Mad, Bad & Dangerous to Know


Lady Caroline Lamb & Lord Byron (from two separate paintings)

Life for the rich and fashionable in London during the Regency period (1788 to 1830), was extravagant and decadent. Marriage was mostly seen as a business arrangement, with fidelity being very low on the priority list for both sexes. The idea was that a woman's duty was to provide her husband with at least one male heir. That objective having been achieved, the happy wife was free to amuse herself with as many lovers as she sought fit to.

Lady Caroline Lamb was a typical example of the time. She was brought up in an environment in which all the adults were having affairs and many of her playmates were their illegitimate children. In her early teens she was married off to William Lamb, an ambitious politician and son of Lady Melbourne, ex mistress of the Prince of Wales. Two out of five of Lady Melbourne's children were rumoured to have been fathered by her lovers.
Not long after her marriage Caroline embarked on a series of affairs, which arose her mother-in-law's hostility towards her as she made no effort to conceal her liaisons. A contemporary account describes Caroline as "...a woman of society and of the world, the belle, the toast, the star of the day. She was adored but not content. She had a restless craving after excitement...she was bold and daring in her excursions through the debatable land between friendship and love."

In 1812 Caroline met Lord Byron. He was already as famous for his affairs with women as for his poetry. After first meeting him she wrote in her diary that he was "mad, bad and dangerous to know". A wildly passionate love affair ensued. Lady Caroline's diary entry would however prove to be almost prophetic as alas, for her Byron did turn out to be dangerous to know and their affair led to her downfall. Byron soon got tired of Caroline, characterizing her as wild and improvident as she would often cause scenes in public and was becoming increasingly possessive with him. At one point, he refused to see her and she disguised herself as a boy in order to gain admittance into his lodgings. Byron started feeling that her behaviour was making him look riduculous and so decided to put an end to their affair. In July 1813, he arrived at a party with a certain Lady Oxford and in everyone's presence ignored Caroline completely. This drove her to distraction and she frantically collapsed on the floor screaming, took some broken glass, tried to cut her wrists and then stabbed herself several times with a pair of scissors. She was carried out in a straight-jacket. Although she survived her wounds, her reputation in high society had been ruined.

Comments

Miz Kizzle said…
Wow. Bummer for her.
Remember, ladies; nothing turns a guy off like a crazy stalker chick.
Sunday, 05 February, 2012
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Catherine the Great and her Many Lovers

Image
Catherine the Great was empress of Russia from 1762 until she died in 1796. She was born in 1729 in Poland and in 1744 was taken to Russia to marry the young Grand Duke Peter, heir to the throne and not of a sane mind. For seven years during their marriage Peter spent his time playing with toy soldiers and dogs and showed no interest in sex. In fact he had a physical disability, a very tight foreskin, which may have played an important part in that matter. Finally the empress Elizabeth gave Catherine the permission to take a lover, which she did and was soon pregnant. She convinced Peter it was his own child, as was the plan anyway. In the meantime he had been circumcised so that he could perform the sexual act. Catherine developed a taste for young soldiers. She had a special area built in her bedroom, which was curtained off and where she received her lovers. Gregory Orlov was her on and off lover for around thirteen years. He was said to possess excellent equipment, unbelievable ‘st...
Read more

Emperor Elagabalus; the Teenage Pervert

Image
When the emperor Caracalla was murdered in 217, the fourteen-year-old Elagabalus succeeded him. He only ruled for 4 years, but in that short period of time he commited a variety of grotesque and debauched acts, enough to make Caligula and Commodus seem rather plain. His real name was Bassianus but as he developed an intense interest in worshippng the Syrian god Elagabal, became High Priest of the cult and so had his name changed to Elagabalus. To honor his god, he demanded that hundereds of cattle were slaughtered daily on huge sacrificial altars. He had a temple built on the Palatine Hill and ordered the Romans to worship a statue of a giant phallus, which didn't go down very well at all... Eventually he decided he was the god embodied. He started to wear women's clothes and make-up, implored his surgeons to cut his penis off and make him a vagina and when they said tehy could not do this he settled for circumcision. His body is said to have been very effeminate and he had a m...
Read more

The Smelly Woad Dyers

Image
Woad leaves Before Indigo was imported from the East in the 16th Century, the only source of rich blue dye was Woad, Isatis Tinctoria, a plant which is a member of the cabbage family and which was brought to Britain by the Celts. They called it Glasto, hence Glastonbury, which means ‘a place where woad grows’. The process by which the dye was extracted was lengthy and very smelly indeed, (think combination of raw sewage and rotten cabbage) and the people who did this work, woad dyers, were outcasts of society, since they smelt so much. As a result they were isolated and inbred. There was no way of hiding if you were a woad dyer as even if you washed yourself really well to remove the stench, the blue dye could be seen on your fingers and under your fingernails. Queen Elizabeth I, not being able to stand the stench from their workshops, decreed that woad dyers should be at least 5 miles away from wherever she was staying. As it took 50 kilos of woad in order to produce 5 kilos of pigme...
Read more