'There never was such a Woman!!!' Emily Cowper (later Palmerston) wrote of her sister-in-law, Lady Caroline Lamb. Lady Cowper was not being complimentary. She later described Caroline as being 'more termagant than ever'. Such disparagement of the woman, who in 1812 had a notorious affair with Byron and was married to a future prime minister, was not confined to the Lamb family. Metternich's mistress, Princess Lieven, referred to 'that madwoman Lady Caroline Lamb', and Lord and Lady Holland compared her to typhus, while within Caroline's own family her cousin Lady Harriet Cavendish wrote of her 'absurdities', and her grandmother Lady Spencer, who was very fond of her, complained in 1811 of her 'great imprudence . . . &all this not from vice but vanity, inordinate vanity . . . Dear Caroline's perverseness makes me wretched whenever I think of it.'

LRB 19 May 2005 | PDF Download