Jane and the Madness of Lord Byron

by Stephanie Barron

  There could be no one less akin to Caro Lamb on the face of the earth—and that the same man could find The Sprite captivating, as swam in Lady Oxford’s orbit, defied comprehension. Still further did Byron’s passion for Catherine Twining strain belief, when presented with the worldly and erudite Countess. I began to think that my judgement of his lordship’s character was correct—any lady must be mere window-dressing to his fundamental love of self, each affair representing an attitude he tried on as another man might study various ways of tying a cravat.

  Or his lordship was mad.

  Lady Oxford’s excellent spirits on the present occasion were explained by the intelligence she had received at Cuckfield but an hour earlier, on her road from London.

  “Even the ostlers were talking over the news,” she observed boisterously as we were handed into Mona’s phaeton, “that the inquest was done, and no judgement returned against Byron! There remains, then, some sense in the minds of men! I despaired of it when in my twenties; but with the gravity of age—or perhaps second childhood—have lately found my innocence returning.”

  “Impossible,” Mona said drily. “That will do, Hinch—I shall take the reins. Stand away from their heads!”

  She had undertaken to drive a team in the perilously sprung high-perch phaeton, the sort of sporting vehicle rarely adopted by ladies, and only then in Hyde Park of a summer’s afternoon. Had the team been Swithin’s breakdowns, turned off to his wife for the remainder of their useful years, I should have felt greater security; but in fact they were beautiful goers, with velvet mouths that responded to a feather touch on the reins.

  “Poor things,” Mona observed as one bucked and reared in the traces, “they have not been out of their stable since Hinch brought them down from London three days ago. I fear they will be a trifle fresh!”

  I was reminded of nothing so much as her uncle, Lord Harold, as the blood chestnuts sprang from before No. 21, Marine Parade, and nearly ran away with their mistress in the direction of the Downs, scattering sedan chairs, promenaders, and errand boys to the kerb. Desdemona was magnificent, in complete command of her team and herself, responding to the surging animals as tho’ to a delightful gambit in courtship—she had only to tug a little, and the rampant course was contained. Lord Harold had taught her well; no other could have instructed her ladyship how to feather a turn, or catch the thong of her whip with a flick of her wrist; she was masterful—and fearless.

  For my part, I clung to the sides of the phaeton as it swayed, and found that I had neglected to breathe for the first dreadful seconds. Lady Oxford quite abandoned her history-book, being engaged in keeping a firm hand on the crown of her jockey bonnet.

  The race course set out by the late Duke of Queensberry and various Royals mad for horseflesh—the Regent chief among them—traverses a rolling saddle of Down-land. There is a neat little stand erected for the use of spectators, but the majority of those present—gentlemen, in the main—preferred to sit their mounts or stand in ranks along the turns of the course, which is irregular and demanding as it cuts through the hills.19

  Desdemona pulled up her phaeton alongside a curricle, which I observed to contain Mr. Hodge and a companion—the redoubtable Mrs. Alleyn, who was looking very pert in a deep rose spencer and green sunshade. She hailed us smartly and complimented Mona on her courage, in sporting so dashing an equipage.

  “I am accustomed to drive myself everywhere, you know,” Mona returned indifferently; “and Swithin is too wise to oppose me. Mrs. Alleyn, may I have the honour of presenting the Countess of Oxford?”

  The lady’s brown eyes widened at being made the familiar of so notorious a personage; but she accepted the honour with good grace, inclined her head sweetly; and recovered herself a little in gazing out at the general scene. I smiled to myself as I watched: the jaunty Mrs. Alleyn might stile herself a prize in Brighton; but she had not yet encountered a ship of Lady Oxford’s draught.

  “How do the odds run at present, Hodge?” Mona enquired.

  If any gentleman were likely to know the state of the betting, it should be Hodge; he embarked on a fluent discourse regarding the points of the various horses and the weight of their riders; the variability of one animal’s response to dry turf, versus another’s liking for mud; the possibility of Lord Wyncourt’s gelding being a trifle touched in the wind; and the excellent action of Lord Swithin’s horse, which was called by the lovely name of China Trade. From which we concluded that the Earl’s entry was a high favourite.

  “Then put it all on the nag for me, Hodge,” Lady Oxford said gaily, tossing him a silken purse that clinked delightfully with coins. “You know I cannot approach the bookmen.”

  “Your servant,” Hodge said with a bow, and sprang down from his curricle, quite deserting Mrs. Alleyn. I might have shifted my place to supply her want of a companion—but that I observed her eagle eye already fixed on an elegant sporting figure making its way on horseback to the curricle’s side: Sir John Stevenson. He tipped his hat, acknowledged his old acquaintance Lady Oxford, and soon made Mrs. Alleyn the grateful recipient of his exclusive attentions.

  “Did Byron say whether he intended the race-meeting?” Lady Oxford asked carelessly of Desdemona.

  There was a pregnant silence, both Mona and I being well aware that Byron’s determined drinking must make all exertion impossible; but then some imp in the Countess’s soul encouraged her to declare, “I do not recollect. Jane—Miss Austen—may have heard him mention it, however … they were much in conversation.…”

  “I cannot say,” I stuttered, as some memory of that engrossing tête-à-tête obtruded. He had penetrated the secret of my authorship. Stripped me naked with a single look. And called me a writer greater than himself.… “Indeed, we spoke so briefly—the merest nothings … but were I pressed, I should imagine his lordship too greatly fatigued by the labours of his morning, to venture out-of-doors so soon after the inquest. And then, too, there is the undesirability of drawing notice—”

  “Whatever do you mean?” Lady Oxford retorted coolly. “Byron adores drawing notice. It is as life-blood to the man.”

  “But I do not think his Bow Street Runner should advise it.”

  Lady Oxford turned her head to frown at me a little. “Are you suggesting he means to skulk within doors, from fear of the rabble? His innocence has been declared!”

  “I beg your pardon—say rather that his guilt has been doubted. Until some other is charged with the murder of Catherine Twining, the general feeling against his lordship remains high.”

  Her ladyship emitted a brittle little laugh. “I collect you are entirely unacquainted with Lord Byron’s character, Miss Austen; and it is as well that I have remembered the fact, else I should resent your picture of the gentleman—for it is the picture of a coward. Good God! He can hardly have known the chit who drowned—a brazen piece who thought nothing of wandering the shingle at the dead of night, and got herself tossed like a sack of flour into a stranger’s bed—”

  Understanding shot through my brain with the clarity of a lightning-bolt. I glanced swiftly at Desdemona, whose countenance was alive with anxiety. She gave the barest shake of the head in my direction; it was true, then: Lady Oxford had no notion of her lover’s passion for another.

  “I had understood,” Mona said breathlessly, “that the two had met some once or twice.”

  An exclamation of annoyance escaped Lady Oxford’s lips. “Very probably! The better part of the known world has thrown itself at poor George’s head! If you only knew, Miss Austen, the throngs of ladies desperate for his lordship’s notice!—The stratagems and schemes to which they resort, without the slightest regard for their own dignity! Did I not possess a keen delight in the absurd, I should be reduced to tears by the folly of their display! But his lordship remains insensible to all!”

  “Not quite all,” came a whisper from somewhere beside us.

  A shiver ran up my spine, as tho’ an incorporeal spirit and not a human form had
spoken.

  Lady Caroline Lamb had condescended to join the race-meeting.

  19 Jane would appear to be describing what we should term a steeplechase; a race derived from the gentlemanly habit of riding to hounds at a punishing pace, rather than a flat course designed solely for speed.—Editor’s note.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Incident on the Downs

  WEDNESDAY, 12 MAY 1813

  BRIGHTON, CONT.

  SHE WAS MOUNTED ON A LEGGY BLACK COLT, PERHAPS three years of age, with a strong Arab nose and a venomous look—culled from the Regent’s stables, no doubt. I may say that she had an excellent seat, and became it to admiration in her Prussian blue riding habit, cut as severely as tho’ Weston had fashioned it for the Marquis of Wellington, with a stiff, high collar and narrow sleeves. The colt was restive, snorting and tossing its head, but she paid it no heed, her tiny hands in their doeskin gloves grasping the reins with ease.

  “Lady Caroline,” Desdemona murmured. “How delightful. I hope you are entirely recovered from your misadventure on the shingle?”

  But Caro Lamb ignored her. Her queer, light eyes were fixed entirely on Lady Oxford, and as I watched, a smile quirked at her mouth—not with malice, but with the threat of uncontrollable laughter.

  “Poor Aspasia! Did you believe his lies? Did you truly think he never met that wretched girl?”

  “Go away, Caroline,” her ladyship spat. “I have nothing at all to say to you.”

  The smile widened. “What fools we women are! I have an idea of the two of you, in your Herefordshire idyll; your complacent and stupid husband absent for weeks at a time; the fireside in January, the hectic conversation over books—laughing until you died at how easily you had rid yourselves of me, wretched little Caro Lamb, with her broken heart and hysteric looks—How nobly poor William stands by her! And you, believing all his lies, believing when he claimed he had never had a lover quite as rich as you, content to think a callow youth of four-and-twenty fascinated by your worldliness … for he, who is older in his bitterness than recorded time, is too adept at playing the callow youth.… Telling yourself that it was right and just he should worship a woman whose teeth are almost all dropt out!—A woman, moreover, taken in love by so many others that she has long since given up reckoning the countless pokes she’s suffered in the night—”

  “Lady Caroline!” Desdemona cried.

  The severe figure on horseback, as tho’ backed with military steel, tossed her head defiantly. “Pathetic Aspasia. You are quite in the autumn of your reign, are you not? You require the lies. You beg for them, with your tit in his mouth. You wish to think them purest Truth! Whereas I hear the golden words that drip from his blessèd lips and love them for their sheer deceit. I cherish them for their mockery, their trickster’s toils. I am quite otherwise from you, dearest Jane—at whose knee I once sat, to learn the wisdom of the World. You require his lies, the better to hide from yourself—whereas I hear them in order to know exactly how degraded I am become.”

  “Shut up, Caroline,” Lady Oxford muttered; but there was violence in her words.

  Lady Caroline had begun to sob: dry, wracking sobs that lifted her frail breast as tho’ a vast bellows filled it.

  “Make him tell you!” she shrieked. “Make him tell you how he loved the Twining girl to the point of madness! He could not bear to keep away—flying south from your arms to haunt the lanes and rooms she frequented. He could not endure her unsullied innocence—the childlike purity of her tender frame—he wished for nothing more than to ravish her, and break that innocence on a stone!”

  I saw Lady Oxford wince. Then she stiffened, as tho’ some barbed point had found its home in her flesh. “I do not believe it,” she whispered, groping for her friend’s hand like a palsied ancient. “Mona—Tell me she lies.”

  The black colt jibbed, and backed; the little hands must have clenched on the reins.

  “Did you know,” Lady Caroline queried in the mildest amusement, “when you pressed your chaise upon him for the ease of his travels—poor boy, he worked so long into the night, scrawling verses for his Leila, he ought to take refreshment, he ought to steal a day or two in sailing o’er the seas—Did you know that it was to her he coursed, in your golden carriage? Her, he bound by wrist and mouth, to carry off to Gretna, for a Border wedding? She would not have him, Aspasia, by fair means or foul. Innocence is innocence still, that can reckon up the lies and find them short in weight. She threw all his passion in his face—and still she was his Leila! Not you!”

  All around us, a hush had fallen over carriage and horse alike, every fashionable head averted, but nonetheless in thrall to the slight figure who sat her mount as brutally as any Cassandra, crying doom to Agamemnon’s house. There had been nothing to equal the charm of this Season in Brighton for a decade, at least!

  A tall figure thrust its way through the crowd; the Earl of Swithin, come to claim his lady at last. I saw his broad frame, his unbowed head, with profound relief; but even Swithin’s face was white at the scene he had been forced to witness. He paid no heed to Caro Lamb, merely slapping the flank of her colt from his path, his eyes fixed on Desdemona’s phaeton.

  “Have we not a race to run?” he cried. “The gun is about to fire!”

  All heads swung as one towards the far end of the course, past the spectator stand, some fifty yards distant from our position, where a ragged line of seven horses fretted and sidled at the starter’s mark; and then, an indeterminate figure raised its arm and triggered a duelling pistol.

  The thunderous pack shot forward.

  I had no idea which was China Trade. For an instant—or even an hour, perhaps, so thoroughly is one’s sense of time suspended in contemplating a race—the horses seemed barely to move at all as they advanced upon us; we could not easily gauge their speed or distance in staring directly at them. Once they had swept past our position, however, in a surge of pounding flanks and striving forelegs, their jockeys crouched at their necks, whips flying, the sensation of speed was immediate. And suddenly one horse had leapt a stile, and another, and a third—

  “That is China Trade,” Mona murmured for my benefit; “the neat little bay with the small head and long neck. She is not so powerful as a stout hunter, mind, but she is built for speed—and leaps every obstacle like a gazelle, Swithin says.”

  I strained my gaze to distinguish the mare, flying away from us towards the far end of the course; it seemed to my eye that she was gaining. I had quite forgot Lady Caroline Lamb in all the excitement of the turf—but she obtruded suddenly and emphatically on my notice.

  “Hola, Sir!” she cried.

  The black colt surged powerfully forward, past our phaeton and into the mounted crowd before us; I thought with thankfulness that her ladyship had done hounding the Countess of Oxford for a moment.

  “Dear God,” Mona muttered. “What queer start will she next attempt?”

  And it was true: Caro Lamb did not merely seek a better position from which to view the race. With a slackening of her hold on the reins and a kick to her mount’s belly, she shot through the assembled viewers and dashed headlong out onto the course.

  The pack was long since gone, but Caro paid no heed—throwing herself flat along the black colt’s neck, the reins loosed as tho’ she wished to be run away with, she gave the horse its head—and galloped straight at the first stile.

  “She’ll break her neck,” Lady Oxford said grimly; and I was surprized to find no hint of satisfaction in her voice.

  “Not Caro,” Mona replied. “She has hunted her whole life with the Duke of Devonshire—I am sure there is nothing she will not throw her heart over.”

  And indeed, the black colt had carried her safely beyond the first three obstacles in the course; to my amazement, the gap between Caro and the rest of the field was shortening.

  “That’s a devilish fine horse,” I heard Sir John call out from beside Mrs. Alleyn’s curricle; “what do you say, Hodge, to a side bet on the black
colt?”

  “Ten pounds on Lady Caroline to place!” Hodge replied.

  And all around us, a feverish spate of betting commenced, with gentlemen hastening towards the little knot of men whose employment it was to record such wagers, and tally the winnings.

  Fragments of intelligence drifted over our heads … one horse was down on the far side of the course, beyond our view; Lord Wyncourt’s had refused a hedge. There was no word of China Trade.

  “How much to see the lady thrown?” a random voice called from the crowd; and a guffaw went up amidst the more vulgar members.

  Three horses were rounding the final curve in the course. A last fence remained, with a broken trunk beyond it—as deadly and as frightening a jump as any I had ever witnessed. One head rose up, shoulders bunched and forelegs dangling—the neat little mare with the long neck. Her mount was clinging like a monkey to her back, a diminutive fellow in the Earl of Swithin’s colours. As I watched, her body seemed to extend—to soar—and both fence and twisted mesh of fallen tree branches were behind her. A cheer went up as the mare laid back her ears, extended her head, and flew for home.

  And behind her—

  The black colt, with Lady Caroline’s Prussian blue train lying like a flag along its back.