hair] isn't that right percy old man? Percy Shelley: yes dear

Byron: [tossing hair] now we're off! Mary Shelley: why're you going all the way to llangollen Mary Shelley: we got perfectly good lesbians at home Byron: [tossing hair] what? Mary Shelley: you heard me fucker

Mary Shelley: byron are you just going to llangollen to hide from your ex girlfriend Byron: [tossing hair] ha ha mary what a ridiculous notion Byron: [tossing hair] ha ha just uh Byron: [tossing hair] ridiculous

Mary Shelley: so it wouldn't bother you if caroline lamb also visited the ladies of llangollen then Byron: [tossing hair] it wouldn't bother me at all Byron: [pausing mid hair toss] why? is she there? what did you hear?

[at llangollen] Byron: [tossing hair] delightfully devilish byron, caroline lamb will never think to look for you here Caroline Lamb: [barging into llangollen] WHERE'S BYRON Lamb: I KNOW HE'S HERE Lamb: DON'T YOU LESBIANS LIE TO ME Lamb: I CAN SMELL HIS AXE BODY SPRAY

William Wordsworth: i was so inspired by those ladies of llangollen that i wrote a sonnet about them Wordsworth: "there once was a girl from nantucket..." Mary Shelley: that's not a fuckin sonnet Wordsworth: uh excuse me i think i know sonnets