In Whig Society (1921) is a life-and-letters biography of Elizabeth Lamb,
viscountess Melbourne (1751-1818), the mother of William Lamb, future prime
minister, mother-in-law of Lady Caroline Lamb, the aunt of Annabella Milbanke,
friend and ally of the Duchess of Devonshire, lover of the Prince of Wales, and
favored correspondent of Lord Byron. For four decades she was one of the most
formidable women in London, a political hostess and matriarch who used her access
to the high and mighty to advance the political fortunes of the Whig party and the
private fortunes of her associates. Byron, who knew her when she was in her
sixties, described Lady Melbourne to the Countess of Blessington as “a
charming person—a sort of modern Aspasia.”
The Countess of Airlie arranges
her letters as a family chronicle, beginning with the marriage of Elizabeth
Milbanke to Peniston Lamb in 1769, passing quickly on to the next generation of
Lambs—Penniston, William, Frederick, George, Emily, and Harriet—and
concluding with the children of Emily, Countess Cowper, some of whom she knew as a
child. There is much about history and politics, but the story and selection of
letters center on family matters: the disastrous marriages of William and Caroline
Lamb and Lord and Lady Byron, the failed marriage of George Lamb and a daughter of
Lady Bessborough, and the more successful marriage of Emily Lamb with Peter, fifth
earl Cowper. Emily's later marriage with Viscount Palmerston was the subject of a
sequel, Lady Palmerston and her Times (1922).
The chronicle leaves readers with
much to ponder about changing times and manners. Lady Airlie barely hints at a
central fact, that after Lady Melbourne had produced the family heir, Penniston,
her later children were probably fathered by George O'Brien Wyndham, third earl of
Egremont, or in the case of George, by the Prince of Wales. Lady Melbourne was
discreet about her romantic affairs, as was not the case in the next generation.
But in both, and indeed in the broad circle of friends and relations, the sexual
behavior Byron chronicles in Don Juan was openly or covertly practiced with
all the attendant conflicts between rational calculation and passionate indulgence.
As Lady Melbourne was a useful informant to Byron, so she remains to Byron's
readers.
The “Gynocracy” Byron
describes is on full display in the life of Lady Melborne who, as Lady Airlie says
in her forward, “exercised a great influence over the society of her
time.” Her book was written to demonstrate a “parallel between the
condition of England during and after the Napoleonic Wars and the England of the
present time.” As sometimes happens, wars abroad created opportunities for
women at home and fostered hedonistic behavior amidst the general uncertainty. It
may be that the domestic perspective is limiting, as when Airlie implies that the
Regent's new-found Toryism was an instance of female sway (“it appears that
he had ceased to care for Whig surroundings from the day that the Duchess of
Devonshire had interfered with Mrs. Fitzherbert” pp. 104-05) but there is
little doubt that Lady Melbourne and her contemporaries thought in such terms and
acted accordingly.
“Rock the cradle, rule the
world” was a sentiment they might have agreed with: insofar as politics was
family business, as it was in Lady Melbourne's time, the importance of sexual
selection and the subtle or not-so-subtle roles women performed in dynastic
politics can hardly be gainsaid. In one of the better letters (pp. 30-32) the
Duchess of Devonshire stops just short of profanity in decrying the Tory Duchess of
Gordon, who had stolen a march by attracting the affections of the Duke of Bedford
to one of her daughters—the very duke who had been one of Lady Melbourne's
many admirers. This is sexual politics of a high order. One also sees in the
letters aristocratic politics beginning to lose or rather change its grip when
William and Frederick Lamb resist their mother's interference and pursue more
professional and less corrupt paths to power.
But one can infer this only by
reading between the lines. In Whig Society looks at events through the prism
of domestic relationships, and therein lies its great interest. The central events
in the narrative are those concerning Caroline Lamb and Annabella Milbanke, whose
antithetical characters were equally troublesome for the prudent matriarch to
manage. The significance of Caroline Lamb's story in the familial context lies in
the threat it posed to William's political career and to the web of kin
relationships needed to support it; the marriage of Miss Milbanke to Lord Byron
might have underpropped similar dynastic and political ambitions, though Lady
Airlie absolves Lady Melbourne of responsibility for initiating it. While one would
like to have more of the Byron correspondence, his is but a secondary role in the
Lamb chronicle and he is treated accordingly.
Mabell, Countess of Airlie
(1866–1956) was the great-granddaughter of Lady Palmerston and the
great-great-granddaughter of Lady Melbourne. After the death of her husband in the
Boer War she became a lady in waiting and spent much of her long life at court.
Times had changed, as she notes, but her life experience and family connections
make her an insightful docent who can both see the world as Lady Melbourne saw it
and distance herself from it, as when she compares her ancestor to the Madame de
Merteuil of Laclos' novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses. She is sentimental but
clear-eyed, judgmental but not censorious, rather like Lady Melbourne or Byron. She
is not very good at sketching characters, but then her characters to speak for
themselves in the correspondence.
David Hill Radcliffe
