Stephanie Barron - Jane and the Madness of Lord Byron

“What I chiefly wish to know,” Mona retorted, “is what Caroline was doing Monday night—or Tuesday morning, whichever you will—when she claims to have been making passionate love to his lordship! She has never said why she parted from Miss Twining in that churlish way. Even a Ponsonby born and bred should never behave so ill as to send a child of fifteen alone out into the night. I believe the lady prevaricates. I smell deceit in Caro Lamb at fifty paces, and I am determined to know the whole.”

“You intend to summon her to Marine Parade?”

“Not at all!” Mona set her cup on its saucer with an audible ring. “We shall beard her ladyship in her bower! Do you not believe the answer to the entire affair lies within the Pavilion itself?”

“I do. It is the last place Miss Twining was seen, and whence her body was certainly conveyed to the Arms. That cannot have happened without someone—guest or servant—noting a disturbance. I have been working upon my brother to use his influence with Lord Moira, in order to gain some entry there. For myself, I should dearly like to meet with George Hanger again.”

Mona look startled. “I cannot think why! Odious man. And his teeth are wooden. But you need no other entrée when I am with you, my dear—let us go at once, if you have quite finished your breakfast!”

I had quite finished my breakfast. It remained only to scrawl a hurried note to Henry, who had—at my behest—presented himself in full mourning dress at Catherine Twining’s funeral. The service was even now commencing, at the small chapel belonging to the 10th Hussars, so beloved of the Twining family; and Mr. Hendred Smalls should be presiding. It was not the service he had anticipated enjoying with young Catherine—and I wondered how he should get through it without breaking down entirely. But I must await Henry’s account. I put on my bonnet—and was away with Mona on the instant.

“I WISH THAT I WERE DEAD ,” LADY CAROLINE OFFERED IN a thread-like whisper.

The sentiment should not be unexpected in one who has tumbled from a powerful young horse to the hard ground of the Downs, and sustained a considerable bruising, if not a cracked rib or two; but Lady Caroline exhibited no evidence of physical injury from her escapade at the race-meeting two days previous, and appeared already to have forgot the sad despatching of the black colt.

“—Drowned, preferably, as the Other was,” she persisted. “I tried to allow the waters to o’erwhelm me, as he sailed on, indifferent—but I was cheated of Death. O, to be dying!”

“—or at the very least, declining,” Mona returned cordially. “On the whole, I think you should prefer declining , my dear—I really do. It is less absolute than death, and therefore offers greater scope for the imagination—one might persist in one’s decline, with periodic episodes of rallying—one might alternately raise and dash the hopes of such gentlemen as place wagers on these things at White’s, from week to week. Whereas with death, you know, the curtain is rung down quite definitely on your drama.”

“Catherine Twining is dead, and all the world can talk of nothing but her,” Caro said petulantly; “Catherine Twining is Leila , and George is forever writing verses to her! I wish I were dead. ”

“I should like to slap you.” Mona’s tone was all bored indignation. “You have only to hurl yourself into the sea, you ghoulish creature, without Swithin there to save you, to make an end of it. But tell us what we wish to know, first. You might then be comforted in your final moments, in the knowledge that you have been the salvation of Lord Byron. We shall promise to tell everyone so.”

Caro Lamb turned doe eyes, brimful of tragedy, upon the Countess. “You are excessively unkind. Why do you hate me so, Mona? Why does the entire world hate me? Is it because I was fortunate enough to have been loved by him?”

We were perched on a scattering of uncomfortable chairs, done in the Chinese stile with hard wooden backs, intended to suggest bamboo, in a small saloon that faced a prettyish wilderness running down to the shingle. It was a bright morning, and a stiff wind tossed the branches of the trees; Lady Caroline had adopted a pose by the French windows, and kept her profile turned firmly to best advantage.

“Not at all,” Mona replied cheerfully. “I expect it is because you are so tiresome , Caro. Now, you will have heard that his lordship has been taken to Brighton Camp, where he is held under armed guard, pending the next sitting of the Assizes—which in this part of the world are to be in two weeks’ time. The magistrate, Sir Harding Cross, has told Swithin that he should not have taken his lordship up, but for your testimony—your insistence at the inquest, Caro, that his lordship was in your rooms for the better part of Monday night.”

“Tuesday morning,” I interjected.

“Very well,” Mona said crossly. “You take my point, I hope. It is because of your … embroidering , your … penchant for the high dramatic … that Sir Harding may insist Lord Byron was at the Pavilion. Which is the very last place any of his friends should wish him to have been.”

“Why?” Caro demanded in a throbbing accent. “Why, Mona? Because they are determined to despise me, and my love for him? I am not ashamed of it! I am not ashamed of having felt that pure, elevating passion which …”

“Can you apprehend nothing , you wretched woman, but your own interest in this affair?” the Countess cried in exasperation. “It has nothing to do with you, Caro, excepting in that you have lied—and Byron shall certainly hang because of it!”

Lady Caroline’s gaze slid back, unseeing, to the windows. “I did not lie.”

There was a palpitating silence. Mona turned a puzzled look upon me, and lifted her shoulders in mute interrogation.

“I should never lie where Byron is concerned,” Caro murmured dreamily. “That should be to dishonour the sacred nature of our bond.”

I rose, and crossed to where she stood. “You insist upon his lordship’s having been here in the early hours of Tuesday morning?”

Caroline Lamb smiled at me, then—a faint, absent, half-crazed smile. “Of course he was,” she said. “Why do you think Catherine Twining ran away, all by herself, without the slightest escort? It was because he followed her here, of course—and the goosecap was terrified of him.”

FRIDAY, 14 MAY 1813

BRIGHTON, CONT.

“I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN SHE WOULD NOT LIE ABOUT anything to do with Byron—and that Scrope Davies should. ” Mona spoke gloomily as we quitted Caro Lamb’s rooms. “Swithin said Davies would do anything to save his friend’s skin— stand buff was the revolting Eton-schoolboy phrase he used.”

We had persisted in talking with Caro Lamb for a quarter-hour after her flat declaration, in an attempt to shake her from her appalling ground, but she would have none of it—nor of us. Her narrative consisted of the following:

Of course Byron had quitted the Assembly at her appearance; he could not bear to see her dancing—particularly if the dance was a waltz, and as she recalled, a waltz was being struck up within minutes of her arrival. She had expected Byron to lie in wait for her, however—or for Catherine Twining, it made no odds—because he could not bear to allow Caro the triumph of driving him out of Society, and must always have the final word. By adopting Catherine—of whose existence Caro had known already from her spies, as Lady Oxford had not—she had ensured that Byron would follow them both. And indeed, his lordship had braved the Pavilion itself—where Prinny had never yet invited him, due to their mutual dislike—on the strength of his acquaintance with Lady Caroline. Byron merely informed the footmen who awaited the late return of the Regent’s guests that Lady Caro had pressed him to drink tea with her after the Assembly—and as Lady Caro had already brought Miss Twining up to her boudoir, the footmen assumed Byron was expected as well.