Vulgar History - Lady Caroline Lamb： Regency Era Manic Pixie Dream Girl

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00:00:18.320 welcome to vulgar history a feminist women's history comedy podcast this series we've been

00:00:33.740 talking about the regency era which is a time period very well known from regency era romance

00:00:39.120 novels which is a whole very popular genre and we're joined today by a regency era romance novelist

00:00:44.680 it's alexandra vasty hi so you were previously on this podcast doing a regency era sex ed

00:00:51.240 episode yes that was so much fun thank you so much for having me which fan favorite um it was

00:00:58.980 it was such a fun episode and i'm anyway the regency era so today we're going to be talking

00:01:04.080 about just so everybody knows lady caroline lamb which was your suggestion i'm so excited

00:01:09.520 there's so much to get into i didn't know her story at all i'm obsessed now there's so many

00:01:14.080 things I think everyone's gonna be so excited about but first can I ask you as a Regency

00:01:18.040 romance novelist how do you square off like the actual history of this era with like the expected

00:01:27.000 tropes of these books like if you were to write a book that was like straight up like the Regency

00:01:32.100 era it's like everybody's in a messy polycule relationship everyone's constantly on opium

00:01:38.920 like everyone's broke from gambling debts it's like no one would want to read that because that's

00:01:43.100 not what people want from a regency romance novel people would people would say this is so inaccurate

00:01:48.820 which is so funny you know so like how do you balance what people think the regency is like

00:01:54.400 with like what it was like because i like you do that in your books i'm just curious how you find

00:01:58.420 that balance yeah um i mean i think that it's a great question and it is something that like

00:02:04.680 as a historical writer especially historical romance where we're not necessarily striving for

00:02:09.920 for like strict historical accuracy or like, let me, you know, open your mind to the realities of

00:02:16.900 the day. It is something that I constantly have to balance in a line that I have to walk.

00:02:22.980 It's really important to me to show readers of historical romance that some things are

00:02:28.900 historically accurate that they may not have known, you know? So for example, I think we,

00:02:34.900 maybe last time I was on, I talked about my sapphic historical romance, which is called

00:02:39.440 Ladies and Hating. And that book, I was like, I already, I already know because you see it with

00:02:45.040 Bridgerton, you see it everywhere that people are going to say, well, that's not real. That's not

00:02:48.100 accurate. You know, there weren't women in loving sexual romantic relationships with other women. 1.00

00:02:53.000 Like that's not a thing back then. They didn't know that existed. So it was really important 1.00

00:02:57.200 to me to fill that book with tons of real historically accurate people like the Ladies

00:03:03.940 of Plain Gothlin, who I'm sure we will talk about today because of their connection to Caroline

00:03:07.320 lamb but also there absolutely are some aspects of real history that i don't really spend a lot

00:03:13.820 of time touching on like i do not want to talk about the fact that the roads were full of garbage

00:03:18.980 right like there is no garbage disposal you just throw it out the window um or burn it if you can

00:03:24.860 burn it so things so in london especially it's smelly there's trash everywhere there's thick

00:03:29.360 disgusting smelling smoke like i don't i don't you know i don't need to include that level of

00:03:35.540 historical accuracy my characters don't have syphilis even though they probably would have

00:03:39.540 um so i think that it's just a constant sort of balancing of like what do you want to shine a

00:03:45.120 light on and what do you want to um you know politely decorously ignore um and i think it's

00:03:50.820 a really fun thing for people to read it's because we're all kind of playing in the same sandbox uh

00:03:56.500 but doing our own emphases or putting our own twists in that universe yeah i think like especially

00:04:04.000 just the story of lady caroline lamb and the people who are around her and her mother and

00:04:09.020 her aunt and all these people just really reminded me i was talking to my friend lana about this

00:04:13.160 where it's like on the one extreme end of like regency romance novels you have like oh my gosh 0.81

00:04:18.340 this lady was seen holding hands with a man and now they have to get married or else her 1.00

00:04:22.800 reputation will be ruined versus you have lady caroline lamb and everything she was up to where

00:04:27.100 it's like i don't know if hand holding was like the most scandalous thing a young woman could get

00:04:32.920 up to yeah actual regency but the books have become so like there's lots more now but sort of

00:04:40.000 like when you think about like the typical like regency romance novels of like the 70s the 80s

00:04:44.000 like it was very like prim and proper yeah um yeah sort of like but and and that's it's just

00:04:50.840 so many people's understanding of the regency and we talked about this in our other episode like

00:04:54.800 on bridgerton where it's like and no one knew what sex was until they got married where it's like

00:04:59.560 okay absolutely i do think that that um that there is this sense and i think um it happens

00:05:09.500 across history like sort of a flattening of the historical past or like oh they didn't know

00:05:13.540 anything then we like to imagine humans we like to imagine that we've like grown right that we're

00:05:17.360 now we're so aggressive now and we're so this and we're so much more we're smarter we're more

00:05:21.240 knowledgeable and we're you know better in all these ways um and so i think one of those is like

00:05:26.020 we like to assume that the past that everybody was like prim and proper and never stepped a toe

00:05:30.640 out of line um so i have i have written many um books about women who step way out of line um and 0.99

00:05:39.360 i do often get a lot of pushback that like well they wouldn't have been allowed to do that or 0.58

00:05:42.920 they wouldn't known to do that or they would have been this that um so yeah so caroline lamb is

00:05:47.080 someone that i have known about as a historical figure for a long time and often when i'm like

00:05:52.280 am i going too far with this character i'm like no like this is like not even half of the caroline

00:05:58.320 lamb distance like go farther well the thing that i'll tell everybody just to like cue up this

00:06:03.320 episode and what we're going to get into a caroline lamb but also just in terms of the regency era

00:06:07.380 what i was thinking it's like the people the people who she was hanging out with her friends

00:06:11.620 her family like they were already at such a level of like what we would consider debauchery for lack

00:06:17.380 of a better word. Caroline had to go so extreme to even be thought of as a scandalous person, 0.69

00:06:24.500 because all the stuff that she was doing, everybody was doing, like her mom did it, 0.99

00:06:28.020 her aunt did it. And part of this is because they were like the upper class, like they were

00:06:31.660 could not have been more upper class. Like they were so rich and so wealthy. That's who can get

00:06:35.120 away with stuff. The stuff where it's like, Oh no, you were seen holding hands. That's like a very

00:06:38.860 middle-class thing. But when you're rich, as we've seen out today, like you can get away with a lot

00:06:43.300 more so the fact that like and she was sort of like an adorable it girl until she took things

00:06:50.220 a bit too far but like absolutely how much she did before she took things too far I think is

00:06:55.660 interesting just to show like what what was considered scandals in that time which was like 0.88

00:07:01.880 and I think that why I mean you know as I'm sure alluding her mother had affairs had multiple 0.92

00:07:09.040 children like well known that she was having these children with men who were not her spouse 1.00

00:07:13.320 um she would be like whisked away to like give birth and they'd be like oh she had a fall 1.00

00:07:18.300 right or like um her mother-in-law similarly like everyone knew that um that that caroline's

00:07:24.400 husband was illegitimate or you know that the father he was technically legitimate because

00:07:28.220 she was married but everyone knew that his parentage was sort of suspect um yeah and the

00:07:33.500 reason that everybody got away with it is because they would pretend they didn't do it and they

00:07:38.040 would just keep up these pleasant little lies like oh i just had a fall on my horse even though

00:07:43.540 like everybody just saw her eight months pregnant you know what i mean and caroline just never did

00:07:48.080 emma hamilton we did the episode about her a bit ago and she was just like oh i was in naples and

00:07:52.000 i just found this foundling baby and i adopted her and now i have her with me don't worry about

00:07:56.460 it totally not my baby with nelson like just found a baby now i have a baby if you just lied

00:08:02.620 everyone would sort of it was like the social contract to just go along with it but caroline

00:08:06.380 for whatever reason could not do that and she was like no these are my feelings this is what

00:08:12.060 happened everything like there was no hiding things with caroline everything was out there

00:08:18.020 everything was in public everything was 11 out of 10 and and people just that's why she's so 1.00

00:08:23.140 scandalous because of of that just sort of inability to to kind of be polite and be decorous 0.94

00:08:29.000 and brush things over and that's so funny the way you described it because i agree i i do want to

00:08:34.300 mentioned, I read, there's a biography of Frau called Lady Carolyn Lamb, A Free Spirit by Antonia

00:08:38.000 Frazier, which I really recommend. It's very like, Antonia Frazier, she wrote like Marie Antoinette

00:08:42.560 The Journey. She's like, if you're going to read a biography, like she writes them really like

00:08:46.640 narratively, really easy to read. But she was touching on this as well, where it's like,

00:08:53.500 everybody was doing this, but as long as you don't talk about it, it's, yeah. Anyway, I do want to

00:09:00.720 clarify because we're going to have so many connections to previous this is i forget it's

00:09:04.880 like episode 29 in my regency era series and i feel like we're going to talk about at least 25

00:09:09.440 people who've already come up in this series because her life intersected with everybody

00:09:14.480 most notably trigger warning lord byron so you just trigger warning for caroline you can't oh

00:09:22.420 if only she could have known but so she's just to start things off like the most like we start

00:09:28.800 with her family. You were just, you were alluding to who her mother was. So her, she's the niece of

00:09:33.680 Georgina, the Duchess of Devonshire, who I did a whole two-part episode about. And if you recall

00:09:38.300 listeners from that episode, Georgina had children with her husband. She had children with her lover.

00:09:44.800 Then also there was Elizabeth, Bess Foster was there and Bess Foster had her children with her

00:09:49.440 husband. She had children with Georgina's husband. These children were all growing up together in

00:09:53.320 kind of this sort of like daycare. And then Georgina's sister, Harriet, had children with

00:09:59.280 her husband, children with her various lovers, and those children were there too. So it's just

00:10:02.340 like this daycare of like cousins, half cousins, secret siblings, half siblings. It's just like

00:10:08.180 no two kids of the same two parents. And so this is where Lady Caroline Lamb was growing up, just 0.57

00:10:14.720 among this menagerie of half siblings, much to my annoyance in reading about it, half of whom

00:10:22.500 seem to be called caroline yes yes and and her husband his brother also marries a caroline so

00:10:31.240 they are both caroline lamb um which is incredible and so the family would call them what is it

00:10:37.860 caroline william and caroline george differentiated between the two caroline

00:10:43.320 and last name yeah yeah and then what happens is yeah so caroline marries william lamb and then

00:10:52.160 her one of these other kids from the daycare caroline saint jules marries another lamb so

00:10:57.460 then anyway so they're they're both married to brothers like it's just a real incestuous thing

00:11:02.880 but like don't look at it too closely i just feel like this you don't i don't think you see this in

00:11:06.840 regency novels you tell me people falling in love and then realizing they're secretly half siblings

00:11:12.520 because i feel like that's a real risk i've never read that one but okay because i was like this is

00:11:18.580 a real risk what ends up happening we're jumping all over but it's fine because ultimately lady

00:11:24.160 caroline lamb marries lady caroline ponsonby marries william lamb and so you're alluding

00:11:30.060 the fact that william lamb's mother had had various affairs and so probably biologically

00:11:34.540 his father was not mr lamb but then her basically she and her husband were probably cousins based

00:11:44.060 on the biological fathers of both of them, but the like legal fathers of both of them were not

00:11:48.780 cousins. So it's just like, there's all these secret relationships because of who everyone is

00:11:53.140 having. So this is what she's growing up with. I want to just contextualize this for everybody.

00:11:56.480 She's a girl growing up in a context where like all the women around her are having affairs and

00:12:02.440 children with various people. That's normal to her. That's just what's up. Yeah. And she grows

00:12:10.120 up in extreme wealth just like lavish wealth that's why they can afford all of these children 1.00

00:12:17.240 all of the you know governesses to take care of the children she's um and she's very wild and 1.00

00:12:23.960 that's sort of like there's all these you know the sweet little girls and then there's like 0.93

00:12:27.820 wild caroline who is she refuses to ride side saddle so like if you've ever read a regency

00:12:34.060 romance all the heroines like oh of course i don't ride side saddle and you know you'll see

00:12:38.300 you'll see reviewers readers will complain like everybody wrote sides out well actually

00:12:42.420 we can look at caroline lamb who absolutely flat out refused and it's you know it's a little 0.76

00:12:47.920 scandalous to be riding a stride especially because they don't wear underwear so you got

00:12:52.380 to wear trousers over there um yeah so she grows up kind of i think sort of in this extravagant

00:13:00.140 atmosphere and she's very everybody knows even when she's a child that she's that she's something

00:13:05.580 special and different. And she's also, she's different physically. She's a little tiny

00:13:10.980 person. I was trying to think about like who in modern society can we compare it? She's like a 0.98

00:13:14.840 little tiny person with huge eyes. So she's described throughout this biography by Antonia

00:13:19.320 Fraser as like this little fairy, like this little sprite, like she's little and so cute with these

00:13:25.020 big eyes. And when you see portraits of her, you're like, oh yeah. So I was like, Nicole Richie is like

00:13:28.360 the closest person I could think of. Who's like little tiny, really big eyes. Maybe like Audrey

00:13:32.740 Hepburn? Yeah. Like, like a short Audrey Hepburn. I don't know how tall Audrey Hepburn is. So

00:13:37.560 she's like leggy. So I assume she's tall. Maybe she's not, but yeah, she's like a little Audrey 1.00

00:13:42.980 Hepburn and she's so cute and so sweet. And she's like in this overcrowded, again, daycare of half

00:13:49.240 siblings. She stands out partially because she's so tiny and partially because of this

00:13:53.120 huge personality that she's got. One of her cousins is Hart, Georgina,

00:13:59.840 Duchess Defensher's son, Hartington. And the two of them have a lifelong, like really sweet

00:14:04.600 friendship. Hart is always very supportive of her, but I think he talked about how, like,

00:14:10.240 she just, she was a star, like from an early age. It's just like, she stands out among all these

00:14:14.360 people. But you said like, she would ride a stride. She had this sort of, because she was so little

00:14:19.580 throughout her life, and I'm guaranteed we're going to talk about this. There was some,

00:14:25.120 she liked to disguise herself as a boy because she was just physically,

00:14:31.780 she was described as like boyish. Cause she's like small. 0.98

00:14:34.480 She's not especially like curvaceous and she would even keep her haircut short, 0.99

00:14:38.040 which I feel like if you did that in one of your novels, they'd be like, 1.00

00:14:40.480 Alexandra, how dare you have a short hair and she rides a stride.

00:14:43.240 That's so inaccurate. You're like, actually, 1.00

00:14:45.240 here's a portrait of Lady Caroline Lamb with her short,

00:14:47.820 with her short pixie cut because she wore her hair short.

00:14:51.020 She liked to disguise herself as a boy. She, and she,

00:14:55.120 And who knows why? I think part of that is just for the freedom that it would entail. She could sneak into places that you couldn't go when you were a girl and she was disguised as a boy, but also because she liked to get away with it. And she could, because she was sort of androgynous looking.

00:15:07.600 I do want to clarify. So she was born in, just to place this all, like she's, when I say she's

00:15:12.720 the niece of Georgina, if you heard those episodes, listeners. So it's like the next

00:15:16.180 generation. She's born in 1785. So she's born at Ponsonby. Her father's Friedrich Ponsonby,

00:15:23.880 the third Earl of Bisborough, an Anglo-Irish peer. And if the surname Ponsonby is bumping up and

00:15:31.660 you're like, I know, wasn't there someone else Ponsonby? Yes. One of the ladies of Lengoghlin,

00:15:36.300 who started her life, Sarah Ponsonby, 0.90

00:15:40.000 started her life in Ireland, ran away to Wales.

00:15:43.200 And so they are relative.

00:15:44.640 And that's how, again, in the episode

00:15:46.700 about Ladies of Llan Goughlin,

00:15:47.960 there's going to be so many callbacks in this episode.

00:15:50.480 But we talked there, part of the reason

00:15:51.800 why they were able to run off together

00:15:53.740 and have this house and be in a sapphic relationship

00:15:56.140 is because they were so rich

00:15:58.580 that they could kind of get away with it.

00:16:00.260 So this is the family that she's born into.

00:16:02.480 And also these, um, the sort of aristocratic connections, um, were part of why their story

00:16:10.440 got so much attention. Like if they had just been like two, you know, like maids, you know,

00:16:15.640 who just like happened to live together or two like farmhands or whatever, like no one would

00:16:20.460 care. Um, but because they, she was supposed to marry rich and she was supposed to have this big

00:16:26.060 aristocratic marriage and they kept sort of like planning, you know, like her, her, her marriages

00:16:30.340 to, to various wealthy and aristocratic men. And she kept eloping with her, her female lover. Like

00:16:37.500 they kept, they kept running off repeatedly eloped together. Um, and, and so I think that,

00:16:43.580 you know, they were sort of, uh, you know, you, it would be like, if like, well, I don't know,

00:16:48.360 like I'm trying to think of someone like similar, like a, like a big politician or something's like

00:16:52.620 daughter kept like sort of getting involved in these sort of like dramatic things. Like everyone

00:16:56.580 would know yeah the only similar thing i think in contemporary culture is like the kennedys or

00:17:02.340 something like a family that people are just like you remember who they are because they're

00:17:06.720 you just kind of oh and there's always something interesting happening with them so it's

00:17:10.660 so she's already like she's born into like on the one side it's like georgina's sisters her mom

00:17:16.200 on the other side it's the ponson bees like she's in this one percent type yes exactly exactly

00:17:23.140 growing up in this daycare. And as you said, like she was, she was wild and people in another

00:17:29.320 context, maybe a girl like that would be, you know, I don't know, beaten down or somehow tried 0.91

00:17:35.540 to like force her to behave, but everyone's just kind of like, that's just her. That's just little

00:17:40.220 Caro. Like she's just like that. And she just kind of was allowed to run wild. And partially

00:17:45.720 that's because her mother was always busy having babies in continental Europe from her numerous

00:17:51.120 affairs no one could really like parent her but i found it interesting that even from a young age

00:17:57.040 um so she was administered laudanum often just to like calm her down which is this opioid which

00:18:04.620 we've talked about in the podcast this series as well and it was used at the time just like we

00:18:09.360 would use like advil or something it's just kind of like people didn't weren't aware then of like

00:18:14.580 the risks and stuff of like opioid use on very young children so from a young age like she's

00:18:20.600 being drugged. And I'm, I'm seeing that because later on, you know, that might affect some things,

00:18:27.300 but she's so intense and hyper that the parents are like, here's heroin. Like, can you

00:18:34.540 is the only way to get her to just be quiet. So she's, she's a handful and she was close to her 0.99

00:18:44.820 mom. She's always close to her mom. She's close to her grandma. And they were both loved her and

00:18:49.380 which i think is great because in another context there could be a family who just like a girl like

00:18:55.000 this would be kicked out of the house or i don't know but she was just sort of like that's just her

00:18:59.140 well the lamb family is that other family that she she just married into it yes and so let's talk

00:19:07.640 about william lamb and it's a love match when she first falls up yeah it's not one of these arranged

00:19:14.060 like you were saying you know with her relative sarah ponsonby they wanted her to have this

00:19:18.220 you know, alliance with another powerful family. But like everything we've said so far about Lady

00:19:24.240 Caroline, like, of course, she's not going to do what she's told. She fell in love with a person 0.95

00:19:28.080 who's like the younger son. And because of her wealth and stuff, they thought, oh, no,

00:19:32.680 we can do better than this. But she's like, I'm marrying you no matter what. But then his older

00:19:36.660 brother died. And it's like, oh, he is the heir. So then everyone's a bit more cool with it.

00:19:40.540 Yes. Although except the family was sort of scandalous because the older brother was

00:19:44.460 the the actual dad's actual biological son but everyone believed that william was not so it was

00:19:51.200 sort of when the when the older brother died who was meant to inherit and then it was like oh but

00:19:55.520 he couldn't do anything about it because they were married so he was legally the heir so that's

00:19:58.820 something that i think the older brother oh i just wanted to mention the older brother peniston

00:20:03.440 no but yeah it's peniston but it is it is spelled would you have you ever called a character in one

00:20:09.360 of your books peniston no i haven't because i again i don't think people believe it but i do

00:20:15.080 use a um a site a census site to come up with character names so sometimes i'm like okay i

00:20:21.240 need a character name that starts with a p and penis p e n i s was a real last name a real so 0.84

00:20:30.020 i could have like mr penis in and it would be real but i have not yeah that good yeah but yes 0.96

00:20:35.860 These are the details where it's just like, you know, these things where it's like, oh, but it's factually true. 0.99

00:20:40.360 But it's just like readers would just be like, what are you doing?

00:20:42.820 It would be so silly if I named a character. 1.00

00:20:46.460 You're a penis. 1.00

00:20:48.220 So, yes, it's important what you're saying. 1.00

00:20:50.540 That Peniston was, everyone agreed, like the biological son of the husband.

00:20:57.840 But then he dies.

00:20:59.380 And then who's left is William Lamb, who is clearly the son of one of the lovers.

00:21:03.680 but you know legally this anyway so he's there so this is kind of controversial 1.00

00:21:08.400 there's a bit of like back and forth and caroline already does have a reputation for being this

00:21:13.380 wild child and the lambs yeah well you were in for you're sort of implying this before but the

00:21:19.380 lambs are a family who are just like this is how things are done and we do things by the book and

00:21:24.140 so you know it and it's not going to be like what's that movie the amanda bynes movie

00:21:30.660 where she's Colin Firth's daughter.

00:21:33.260 I don't know if you know what I mean.

00:21:34.380 Oh, yes. 1.00

00:21:35.580 And she shows up and then what a girl wants. 0.97

00:21:39.220 So she shows up and everyone's just like, 0.98

00:21:41.660 oh no, all of her wild ways.

00:21:43.360 But at the end, they're just like,

00:21:44.200 we love you and you're wild.

00:21:46.720 That's not what's going to happen with the Lamb family.

00:21:49.960 This is not an Amanda Vines movie.

00:21:52.160 This is, they hate her. 0.99

00:21:55.620 They get married and the mother-in-law, 1.00

00:21:57.820 talk about the mother-in-law,

00:21:58.840 like mother-in-law from hell mother-in-law from hell in so many ways okay so I want to say and

00:22:05.000 I hope I'm not jumping ahead too much so so William Lamb so so they this is a love match as

00:22:10.060 you said she's 19 he is I think 26 or so um so they're both fairly young I mean this is like a

00:22:17.160 pretty young marriage I think sometimes we think like oh in the past everybody got married so but

00:22:22.000 they didn't really so this is like a fairly young marriage he later would say like no man should get

00:22:26.400 married before they're 30 because their brains aren't like fully developed basically was what

00:22:30.600 he said um but they're really in love and they're very happy together at first despite the fact that

00:22:36.360 um melbourne by campus melbourne who is um william lamb's mom like really loathes caroline like

00:22:43.380 and they all live in the same house it's important to note that they all live in the same house she

00:22:47.900 moves into it's a big house but like the mom who hates you is there every day every day yeah

00:22:55.820 and they have sort of a sad it's sad um their first child is stillborn then they have a son

00:23:04.160 and then they have another daughter who dies after 24 hours so i mean just you know infant

00:23:10.660 mortality was very very high then maternal mortality was very high as well um and then

00:23:15.680 she never gets pregnant again for the rest of her life so there's despite having what seems to be 0.99

00:23:20.440 quite a lot of sex. So, and she loved children. So it's, it's, it's kind of sad. So they do have

00:23:26.580 one son together whose name is Augustus, George Augustus. Yeah. And Augustus has, this is one of

00:23:33.240 those, when looking back at history, I can't not just, and we're going to talk about this with

00:23:38.380 Caroline's psychology and that of some other people, but like there's an Augustus neurodivergent

00:23:43.460 probably um he had he's this sort of child where she was devoted to him and it was really I find

00:23:52.120 it really cute that she's this little teeny tiny person and her son is born and everyone's like

00:23:56.080 whoa that's a big baby and he's just like a big kid and then he becomes like a big adult band like

00:24:02.320 he's just like a big guy and she adores her son and another mother might have sent him off to some

00:24:08.500 sort of like hospital or something because he had like extra needs like special needs

00:24:13.420 but she did not and the family and William also that like they supported him and loved him

00:24:17.720 and he just has I don't know there's something going on with epilepsy yeah he definitely has

00:24:24.080 epilepsy yes and I think that it is sort of hard to believe but is historically true that you could

00:24:31.260 be um institutionalized at the time just for epilepsy like not even for anything else like

00:24:37.720 epilepsy alone was it was like oh you're having fits you need you need to be whatever so she um

00:24:43.780 she really worked hard to prevent what other people were advising which was hat send him away

00:24:49.800 send him like oh there's nice places you can send it you can put him into right because part of the

00:24:55.220 this upper class sort of thing they live in is that like oh these these things are embarrassing

00:24:59.800 and you need to hide them and we don't talk about them and and she spent her whole life making sure

00:25:05.520 that that did not happen to him. So I think that that's really just a part of her personality,

00:25:10.240 that she wasn't going to hide anything, but she definitely wasn't going to hide her son.

00:25:15.080 And I wonder if part of the thing, like the sort of what's up with Augustus, and we don't know,

00:25:19.920 but is that he had these fits and people back then and their understanding of

00:25:24.380 everything, medical knowledge would just be like, oh, he has fits, that must mean that he's also 1.00

00:25:31.020 stupid. Like the, I think, I don't know how much, but he did like, he could read and write and like 0.99

00:25:37.440 he went to school and stuff and he just might've had some extra challenges, but she was so devoted

00:25:40.960 to him. Um, and she also similar to her contemporary Carolina Brunswick, the princess of

00:25:47.980 Wales, who also had huge maternal feelings and wanted to have a huge brood of children and did 1.00

00:25:53.260 not. Um, lady Caroline Lamb also took in people like children, like young page boys, like young 0.98

00:25:59.720 girls there was a a child who she took in who's like the illegitimate daughter of a relative

00:26:04.920 called susan who she kind of raised as her surrogate daughter so she didn't have other 1.00

00:26:09.560 biological children but she did she found ways to like be a mother to other people yeah

00:26:16.520 i'm i'm really putting off lord byron for as long as we can and i do feel like when people talk

00:26:25.040 about caroline lamb it is in the context of byron or in the context of her husband that's all i knew

00:26:31.720 so yeah so i and you know i think then well both she she these were two like powerful men and and

00:26:41.100 william lamb was sort of this like he he just sort of adored her he he was sort of like easily led so

00:26:48.640 his like sisters and his mom would be like you got to break it off with caroline and then he

00:26:52.800 he'd be like okay i guess and then they'd like find him with caroline again you know um but he

00:26:58.520 was he was very like fine with her doing whatever but after she dies so spoiler she dies

00:27:04.200 here years later there's a lot to come he's born in 75 so we could probably assume that

00:27:10.520 actually um so after she dies he becomes the prime minister like a very important very significant

00:27:16.960 um prime minister for queen victoria so like she's so often she gets talked about in the context

00:27:23.720 either of um him as prime minister or of byron and it's so i totally agree that i'm like let's

00:27:32.140 just not let's just let's talk about her and what she's no i just realized that we hadn't even got

00:27:36.860 into that but i'm like because this is what interests me about her is who she was but that

00:27:40.380 was actually that was a big twist for me when i was reading through this biography at the end when

00:27:44.600 talked about after she died and then he inherited his father died he became lord melbourne and i'm

00:27:48.880 like why do i know that name lord melbourne and then it's just like the hot prime minister from

00:27:53.560 victoria yes yes the miniseries played by rufus stewell the tragic backstory of having had this

00:28:00.760 like you know mad wife who almost destroyed his career yes i know it's just like wait a minute

00:28:06.080 wait a minute her husband was hot um that was my i just because in victoria you know the one

00:28:11.360 with Jenna Coleman, the like miniseries version. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. In the first episodes, I was

00:28:15.280 just like, oh, I hope she gets together with this guy. It's like, wait, I know Queen Victoria did

00:28:18.640 not get together with her prime minister. That's Caroline's husband later. So that was a big twist

00:28:24.100 for me. But yeah, so he becomes an important prime minister, but that's also important in

00:28:27.420 terms of the Lamb family hating Caroline because they wanted him to become this important politician

00:28:32.900 and an important politician has to have a wife who's like not riding sides at all while this

00:28:38.460 guys is a page boy and she is not political like she is not ever gonna poll it i mean so she later 1.00

00:28:45.480 in life she like tries to um like help one of the friends campaign or cousin or something and she's

00:28:51.000 literally like i will kiss you if you vote for him but you know and see that's why she's inspired

00:28:54.840 by her aunt or jana who is alleged to have done that yes so she's like this is how you campaign

00:29:00.220 okay i'll just like kissing booth great yes that is part of why they hate her so much and to be

00:29:06.720 fair to that not to the mom who was horrible but to the sisters i could see like if your brother

00:29:11.340 is like trying to be a serious politician and his wife is like frolicking around causing scandals

00:29:15.600 all the time like i could see how you would really get mad but i appreciate about william

00:29:21.760 that he was just like oh that's just her you know the same way that her family was like he he liked

00:29:25.900 and knew that that's what she was like i love this detail that so he kind of was like in and

00:29:29.780 out of politics for a while and like various jobs but when he first was elected to i guess the house

00:29:34.000 of lords he went to like give a speech or parliament honestly i don't know i don't care

00:29:39.240 he was elected to something in government i think parliament because that's when you're elected

00:29:43.560 yeah yeah and so and he's a wig for all my wigs and tories lovers out there this has been haunting 0.92

00:29:52.320 me this whole series alexandra is i'm just like goddamn wigs and tories do i have to talk about 0.79

00:29:56.860 it again i anyway these people all wigs anyway so he's elected and he's gonna give his like hey 0.95

00:30:04.040 thanks for voting me in speech and like women are not allowed in parliament only men can go

00:30:08.420 to parliament and carolyn's just like but i want to see my guy have his moment so she disguises

00:30:12.400 herself as a page boy with her short hair puts on some trousers and then she's there to watch him

00:30:17.680 and i'm just like i love this couple like she's cool she's proud of him and he's cool with her

00:30:23.000 just like wild ways and they're they're just having a nice time yes although i do we should

00:30:28.060 i think it's worth noting that he was hot and he was very sweet to her for most of their life and

00:30:34.140 he also did not want his son institutionalized but it is worth noting that he was like a huge

00:30:39.320 pro-slavery advocate he loved i know that slavery so much um yes this is like an important historical

00:30:47.820 fact about william lamb who then becomes melbourne right like he was like fought so hard to keep

00:30:54.540 slavery going so thing thing to know about history thing to know yeah um so he's like doing well

00:31:05.640 politically caroline it's just i've so many there's so many fun examples of her like she

00:31:11.160 loved to do um a masquerade party she loved to have and she there's i'm just trying to think

00:31:18.160 there's other there's one party she went to once like she was a famous person just for being this

00:31:22.480 like outrageous personality she's like julia fox of her time i don't know i'm trying to think of 1.00

00:31:26.740 somebody who's just like whoa like if she went to the met gala like look at what what she can wear 0.99

00:31:31.100 it's amazing absolutely at one of her masquerade parties she came dressed as a man dressed as lady

00:31:36.760 caroline lamb this is my favorite i'm so glad you told that anecdote because yes and and and people

00:31:42.840 thought it was a man dressed as caroline lamb like people were totally convinced by this

00:31:48.020 i can picture like lady gaga doing that or something where she's just lady gaga like she

00:31:55.220 because of her just her build and i guess she's able to change her mannerisms and this is also

00:31:59.760 a time where it's just like if you're wearing trousers you're a man like culturally that's

00:32:03.240 the understanding like she would just she'd go off and sneak like she pretend to be the page boy

00:32:09.220 there is some this might happen later in her life but these i'm sure she's doing this throughout her

00:32:12.460 life where she was she wanted to meet somebody and she's like okay yeah come by my house and

00:32:16.700 she sent a letter and the person showed up and then she had like her maid servant dressed in a

00:32:19.960 fancy dress and she was standing nearby as a page boy and the person assumed oh this must be lady

00:32:24.360 caroline lamb and she's like no wait one second and she runs off changes cuffs back in she's like

00:32:28.340 i'm lady caroline lamb like yeah she's never not doing a costume switcheroo do your favorite thing

00:32:35.940 impersonating a page boy i'm obsessed with this it's like she for her whole life she's like later

00:32:43.300 on she's like 35 years old and she's just like is that a teenage page boy or is it me lady caroline

00:32:47.840 lamb like she she's constantly so all right i fear we have to turn to byron so so william

00:32:57.220 and caroline are happy for a while and then she has kind of a flirtation with another man 0.62

00:33:03.740 his mom says you got to shut it down she's like okay fine she shuts it down and then

00:33:09.520 the byron era starts and it never really ends i need to do one thing so lord byron

00:33:18.600 like listeners here we go but um his first really famous poem was called child herald

00:33:25.460 which um friend of the podcast allison epstein she does this sub stack called dirt bags through

00:33:32.220 the ages where she talks about just like shitty people in history and she said when whenever she

00:33:37.260 sees child harold the title she pictures like harold in the purple crayon the children's book

00:33:41.420 so i can't not think i can't not think the lord byron and his famous work harold in the purple

00:33:48.800 crayon and everyone's just like oh this beautiful work i'm like yes harold in the purple crayon

00:33:53.140 okay go ahead go ahead no no you go ahead like what people need to know about child herald is

00:34:00.100 that it is the hudson williams connor story moment of lord byron life it is heated rivalry

00:34:06.580 he goes from zero to one million in terms of fame yes and and he's young and he's super hot to

00:34:14.600 to everyone apparently despite me not understanding this fact and and yeah he it it transforms his

00:34:22.380 career his life he's he's been this sort of like impoverished he had a disability so he's sort of

00:34:27.800 been this like impoverished he's technically a lord but like you know people don't think he's

00:34:32.800 that great to all of a sudden overnight he is like this massive massive celebrity and so caroline

00:34:39.920 reads the poem and she writes him a fan letter and i want to mention too just in terms of like

00:34:45.920 caroline forward discussion she is a very literary person like she she's been writing her

00:34:52.200 whole life like writing poetry she's also a talented artist she's educated really well she

00:34:56.340 she can like speak and read and write in like Greek and Latin and French and Italian like she's

00:35:00.740 she is a writerly person in an era where like women like her couldn't really be writers like

00:35:07.080 we've done episodes we've talked about Jane Austen we've talked about Mary Wollstonecraft

00:35:09.900 the Brontes like we know the challenges of a woman can't just like be a novelist but I think

00:35:15.020 in today's age you know she would have been so when she's writing to Lord Byron she's not just

00:35:19.720 like hey you're hot hi I think she's like whoa your writing is so good and you're hot and I'm

00:35:25.680 a chaotic person and like let's do this but the the heated rivalry comparison is so apt I think

00:35:31.260 Lord Byron has a famous quote he wrote something where he's just like I woke up one day and I was

00:35:35.780 famous and I'm like yes you are Hudson Williams it's exact like just suddenly I think he's the

00:35:41.520 what like 24 or something I could look up but it's like he's 24 he's 26 and he is so he is

00:35:47.600 facially very handsome when you see the portraits of him like other people from this era we know

00:35:52.660 like the prince of wales um got portrait artists to exaggerate their handsomeness but byron was like

00:35:58.640 a really good looking guy he had like the face of like harry styles he was like a very handsome

00:36:04.180 person his disability which you mentioned is he has a club foot which means like his one foot

00:36:08.800 kind of drags when he walks this becomes an issue because later on the waltz is popularized

00:36:15.020 caroline starts hosting waltzing party byron oh oh this podcast is a purely anti-byron so there's

00:36:25.980 waltzing parties and caroline is all about it so if you picture like in a classic regency era

00:36:30.940 movie you've got the you know like the lineup of people it's like the women on one line and

00:36:35.420 the men in one line and you like walk towards each other and then you switch partners maybe

00:36:40.340 touch hands at the most. But a waltz is like this new German sexy dance where you're like

00:36:45.440 holding onto one person for a whole song. It's like, so it's like, what is it? It's the dirty

00:36:50.960 dancing of its age. It's like the Lombata. Everyone's just like, what? No, like by the

00:36:56.080 waist. Like even now, if like a person is like holding me by the waist and I'm like, this feels

00:37:01.720 very intimate. Why are we, you know, like I don't, this should only be someone that I have a very

00:37:06.120 close relationship with so it's it's it's shocking and of course caroline loves it and caroline she

00:37:11.680 starts hosting waltzing parties or which are literally like all night raves she has like

00:37:16.860 literally like they have a waltzing party and they go until like they start at 2 a.m and they

00:37:22.940 go until like 2 in the afternoon the next day like people are just like waltzing she loves it and but

00:37:27.840 byron because his club foot is just like they're having an affair at this point he's just like i

00:37:31.560 forbid you from waltzing he forbids her from waltzing because he can't do it because he can't

00:37:35.660 do it no he's awful so basically she writes in this fan letter he comes to meet her at her house

00:37:40.400 she's just come in from from one of her rides and she's all sort of windblown and whatever and it's

00:37:45.340 it's it's it is lust at first sight and they embark on an extremely intense very short

00:37:53.580 relationship and this is what like i think needs to be expressed is that she becomes

00:37:59.340 obsessed with him after like a pretty short two months the entire duration of the relationship

00:38:07.040 is something like four to five months right and and i don't we were talking about this a little

00:38:15.460 before we started recording but like i don't understand what byron has that makes people

00:38:20.860 feel this way about him because it was a lot of people were like completely so in him so she

00:38:28.420 becomes obsessed obsessed with him and he I think really like kind of negs her kind of hot colds her

00:38:35.840 like on one day they're having they're declaring their love forever and their commitment and they're 0.96

00:38:40.460 having a fake marriage ceremony which obviously they can't get married because she's already

00:38:43.460 married and then the next day he's like frolicking off with you know someone else one of the people

00:38:49.360 he was frolicking about with at the time was was you know what I'm gonna say already Caroline's

00:38:55.260 mother-in-law mother-in-law the one the one who hates her her chief hater hater in chief

00:39:04.840 so pause to talk about her mother-in-law elizabeth lady melbourne and it's certainly mentioned in the

00:39:11.360 biography i read i forget if it was a contemporaneous source or not i think it might

00:39:14.840 have been someone compared the mother-in-law to um the marquis de mertoy in dangerous liaisons

00:39:20.740 the character played by Glenn Close in the film

00:39:23.340 and by

00:39:25.060 Sarah Michelle Gellar in Cruel Intentions

00:39:26.760 because the mother-in-law

00:39:29.120 it was said like she could not stand to see

00:39:31.120 two people in love and happy she had

00:39:33.240 to break them up she's like 0.97

00:39:34.740 pathological about it she couldn't 1.00

00:39:37.300 stand it she just had to 0.96

00:39:39.140 like make everyone as miserable as she was so she

00:39:41.260 okay remember they're all living in a house

00:39:43.060 together listeners so

00:39:45.100 Byron is coming to like see Caroline

00:39:46.980 he's coming the next day to

00:39:49.160 see the mother-in-law in the same house he's like in the same house we have one of caroline's

00:39:55.760 letters to byron where she's like well if i ever get jealous of her i just remember

00:39:59.040 her age so then i i make sure to be polite i mean caroline is very witty she's very funny

00:40:05.800 she's very snarky she's like excellent at at sort of just like jabbing people where it would bother

00:40:12.440 them and in terms of re byron's club foot there's a detail that i also i appreciate it in terms of 0.97

00:40:19.660 you know like accessibility for shitty men um you know it matters even if you're a shitty man or not 0.93

00:40:25.560 that if you have a club foot and you're going to see your lover and there's a little tiny staircase 0.98

00:40:29.740 you know what they put they put up like a rope so that he could like yes he could climb the stairs

00:40:34.920 more easily with his club foot like that's the sort of accessibility that matters it's just like

00:40:39.180 making sure lord byron can get to both of his lovers in the same house of course with stumbling

00:40:46.160 on the stairs they have this extremely passionate intense intense affair and carolers exist like

00:40:53.780 this is how we know the intensity and the passion of it because the letters and both of them are

00:40:57.600 like for these four months it's like matching each other's freak like oh my god yes that is

00:41:04.620 in like she like we talked about her she's this intense person like she's just like chaotic like

00:41:11.600 she does what she wants lord byron also and so for these four months it's like is this actually

00:41:16.780 the best pairing because like no one else is at this level of like freak it's like the angelina

00:41:22.840 and billy bob thornton vials of each other's blood and i thought of that specifically because

00:41:27.760 she asked him to send her his blood that is where they were at so she thinks that they're

00:41:37.520 gonna run off together i thought you're gonna mention the um vials of pubic hair pubic hair

00:41:42.620 okay so was this i have learned that this was not uncommon so for a long time i thought this

00:41:49.220 was really wild so she is they send each other locks of hair but her lock of hair is pubic hair 0.57

00:41:54.280 and i thought guess where this guess where this hair came from in her letter i thought that this 0.99

00:41:59.620 was really wild but apparently this was like not that uncommon like ann lister who was like a 0.91

00:42:05.980 famous regency lesbian like we didn't know about her yeah okay good did you talk about how she had 1.00

00:42:12.180 like multiple locks of pubic hair stored up from her various lovers yeah apparently this was like

00:42:18.180 the thing i i sometimes it's very hard to understand history like how did this we're

00:42:24.420 talking about no but a pubic hair collection we have talked about on the podcast was um george

00:42:30.520 the prince of wales who had a pubic hair collection yeah a pubic hair collection as well

00:42:36.040 it does seem to be like not wildly common but like not that uncommon either and now for a quick

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00:45:20.280 He went on a trip, once he became king,

00:45:22.820 he went to Scotland on like a royal tour

00:45:25.400 and he presented the box of pubic hair

00:45:28.500 to St. Andrew's College and it's still there.

00:45:32.080 I did not know that.

00:45:33.640 And the poor archivists are just like,

00:45:36.360 well, how do we, where do we want to store this?

00:45:38.320 tin of pubic hair it's like well it was from the king so i guess it matters anyway so

00:45:43.800 they're just exchanging a lot of hair tradition of she gives a lot of pubic hair i feel like if

00:45:50.720 they could have they would have drunk each other's blood like they were just like all into this

00:45:54.540 extent it's like oh no like caroline is dead serious about it like she is she loves her baby

00:46:01.960 and she well he's not a baby anymore but she loves her son and she's gonna even still she's gonna

00:46:06.100 she's gonna throw she's gonna leave she's gonna run off with Byron she that is how committed she

00:46:10.640 is Byron is not Byron is poor he knows he needs to marry an heiress running off with Caroline is

00:46:18.000 not in his life plan at all so he is like courting this woman who he does end up marrying and it's

00:46:26.180 starting to get serious actually Caroline's of course horrible mother-in-law is the one who

00:46:30.000 introduces them and Caroline shows up at his house and is like I'm ready I'm ready to elope

00:46:36.100 let's go. And he, and he says like, absolutely not. Right. And this is like the beginning of

00:46:43.200 the sort of horrible blow up end. I do think it's important to say that Carolina shows up

00:46:49.120 at his house to say, let's elope. And she's dressed like a page boy. Yeah.

00:46:55.260 What story is she not dressed as a page boy? Yes. And his friends are there and she's like,

00:46:59.860 just let me talk to him alone. I know he'll, and his friends are like, absolutely not. You can't

00:47:05.460 Doctor Malone they have to sort of like quiet her dad she grabs a sword and she's like waving the

00:47:10.960 sword around she's like I'm gonna stab you I'm gonna turn it on myself I mean she just creates

00:47:16.820 this huge massive um scene the first of many scenes this is also an era where yes this is

00:47:27.740 she's doing the most and I thought numerous times when I was reading this biography

00:47:31.280 if only she was alive today

00:47:33.280 and could be on 1.00

00:47:34.260 a Real Housewives franchise 1.00

00:47:35.380 I think she would have done 1.00

00:47:36.880 so well

00:47:38.280 and she would have been

00:47:39.100 a breakout star 1.00

00:47:39.600 should have gotten her own spinoff

00:47:40.660 but this was a time period

00:47:42.620 where feeling things

00:47:43.940 really deeply

00:47:44.580 was very trendy

00:47:45.820 like Byron really popularized

00:47:48.140 this like romantic poetry

00:47:49.840 where it's just like

00:47:50.740 everyone

00:47:51.360 like again

00:47:52.680 I keep coming back to this

00:47:53.720 but like listeners

00:47:54.280 I wrote a book

00:47:55.020 it's called

00:47:55.660 Rebel of the Regency

00:47:56.960 The Skin of Saga

00:47:57.960 of Carolina Brunswick

00:47:58.800 Britain's Queen Without a Crown

00:47:59.840 and so I keep

00:48:01.220 thinking about things like that but in that book George the Prince of Wales like he he claims to

00:48:07.580 attempt suicide in order to make a woman marry him like this is this is how people are just behaving

00:48:12.780 like again they're all on drugs constantly and they're also just like it's it's a time where

00:48:20.420 like feeling things deeply is like what you want like that's what you want to be displaying like

00:48:26.140 i'm a passionate person and she just like takes it a step further than anyone else and she can't

00:48:32.060 be cool about things ever oh she has no chill she has no chill yeah yeah so byron like repeatedly

00:48:41.740 like tries to break it off with her he's like i haven't actually known you that long you're gonna

00:48:46.240 get over me and sometimes he tries to be nice about it sometimes he's absolutely horrible about

00:48:50.280 it and she's crushed because in her mind like they are forever this is the thing so she runs 0.99

00:48:57.940 away to spain and no one knows where she is she literally is just like fuck it and she goes off 0.98

00:49:04.700 and sort of vanishes because she's so upset um about this this guy is a page boy so you know 0.97

00:49:10.720 people are looking for her like you don't see a little boy where's caroline lim i don't know but

00:49:15.280 i saw a little boy running over that way yeah she also at one point i don't know if this is before

00:49:19.960 or after but it's all a blur of just like caroline oh god like you need some friends but she at one

00:49:25.840 point breaks into byron's house like opens one of his books and writes in the book remember me 0.64

00:49:30.780 which is like restraining order time she no she also goes to his publisher she wants like a

00:49:36.900 painting of him so she goes to his publisher and like forges a letter saying that from byron saying

00:49:42.540 that they're supposed to give her this painting of him and then byron's all mad because like

00:49:48.200 they wasn't supposed I mean like really not great behavior not great it's it's really like it's an

00:49:57.120 old time version of just like Instagram stalking while drunk like just like sending DMs but it's

00:50:04.340 olden times so you have to like go to a publisher and but but Byron like he's like he takes the bait

00:50:10.340 sometimes yeah like he he writes poems making fun of her and then every time he writes a new poem

00:50:16.360 just like a regular poem not a making like not a making fun poem then she would do a parody of

00:50:20.680 that poem like because she feels like all the poems are aimed at her yeah because she's a good

00:50:24.560 writer are excellent they're very funny i mean she just was had a real talent for kind of like

00:50:29.480 taking his style and like twisting it um i think there were some poems that actually people were

00:50:35.000 like wait is this by byron actually like people didn't know i mean she's super talented um she 0.91

00:50:41.920 just wasted a lot of time on this like piece of shit byron who just i think just like really i 0.98

00:50:49.760 think he likes the drama you know what i mean he's like it feeds his ego that she is like causing 0.99

00:50:55.120 these scenes and like making whatever they went so after she gets back she gets brought back from

00:51:00.880 spain by her family um and they are at a party together um and she's like well i guess i can

00:51:07.640 finally waltz now right and she like you know she gives them that little what for she they get into 0.98

00:51:13.040 a fight publicly she breaks a glass and then like acts like she's gonna cut herself with it i mean

00:51:18.000 just scene after scene after scene and she spends just like a lot of time and energy on byron and

00:51:26.000 it's like everyone in the world is like caroline you're being very cringe right now and she just

00:51:31.400 cannot let it go and she's at this point i think it's like the going to the party and like

00:51:37.400 pretending like she's going to slit her wrists with a glass is where I think she gets like kind

00:51:42.200 of blacklisted from all max. Can you explain what all max is? Yes. So all max. So basically there

00:51:48.700 were a lot of clubs for men in your club. You, you had to be sponsored by someone to get to,

00:51:53.560 to be a member and you could go there and you could smoke and drink and have a good time. 1.00

00:51:58.680 It's just for men. All max is the only club that allows both men and women. So there's no, you 0.97

00:52:03.980 know it's there's no smoking there's no drinking it's much more decorous but being admitted being

00:52:09.140 like getting a voucher to almex was basically like it meant that you were upper class that you

00:52:14.720 were part of the good set and so caroline comes from this very rich background i mean there's

00:52:20.720 absolutely no way like there she's more famous than than you know the people who run almex

00:52:25.100 so when she gets kicked out of almex it is like shocking it is like really like scandalous like

00:52:32.900 i'm trying to think of like an equivalent today but it would be like well smith slapping chris

00:52:37.840 rock at the oscars yeah and then he can't go to the oscars anymore right and yes exactly it would

00:52:43.260 be like you're blacklisted from the oscars and it would be like oh what you know like it's really

00:52:48.540 shocking right so um yeah so that's it's just she just starts to she's so extra about all of this

00:52:56.920 Byron stuff that it really, it starts to hurt William's political career. It just, it embarrasses

00:53:04.800 the family. And Byron is so famous and popular that of course he is able to, I mean, she is

00:53:13.920 acting a little extra, but like he is able to spin it like she needs to be institutionalized.

00:53:18.740 So, so this is when the family starts to be like, well, she's, she's completely unhinged. You need

00:53:23.180 to you know throw her in a straight jacket you need to get her out of here um and a lot of that

00:53:28.600 i think is because byron is so popular and and so just so so so famous it's very like um you know

00:53:36.760 like johnny depp amber heard i was gonna say johnny depp amber heard yeah so like he's so he's so

00:53:42.100 famous and then the society in general like it's easy for him to get them to take his side against

00:53:48.040 her and this is where the family i think just like so you just quasi an intervention and drags her to

00:53:52.380 ireland to just be like let's remove you from the country of england let's just

00:53:57.760 byron gets married um to the heiress who was not that into him pretty much ever which is so great

00:54:07.220 i love that his wife is like one of the few women who was just like never succumbs to his charms

00:54:12.560 um so byron gets married caroline gets dragged off to ireland and now i we can stop talking about

00:54:19.880 byron for a minute because this is when caroline starts to become a novelist and caroline has she

00:54:24.660 takes she takes a break from obsessing over byron for a little bit to do what she is like meant to

00:54:30.540 do which is which is create um and she which is right like this is so her her first novel is

00:54:36.480 called glenarvin and if you everything we said about caroline it's just like yeah hell yeah like

00:54:41.540 everyone wants to read a book that this person's gonna write like she's such an interesting creative

00:54:45.480 interesting person. Like, please, like what, what book did she write? So Glenarvin is like,

00:54:52.540 well, describe it. It's a Gothic, right? It is delicious. It is delicious. So I have a book

00:54:57.820 about two lady Gothic novelists. Um, so when I was, uh, who have a romance, obviously. Um,

00:55:04.380 and when I was researching that, I read a lot of Gothic novels from the period.

00:55:08.620 Glenarvin is so, it is, it is, it is very Caroline Lim. It is the most, it is the most Gothic. It is

00:55:14.080 the most sexy it is the most like unbelievable you know it just is the most it was 11 out of 10

00:55:22.040 all the time every single page um so it is about this poor innocent young woman named calantha

00:55:29.520 who gets married to this sort of um you know stern kind of man that she thinks is sort of cold at

00:55:36.860 first but he actually turns out to kind of be the hero um and then so she's this young bride and

00:55:42.640 then she meets this irish rebel this dark handsome uh moody sexy not to say he has a club foot but

00:55:52.840 like he might have a club foot and his and his name is glennarvin and she falls for him immediately 1.00

00:55:59.960 he sucks her in with his like mesmerizing erotics she literally can't stop like fucking him all the 0.99

00:56:08.520 time basically is implied in the book she her family like sort of disowns her whatever well 1.00

00:56:13.740 of course then it turns out he's actually a vampire and that is why he is able to exert

00:56:20.120 these sort of mystical occult powers on her um because he's a vampire um people are dying

00:56:27.780 everywhere people are dying of grief it's like so gothic and just whatever um so obviously this

00:56:34.480 guy is Byron, right? Like it is, it is so thinly veiled as to like not even be veiled, basically.

00:56:40.540 Like she writes and it, and it is a total takedown of him. At the end, he turns out not to have been

00:56:47.400 an Irish rebel fighting for the cause, but in fact, a British sympathizer who's like a traitor

00:56:52.580 and like is, is, is in league with the colonizers. So it is just absolutely like it destroys,

00:56:58.720 um you know byron it's like a complete takedown um of byron he was livid about this book absolutely

00:57:07.660 furious he had a huge ego and he could not take the idea that all of these people would see this

00:57:13.200 clearly byronic character you know like people were reading it like it's not just like

00:57:18.640 but he's livid because it's like this is a takedown of him and everyone's reading it

00:57:25.520 And everyone's reading it. Yeah, exactly. He's so mad. He calls it like the phrase kiss and tell. He calls this book fuck and publish.

00:57:33.860 You know what? That's a good one, Byron. 0.99

00:57:35.940 Yeah. Yeah. I don't want to admit anything nice about Byron, but that's pretty funny.

00:57:41.880 No. I bet someone else said that and he copied them.

00:57:43.960 So she's a novelist. She's just like, because she's always been, you know, she had a good education for a girl of this time, for anybody of any time, really.

00:57:53.600 and she has always been a creative person

00:57:57.240 and now she has this intense passion

00:57:58.760 and it's just like, yes,

00:57:59.700 put this into a creative outlet.

00:58:02.800 Don't put this into just like,

00:58:04.420 you know, put this into costume parties

00:58:05.880 when you want,

00:58:06.760 but don't just like crash balls

00:58:08.800 and like make a scene.

00:58:12.200 Like do something productive. 0.99

00:58:13.380 Good for her.

00:58:14.820 Yeah.

00:58:15.280 And she continues to write

00:58:17.440 for the rest of her life.

00:58:19.240 She sort of finds this passion in this time

00:58:22.900 and just sticks with it and she publishes several interesting very different novels one of them is

00:58:29.060 set in south america um none of them got nearly the fame of glenn arvin right because glenn arvin

00:58:35.260 is about byron and byron is the you know is the biggest person the most the biggest celebrity

00:58:39.840 alive at that particular moment um and of course people are also very interested in her because of

00:58:47.140 her relationship with byron like this increases her celebrity as well by being affiliated with

00:58:51.960 him they want to read the story they want to see her perspective on it um so none of them are as

00:58:55.920 as um successful as glenn arvin but she was very committed to writing for the rest of her life and

00:59:01.260 of course as we already talked about she publishes these byron parody poems as well um which is very

00:59:07.640 funny i love it the weird owl of her time um but just you know what it is it's like kendrick

00:59:13.920 lamar at the super bowl with his takedown of drake yes that is because it's like well done

00:59:18.800 and a diss track but in her case and so she has like if we can move on from Byron I think we're

00:59:25.760 both happy to um she she's a writer and she joined like she makes writer friends and she's

00:59:32.300 hanging out with lots of creative people one of them she develops like a strong platonic friendship

00:59:36.920 with Mary Shelley's father William Godwin like he's a big supporter of her as a writer he's a

00:59:42.940 publisher also so she can you talk about the like literary circles that she sort of I absolutely

00:59:48.080 adore william godwin so much um let me just tell you a little mini story about william godwin so

00:59:53.660 william godwin is a radical like the wigs are like he's like those wigs you know he's he's like

01:00:00.920 a radical he believes in free love he doesn't believe in marriage he's literally publishes

01:00:06.620 a whole book about how like marriage subjugates women and is like the cause of women's oppression

01:00:10.900 Then he meets Mary Wollstonecraft and falls just like head over heels for her.

01:00:20.340 And he changes his mind.

01:00:22.000 He's like, okay, I want to marry you.

01:00:23.200 And all of his friends are like, bro, you literally wrote a book about...

01:00:26.080 And he's like, I don't care.

01:00:27.280 So I just love William Godwin.

01:00:29.180 He was so in love with Mary Wollstonecraft.

01:00:31.440 She dies in childbirth very shortly after they get married, which is very, very sad

01:00:37.020 because he was so lovely.

01:00:39.240 So he, yeah, so he becomes friends with Caroline Lamb and she was also very interested in like his daughter, Mary Shelley, right?

01:00:46.540 Yeah, Frankenstein has now been written.

01:00:48.840 Yeah, right.

01:00:49.460 Yes.

01:00:49.800 So she's very interested in that.

01:00:50.780 So she sort of develops this correspondence with William Godwin.

01:00:53.880 Lots of people correspond with William Godwin.

01:00:55.780 I think he must have really been a very devoted letter writer as well.

01:00:59.700 But he's just really interesting and he's a philosopher and he is very respectful of women.

01:01:05.120 and he just kind of nurtures this intellectual interest.

01:01:08.960 All of the intellectual interests that she has

01:01:10.760 nurtures her publishing career.

01:01:12.320 It's just very supportive of Caroline Lamb.

01:01:13.760 I also think it's very funny

01:01:14.880 that when his teenage daughter runs off with Percy Shelley,

01:01:18.000 William Godwin is like,

01:01:18.980 everything I said about free love, I take it back.

01:01:22.360 He's like, none of that applies to my daughter,

01:01:25.800 my 16-year-old.

01:01:26.400 Free love is like great in theory,

01:01:28.560 but when it comes to my 16-year-old daughter,

01:01:31.060 well, and this is where it's like just the crossing

01:01:32.900 of like generational boundaries.

01:01:34.680 Like we talked before at the beginning about, you know, all the women having affairs and all these children and they're maybe half siblings, like the fact that she's friends with Mary Shelley's dad and Mary Shelley is hanging out with Byron and Byron's having an affair with Caroline's mother-in-law.

01:01:49.400 It's just kind of like age means nothing.

01:01:51.900 Just like everyone's just like, I don't know.

01:01:55.980 These days, I think you have a much more like people in their 20s hang out together and people in their 50s hang out together.

01:02:00.860 But then it was just kind of like, it's all good.

01:02:03.080 i'm like let's i'll be friends with you and then my daughter's friends with your ex and like

01:02:08.400 it was interesting to me that she william godwin is a person she hung out with but earlier on in

01:02:13.920 her life she read mary wilson craft the famous book vindication of the rights of women she wrote

01:02:20.320 that as a young woman and it like really affected her and we see that like she moves through the

01:02:24.000 world because mary wilson craft is like women should not just be a wife and a mother women

01:02:27.640 should be able to do what they want and like caroline lemme you can see like hell yeah like 0.99

01:02:31.780 she and Mary Wollstonecraft would have gotten along. And maybe that's part of what William

01:02:34.820 Godwin likes about her. Yeah, I think probably for sure. She was very affected by the book. And

01:02:41.440 one of the other things the book is really arguing for is education for women. And that was something 0.54

01:02:45.480 that she benefited from, because of course, there's no compulsory education, but her family

01:02:49.600 chooses to give her an excellent education. And it's just nurtured throughout her life by

01:02:54.240 her own sort of eagerness to read. She was a huge reader, but also by finding people who did

01:03:01.000 support that in her, like William Godwin. And there's somebody, just before we started

01:03:05.280 recording, you were saying there was another writer who she was involved with, maybe as a

01:03:10.180 lover or maybe just his friends, Lytton? Yeah, Bolwer Lytton is his name. Yeah. He is like a

01:03:16.820 Victorian writer. So I was just saying, we were talking about like how this name pops up because

01:03:21.060 he was, I think he was like 17 years younger than Caroline or something. And he's like this sort of

01:03:25.640 devoted fan. My favorite part is like, I think he writes like a love poem to her and she like

01:03:30.280 replies to his mother she like sends a note back like to his mom he is undeterred um and yeah and

01:03:37.220 and he eventually becomes like a very well-known victorian writer um so it's funny to see that's

01:03:42.160 the sort of like as you said cross-generation sort of like um you know i think about her as like a

01:03:47.000 very staunchly regency figure but then it's like well her husband becomes like you know this major

01:03:53.920 prime minister for queen victoria well and then also going backwards too like the as a younger

01:04:00.360 person or maybe in this time too i forgot how long she lived but germaine de stael shows up in

01:04:05.360 her story as well who i did an episode about back in my french revolution series so i think of her

01:04:10.040 as like a revolutionary figure but she was also like a woman writer kind of like bon vivant and

01:04:14.740 lady caroline lamb like saw her as an inspiration and they had dealings with each other it's just

01:04:19.720 like she is the forest girl of this whole time period like she was talking with everybody yes

01:04:24.660 and mary wallstonecraft too was very influenced by the french revolution and that like her first

01:04:28.840 big book was was inspired by sort of in response to the french revolution so you're absolutely

01:04:33.760 right that like this history is both very long but also like one person's lifetime can be very

01:04:39.300 long in you know and can sort of intersect with all of these different times and periods

01:04:43.300 and that's what's funny too like because you know when one thing when i think of the regency it's

01:04:48.680 just like finite it's like this to this and the empire waist dresses like this is what's happening

01:04:53.920 going to balls and before that was a french revolution and that was different wigs big skirts

01:04:58.740 and then victorian and that's different but it's like no one person's life can comprise all of

01:05:03.040 these things and what an interesting thing to to live through all these changes so she eventually

01:05:09.780 um william lamb's family is just like you need to separate from this woman 0.94

01:05:18.180 Yeah, they're like, you got to get serious. Like if you want to have a career. So they also I think they had anticipated that his father would die and that he would inherit, but his father just like keeps not dying. So his family is like, you have to get a job, basically, you need to do you need to set up a career, you need to kind of establish yourself. And you cannot do that, you know, with this like scandalous wife that you have, especially after Glen Arvin, you know, she becomes even more of a household name. 0.99

01:05:47.120 It was published anonymously, but it was like a very, very...

01:05:49.960 Everyone knew.

01:05:50.940 Yeah, there was absolutely no mystery as to the authorship of Glenarvin.

01:05:56.360 So they persuade him and he finally accepts to do like an official separation.

01:06:02.000 And then he takes a post in Ireland and takes their son, which she was very supportive of.

01:06:08.320 Their son is now like 20 or something.

01:06:11.420 Yeah.

01:06:11.940 And I think just so everybody understands, because she's been devoted to the son, Augustus,

01:06:15.900 like his whole life.

01:06:16.540 like she it's like her best friend she loves him so much she's always writing him letters but at

01:06:20.820 this point her health is like becoming a bit more fragile and so she knows that Augustus would thrive

01:06:26.840 better in a different environment because she's living in this place called Brockett Hall which

01:06:31.740 is sort of out in the countryside and so she wanted him to get more education and just to like 0.91

01:06:36.880 be around more interesting people not just kind of like trapped with his invalid mother in the 0.79

01:06:41.120 country. So with her blessing. Yeah. So William and Augustus go to Ireland and she stays there 0.97

01:06:46.880 in Brockett Hall, which seems to be like, she's, she really liked being there. I think eventually

01:06:52.200 just she'd had enough. I don't know. It's, you know, it's the thing of like,

01:06:57.740 she lived really hard and she like burned through London high society. And now she's like,

01:07:03.700 you know what I like? Kind of like the ladies of Lengochland. It's like, you know what I like

01:07:07.220 just being in the countryside having a garden reading some books like writing some books you

01:07:13.660 know she has correspondence with various interesting people who um you know william

01:07:18.080 godwin but also others as well who were interesting to her there are many people in the village who

01:07:23.680 really like her but she's still sort of scandalous there's like a very sad story where she like

01:07:28.780 sends out a bunch of invitations and she's like thinks she's gonna host a big ball and like four

01:07:33.100 um and they they have orchestra they have the table set for 25 or you know whatever and there's

01:07:38.880 only four people there so she she does i think she sort of tries to feel positively but there

01:07:46.360 are also i think some ways in which she feels like she's kind of lost something that she can't

01:07:50.980 get back she's lost her husband you know she's lost sort of the opinion of society but she's

01:07:56.600 still writing so she's still writing she's still publishing um and she's still kind of keeping up

01:08:01.480 this like lively correspondence with a lot of different people.

01:08:03.660 One of whom we haven't mentioned is the Duke of Wellington.

01:08:06.680 Yes.

01:08:07.880 The Duke of Wellington,

01:08:08.880 I feel like is a stealth supporting character in this whole series.

01:08:13.060 He keeps,

01:08:13.680 he keeps popping up.

01:08:14.760 He's just kind of always around like,

01:08:16.940 and he's like a good friend to her.

01:08:18.860 And some people think that they were lovers.

01:08:21.340 There's various men in her life.

01:08:22.760 And it's like,

01:08:23.140 which were lovers and which were just friends.

01:08:24.500 She like had a lot of man friends,

01:08:26.340 but Wellington just like,

01:08:27.840 he liked her.

01:08:28.460 He thought she was a good time.

01:08:29.440 They'd met when she was younger.

01:08:30.400 and he stalwart like continued to be your friend and i appreciate that thank you wellington

01:08:35.600 yes he had like his longtime mistress and we have their letters and they talked a lot about her and

01:08:43.140 so we have a lot of surviving information and he just seems very fond of her he's like that little

01:08:47.760 wild creature you know he's sort of sometimes he'll kind of like be stern and be whatever about

01:08:54.480 her but mostly he seems kind of just like amused by her her antics oh and part of her sort of like

01:09:01.260 this this is her final era spoiler but byron dies in greece from a cold when he went off to be

01:09:09.420 a war hero there which you know what listeners i did a whole lord byron episode we don't need

01:09:15.780 to get into it he dies and she's devastated because she's been like they haven't they

01:09:20.300 were together for four months years ago but like she's never not been thinking about him and this

01:09:25.240 is yeah and they have continued you to argue and snipe at each other um his best friend is running

01:09:32.840 for office so we talked about her campaigning she campaigns for the the friends uh like opponent

01:09:38.440 he was so mad at her which was great about it yes he actually said like very unpleasant

01:09:45.580 things that I'm not going to repeat

01:09:48.040 that were very sort of graphic and

01:09:49.740 rude about what we would

01:09:51.840 do to her to get her to stop. 1.00

01:09:54.820 He sucked. 1.00

01:09:55.820 Guys, Byron, horrible. 1.00

01:09:57.980 He was the 0.51

01:09:59.860 worst. And in the midst of all of this, like Byron,

01:10:02.620 you know, Mary Shelley

01:10:03.320 wrote Frankenstein. Byron

01:10:05.940 was briefly involved with Claire Claremont,

01:10:07.820 Mary Shelley's sister.

01:10:09.900 They had a daughter. The daughter died.

01:10:11.680 Byron, like, stole the daughter and then the

01:10:13.800 daughter died like he's he's getting up to a lot of stuff caroline is like she's got various friends

01:10:18.640 she's got perhaps lovers and byron's just like burning through a variety of really toxic

01:10:23.700 relationships and just leaving really sad women in his wake and he dies and yeah oh you know what

01:10:31.900 we haven't talked about is dogs this is important caroline loved dogs she had so many dogs and she

01:10:40.920 was obsessed with her dogs and Byron also loved his dog so I feel like maybe that's part of where

01:10:45.040 they got along definitely no they had a ton in common I mean they like too much you know like

01:10:51.020 actually William Lamb was like a much better match for her because he was like a grounding force for

01:10:56.960 all of her excesses she was also like she was just very loving like she loved animals um she would

01:11:03.940 like sort of collect them she was very loving to like the servants in a way that like William Lamb's

01:11:09.280 family found cringy that she was always whatever there was like a very like a great anecdote about

01:11:14.300 her she would always like play with the servants she had like one page boy that would like throw

01:11:18.220 firecrackers in the fireplace and she you know they would just like cause chaos all the time

01:11:23.140 and so he throws a firecracker in the fireplace obviously it explodes and then she throws a ball

01:11:29.580 at him and it hits him and he starts bleeding and she runs out screaming i've murdered the page and

01:11:34.660 so of course there was like this big scandal like that she had murdered a man in her house 1.00

01:11:39.720 like oh just the gossip was just ridiculous like she could do like one little thing 1.00

01:11:45.800 and you know um gossip would just explode over it because of because of who she was

01:11:52.340 and because byron also was much more capable of like being cool about stuff and and like so people

01:11:58.440 i think were just like sort of more on his side because he could just play it off and act and act

01:12:03.680 cool and she just couldn't she was just too I just I just if it's not obvious I just love her

01:12:09.580 and I feel for her so much just this like just this honesty and this brashness and the sort of

01:12:15.540 like unwillingness to like play around but also then like how it it just led her astray sometimes

01:12:23.300 this sort of nature of hers when you've used the word a few times and I think it's a perfect word

01:12:27.900 which is cringe where it's just like she's just like so upfront about everything all the time

01:12:32.560 like she's she has no chill she is not cool well to me she's cool in the sense because she is so

01:12:38.920 honest and upfront all the time but it's just like everything she does you're just like oh god

01:12:43.600 caroline like oh why no she's just like i gotta be me i gotta be me like i love her too i read

01:12:51.420 this biography and i was just like i am obsessed with this little person and her like constant

01:12:56.160 page boy disguises there was one before her sort of social downfall there's a party that she held 0.55

01:13:01.960 i forget the details exactly but she had announced i come to this party and meet it wasn't wellington

01:13:05.740 but it was like meet this great war hero and everyone was there waiting for the war hero to

01:13:09.420 like come stroll out and then what happened was she strolled out in men's clothes being like hello

01:13:14.620 everybody for i forget if she had like a fake mustache on or what and everyone's just like oh

01:13:18.620 she's great like and then like yeah she's hilarious i love it no she was very funny 0.90

01:13:26.080 so but as you alluded her health was poor um she increasingly self-medicates with laudanum and

01:13:33.680 alcohol which she'd been using laudanum remember when i said earlier from like childhood so she's

01:13:39.380 like it's an opiate like this is yeah like has she been an addict since she was five maybe i don't

01:13:46.080 know yeah and many people were like this is not everybody was yeah yeah this is not just yeah

01:13:52.180 so she she her health grows increasingly poor um she william is like i would like to come back so

01:14:00.580 he this man he wasn't absolutely was not perfect but he really like was very loyal to her he never

01:14:07.620 remarries after she dies um he's like i would like to come be with you but he's like right in

01:14:12.740 the middle of this like very delicate like political situation and literally like the day

01:14:16.240 the situation ends. He and Augusta's travel back, um, to be with her. Um, and, and then she dies at

01:14:22.920 42. I'm always blown away. It happens so often when I'm researching where I read about somebody's

01:14:29.720 life, it's like, and then she died and it's like 42. Like she, she did so much stuff. Like, um,

01:14:36.900 but also I want to say like their whole, like they separated and the family is pressuring them,

01:14:40.380 but it was a real like conscious uncoupling type situation. Like there was no bad feelings. Like

01:14:45.640 they both still like loved each other and i like that he went to return to her but yeah she died of

01:14:49.600 well basically just health related issues um exacerbated probably by alcohol or you know

01:14:55.820 what health related issues that she was self-medicating with alcohol and laudanum and

01:14:59.520 this all kind of works together so she passed away and then what do you know about her legacy

01:15:06.580 like once she died was everyone just kind of like good riddance or were they just kind of like

01:15:10.540 oh actually what was what was the vibe yeah no i think it was definitely more like good riddance

01:15:17.180 i think it was like now you know william lamb can finally have the illustrious career he always was

01:15:23.340 supposed to have um her her son also dies quite young um like in his 20s so not too long after

01:15:32.020 she dies um and they their their family line actually like peters out like there's no more

01:15:39.120 melbourne's um the line goes extinct um yeah it's just very sad um and i think that for a long time 0.95

01:15:49.540 her reputation was basically like this you know wacky bitch who could have ruined melbourne's 0.94

01:15:57.720 career good thing she died or this you know over the top hysterical woman who was obsessed with 0.99

01:16:05.720 byron oh and mad bad and dangerous to know yeah yeah supposedly she said that about byron um

01:16:13.560 if if you've heard anything about her it might have been that she allegedly coined the phrase

01:16:20.760 mad bad and dangerous to know about byron did she we don't know but it's a good yeah that sounds

01:16:26.840 like something she would have said it is a good phrase she was a good writer but yeah so she's

01:16:31.620 just kind of, so I'm curious to know, like you read Glen Arvin when you were researching for

01:16:36.320 this novel, you're writing about Gothic novelists. Like how is the book understood? Well, so even as

01:16:43.120 late as like the 1970s, um, historians were still, uh, like criticizing her and criticizing her

01:16:50.600 behavior and basically like seeing her as just this like horrible, uh, kind of stone around

01:16:57.000 melbourne's neck or melbourne as being william lamb um or or just this like wild woman and i

01:17:03.640 and i really don't think it's been until like the last you know this this century like this century

01:17:11.380 that we are in now that her reputation has really taken a turn that she's been recognized for her

01:17:16.880 own writings i mean like biographies of her were often critical biographies until recently um and

01:17:24.960 only recently I think has her work been have there been studies just about her literary work

01:17:30.760 like that it has been seen as a thing worthy of academic treatment um which is just wild because

01:17:37.200 it was such a popular book at the time um but just this sort of like scandalous life reputation I

01:17:42.900 think both added to its popularity but made it seem like not a serious work it's interesting

01:17:49.640 because I can see it in the pantheon

01:17:51.700 of like the Brontes writing, for instance.

01:17:55.220 Like how many movie versions

01:17:57.200 and how many theses have been written

01:17:59.020 about like Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights.

01:18:00.600 And these are also bananas books 1.00

01:18:02.420 written by like intense women. 1.00

01:18:05.340 But they didn't have this scandal in their life.

01:18:07.240 So I guess they were taken more seriously.

01:18:08.760 I don't know.

01:18:10.020 Yeah, right, exactly.

01:18:11.340 There was no sort of grand public scandal about them.

01:18:15.140 So I think that that absolutely plays a huge role.

01:18:18.380 I mean, even Mary Wollstonecraft. Mary Wollstonecraft writes Vindication. And it's popular. Like, everybody's reading it. Everybody's talking about it. And then after she dies, William Godwin writes his biography of her and sort of unwittingly destroys her reputation because he writes about her sexual relationships.

01:18:37.440 and and it destroys reputation for like a century like it takes a long time for that to come back

01:18:44.140 this these sort of sex scandals just outweighed this book that she had written that was incredibly

01:18:49.640 important and that was popular at the time well and versus i would say byron who right

01:18:56.680 was always taken seriously for his writings and like as a writer despite his like chaotic

01:19:02.940 nightmare Tom Sandoval level life that he was living like he was well just the double standard

01:19:14.200 right like he had so many wild you know love affairs and scandals and stuff but like because

01:19:19.740 he was a man like he did eventually leave England because even his his stuff got to be a bit too

01:19:25.860 much but his writing was taken seriously yes exactly his public reputation was was just as

01:19:31.140 dismal by the end of his life as Caroline's, but that never impacted how seriously like

01:19:37.500 literary critics at the time or later took his work. Absolutely. So yeah, so he, well,

01:19:44.660 you already did an episode on him, so we don't need to talk about Byron.

01:19:47.520 Yeah. But yeah, so it's, it annoys me that he's got, he wasn't allowed to be buried in

01:19:52.860 Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey because of his like terrible reputation and people fought

01:19:57.180 Byronites for years and years and years until finally there's like a stone there for him and

01:20:01.320 when I was there I was just like boo I said in my head when I thought just like

01:20:04.580 yeah and I think that I I also think another thing that's really important in sort of reflecting on

01:20:13.360 her life is this constant threat that she could be thrown into an asylum at any moment right

01:20:19.520 because she absolutely does not have the right to say no I don't want to be institutionalized

01:20:26.600 And the only thing that prevented that from happening was William Lamb. Like, had he decided, like, you know what, she is causing me too much trouble. She would have, she absolutely could have been institutionalized and tossed in there for hysteria and never let out again.

01:20:40.820 I mean, he absolutely had that control over her at that time. We are long before women having any kind of rights over themselves, their own bodies, their property. Like, we are 60 years before the Married Women's Property Act, right? 0.56

01:20:57.500 So I think that that constant sort of threat against her, I mean, I just can't imagine what an impact that would have had on, you know, your mental health if you're constantly being told, like, if you act out again, we're going to toss you in an institution.

01:21:13.020 By your, like, mean in-laws who you live in a house with.

01:21:17.920 Right. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.

01:21:21.560 I mean, the fact that she wrote as much as she did and that she achieved as much as she did is actually incredible.

01:21:26.360 given everything. So this like leads us really well into, we've got four categories that we're

01:21:32.280 going to score her in. And I think I'm going to get, I want to start just because we're talking

01:21:37.700 about this. Like one of the categories that I score people on, on this podcast is what I call

01:21:42.200 the sexism bonus, which is like, I want to give people bonus points for how much shit they had 0.98

01:21:47.500 to put up with and how much more maybe they could have done if they weren't living under a shitty 1.00

01:21:52.200 patriarchal society. And I feel this on a scale of zero to 10, how much do you think that 0.90

01:21:56.380 affected her and what she was able to do? Well, it's hard to say for Caroline,

01:22:03.560 because on the one hand, a lot, but on the other hand, her whole person was just like,

01:22:08.580 I'm going to do what I want anyway. Right. So I'm going to, let's say a five,

01:22:14.100 because I think in a different world, different circumstance, she could have had a completely

01:22:17.280 different life but she also i think very much refused to to be handed in in a way that was

01:22:24.700 maybe sometimes to her detriment yeah i think a 10 out of 10 for her in this context would have

01:22:29.740 been like if she had a shitty husband who did send her to an asylum exactly exactly yep like she 0.98

01:22:35.700 that she didn't right yeah well especially because the marriage i don't know like maybe 1.00

01:22:42.360 she chose a person who they actually were in love with each other and if

01:22:46.040 her family had chosen a husband, maybe he would have been more mean, but like she chose somebody 0.59

01:22:50.220 who they actually liked each other. And maybe that's part of why he was, did not do that to

01:22:55.460 her. So the next category, again, it's a scale of zero to 10. Uh, I know what I think. Um,

01:23:00.800 and the category is scandalousness. How scandalous was she seen by the society in which 1.00

01:23:05.780 she lived? I feel like this has to be a 10. I feel like it has to be a 10. I don't know what

01:23:11.040 else she could have done who could be more scandalous yeah no she's like the pinnacle

01:23:15.740 well and even in the context of i forget if we were saying this before or on the podcast but

01:23:21.760 like the regency like there's all these people and they're having affairs they're having

01:23:24.720 they're called children of the mist um the illegitimate children like even in that context

01:23:31.240 what she did was too much for even them so like even people who are like you said like they were

01:23:37.080 all just pretending like this wasn't happening but she just did it and you know dressing like

01:23:41.300 a page boy and having short hair and like riding a stride like these things were just too much

01:23:45.860 yeah i think short hair was like fairly trendy actually like i think there was definitely like

01:23:52.140 a window where that was like pretty on trend so that i don't think was super scandalous necessarily

01:23:56.440 um but everything else absolutely it's interesting because you don't see the short hair in the

01:24:02.820 regency era you know costume dramas absolutely never in a costume drama for sure not everybody

01:24:09.020 would panic about if an if on bridgerton when they do their francesca michaela sees and if

01:24:13.820 francesca shows up with a pixie cut oh man yeah and you and i will be like actually it's accurate

01:24:21.720 um so the next category is scheminess which is interesting because she's not like someone who's

01:24:29.840 she's coming up with

01:24:31.880 some of the Byron

01:24:34.140 parodies and stuff, but in terms of her schemes, she's

01:24:36.200 just like, I'm going to go to Spain just like a

01:24:38.200 boy. It wasn't a well-thought-out plan.

01:24:40.940 I wouldn't even call a scheme.

01:24:42.760 She's not grifting, right?

01:24:44.280 She's not trying, how can I move

01:24:46.240 up in the world? She is already up.

01:24:48.380 The extent of her schemes are like,

01:24:50.000 you were saying, I'm going to dress up as a war

01:24:52.200 hero. Ha ha ha.

01:24:54.320 They last for five minutes.

01:24:56.300 I feel like she's more playful

01:24:57.920 than a princess.

01:24:59.840 her over scheming so i don't know i feel like she's like a two i think a two is fair and and

01:25:06.000 that's entirely mostly just for the the times that she the the work and the schemes that had

01:25:12.220 to go into preparing her costumes for her like surprise review for the cost you know it's two

01:25:16.560 points for the time that she's dressed as a man dressed as herself yeah right okay maybe a three

01:25:20.640 maybe three that's that's in preparation um and then the final category is her significance and

01:25:25.740 that's her significance to just everything, to history. I think if we're looking at in the

01:25:31.500 pantheon of Regency era women, like there have been a couple of films about her. Mad, bad and

01:25:38.220 dangerous to know is a phrase that people have heard. Glenarvin is a book that is being taken

01:25:43.360 more seriously now. But yeah, I feel that her significance, she's always been well known,

01:25:51.640 but it's so often been in the context of men and i would just love to see her increasingly be

01:25:59.080 recognized for herself and her her accomplishments and not her relationship with byron or her

01:26:06.000 relationship with william lamb so i'm gonna say like a six but i think we could do like we could

01:26:12.720 do better you know like she's currently at a six but like let's guard her to a 10 yeah so you see

01:26:18.860 so this gets her to a total score out of a possible 40 she has 24 and i'll just let you 0.87

01:26:26.000 know for comparison other people this series the brontes only got a 19 that's because they had

01:26:31.320 zero scandal um her aunt georgiana had a 22 um the ladies of langochland 23 and then she's at a 24

01:26:41.080 so she's just above them and then way way way higher above mary shelley 29 um so i think right

01:26:48.140 in the middle of all that makes sense mary shelley mary shelley mary shelley mary walsoncraft it's

01:26:53.900 wild that that's a mother-daughter because they're both so iconic yes yes yes

01:26:59.420 did you did an episode on mary shelley i did i think two episodes of mary walsoncraft two

01:27:07.800 episodes of mary shelley because there's you talk about how some critics think she's bisexual

01:27:11.780 yes some think that both mary shelley and mary wallstonecraft were potentially queer okay so

01:27:19.520 mary shelley so she she gets with percy quite young he dies very young so she is a single

01:27:27.300 woman for a long long time she lives a long life um and she is not really that into men

01:27:33.880 um despite being courted by them and she says stuff like um i never really feel anything with 0.90

01:27:40.620 men although sometimes women make me feel tuzzy muzzy we have record of her saying this we don't

01:27:46.600 know what that means tuzzy muzzy is not like a adjective that we know what she was talking about 0.97

01:27:52.360 but we do know that tuzzy muzzy was a slang for vagina so it's like maybe you know possibly 0.74

01:28:00.540 we don't know what she was getting at there well and then with mary walson craft she had 1.00

01:28:06.280 um like Georgina Duchess of Devonshire who also like some people see some queer coding in her

01:28:11.760 story like again just sort of like very passionate female friendships like Mary Wollstonecraft wanted

01:28:17.920 to run away with her friend Fanny Blood and be together forever like there's yes and the sapphic

01:28:25.380 commune was was real um sapphic communes were like early feminists were very in favor of sapphic 0.98

01:28:32.760 communes there were some that were like tried and attempted sort of like this women only utopia 0.52

01:28:38.280 and i do have um a book series that features a sapphic commune so i wanted to have you so for

01:28:45.360 everyone like explain about well you have a book coming out in june so like i feel like yes

01:28:51.020 yes also people like we're talking about the sapphic book so like talk about that first like

01:28:55.380 you have the um ladies in hating which you mentioned is about the two came out last september

01:29:01.760 um and yes that is my they are uh so that's when i read glen arvin for the first time was when i

01:29:07.100 was doing the research for ladies dating um and they are a pair of rival gothic novelists um who

01:29:14.140 end up trapped in a haunted mansion together as they're doing research for their next books

01:29:18.760 um and it is full of real um historical inspiration real historical figures lady caroline lamb's ghost

01:29:28.920 is haunting that story uh as well as ann lister and the ladies of flan gothland and lots and lots

01:29:33.960 of other people so yeah that came out last year i also have um a book that came out this year in

01:29:39.860 february that is about sort of a a pair of twins who kind of deliberately court scandal um so a lot

01:29:47.880 of their antics were also drawn from lady caroline lamb so dressing up as things and um things like

01:29:53.420 that uh and that's called the halifax hellions and then yeah and then this summer i have a new

01:29:58.440 book coming out uh called scandal of the summer which is eventually the first one in the series

01:30:03.580 doesn't have the sapphic commune books two and three we will see the the sapphic commune uh

01:30:08.020 appears there well and scandal of the summer like it's a you've got a well the premise of that is

01:30:15.020 a lady caroline lamb spiritual type person like spiritually a person who's a a kind of rebellious

01:30:22.620 young aristocrat in the Regency era yes yes I think the thing that she takes the most from

01:30:29.080 Caroline Lamb is just that she can't stop telling the truth um and that she is just really committed

01:30:36.440 to speaking her mind even when that gets her into big trouble and people um uh are are not a fan of

01:30:45.780 her speaking her mind and i based her father off of lord elgin who is the guy who um stole the

01:30:54.060 perthenon marbles from greece and and sold them to the british government um so he's bad obviously

01:30:59.440 um so she yeah so the premise of that one is that she and her friends decide they've had enough of

01:31:04.360 society and its judgments um and they decide that they are going to forge um a letter saying that

01:31:10.520 they're the ladies and waiting of a princess they frolic off to her kind of the prince's country

01:31:16.080 house which is abandoned um only to find out that it's not so abandoned because a gang of smugglers

01:31:21.840 have been operating their smuggling ring out of this abandoned country house um so that's the

01:31:27.160 premise of that one that's fabulous i love because when we first connected about like having on the

01:31:32.740 podcast i think you'd mentioned lady caroline lamb but i love the word promoting we're doing

01:31:36.300 this episode now when you have this book coming out with kind of like lady caroline lamb vibes

01:31:39.800 so it all kind of like pairs up nicely and how can people like just tell everybody about your

01:31:45.480 website and stuff and your social media so they can keep up with because your book is coming out

01:31:48.760 and what events you're going to be at and how people can keep up with you yes um well i do uh

01:31:54.640 you can sign up for my newsletter um if you would like updates about all of those things books

01:31:59.240 events etc i also um you can find that on my website which is alexandravasti.com

01:32:04.720 or all the major social media sites at Alexandra Vasti.

01:32:09.820 I'm just going to mention also, I wrote my book, nonfiction book, Rebel of the Regency,

01:32:14.580 The Scandal Saga of Calendar Brunswick, Britain's Queen Without a Crown.

01:32:17.740 You can get all the information about that at rebeloftheregency.com.

01:32:21.060 It's available in North America, soon to be in the United Kingdom as well.

01:32:26.200 And that book is also sort of like interrogating the myths we have about the Regency era and

01:32:31.340 like, what was it actually like?

01:32:32.640 turns out a lot more riots than you might be led to believe from, from various historical

01:32:38.380 costume dramas. Um, anyway, Alexandra, thank you so much for joining me. I did not know anything

01:32:43.820 about all I vaguely knew about Lady Caroline Lamb was like, Oh, she was involved with Byron. Didn't

01:32:48.380 she like threaten to kill herself at a party? Like that's literally all I knew. And now I'm just 0.73

01:32:52.320 obsessed with this little, this little costume wearing little freak. I love her. Yes. Yes. I'm

01:32:59.920 so glad. Thank you so much for having me back. I had a blast, um, once again, and I'm happy to

01:33:05.000 join you to talk about rebellious, uh, historical women anytime. Fantastic. And to all my listeners,

01:33:10.760 we'll be back next week. Um, I don't know, maybe picked up on some of the clues, but we're going

01:33:15.000 to be talking about somebody next week in the finale of the Regency era series who connects

01:33:19.440 very specifically with this. It's kind of the next generation of people after Lady Caroline Lamb.

01:33:25.100 So stay tuned for that next week. And until next time, listeners, keep your pants on and your tits 1.00

01:33:28.840 out. 0.99

01:33:29.920 i'm so happy that alexandra mentioned the how historians are considering the potential

01:33:41.500 queerness of mary shelley's life and we also talked about mary wallstonecraft as well because

01:33:45.700 those are two of the people included in a new design that i have that i'm doing a fundraiser

01:33:50.660 for so i got my friend yan yupater who is a queer artist to make a design called the regency

01:33:57.260 Queera, Regency Era, but queer. And it features all of the queer, potentially queer people we've

01:34:04.140 talked about this season. Mary Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, Georgina, Duchess of Devonshire,

01:34:09.160 Anne Lister, the Chevalier d'Anne, and the ladies of Len Goughlin, and their cat Sappho are all

01:34:13.880 featured in this design. So what I did is I put this design on a ringer t-shirt. If you don't

01:34:18.140 know what that is, it's like a white t-shirt with a colored collar and colored cuffs, the color

01:34:22.540 you can do this as red or navy or black. Anyway, all the funds raised from sales of this t-shirt

01:34:28.240 are going to go towards supporting the Trevor Project. The Trevor Project is an American 0.62

01:34:32.740 organization that focuses on suicide prevention efforts for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender,

01:34:37.960 queer, and questioning youth. They offer a toll-free telephone number that's available

01:34:43.180 24-7 where confidential assistance is provided by trained counselors. And I wanted to, you know,

01:34:51.080 to do this fundraiser

01:34:52.800 because it's such a wonderful organization,

01:34:55.000 such a wonderful cause.

01:34:56.580 There's been so much discussion recently

01:34:58.020 in the wake of the announcement

01:34:59.500 of the new upcoming Suffolk season of Bridgerton 0.99

01:35:02.440 about like, oh, but were there queer people

01:35:04.440 in the Regency era?

01:35:05.580 And this season, we've talked about a bunch of them

01:35:07.960 and they're all featured in this beautiful, colorful design.

01:35:10.960 To support this fundraiser,

01:35:13.040 go to vulgarhistory.com slash Trevor.

01:35:16.220 That's vulgarhistory.com slash Trevor

01:35:18.200 because it's a fundraiser for the Trevor Project.

01:35:20.240 and you can purchase one of these t-shirts and or make a donation to them at that link until the end

01:35:26.840 of may until may 31st so you can get your shirt in time to wear it in june for pride if you want

01:35:32.700 to show the rudency quera vibes for for whatever you're doing in june anyway i just want to let

01:35:38.780 everybody know about this fundraiser vulgar history.com slash trevor vulgar history is 0.97

01:35:45.820 researched, scripted, and hosted by Anne Foster. Editor is Christina Lumagi. Theme music is by

01:35:51.160 The Severn Duo. Regency-era artwork by Karen Moynihan. Social media videos by Magdalena

01:35:56.820 Denson. Transcripts of this podcast are available at vulgarhistory.com by Aveline Malek. You can get

01:36:02.680 early ad-free episodes of Vulgar History by becoming a paid member of our Patreon at 0.52

01:36:06.960 patreon.com slash Anne Foster Writer. Vulgar History merchandise is available at vulgarhistory.com

01:36:12.900 slash store for Americans and at vulgarhistory.redbubble.com for everyone else.

01:36:18.300 Follow us on social media at vulgarhistorypod. Get in touch with me at vulgarhistorypod at gmail.com.

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01:37:54.560 Hi, listeners.

01:37:57.400 We want to tell you about a podcast we love.

01:38:00.020 It's called Rebel Girls,

01:38:01.820 formerly known as Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls.

01:38:04.320 It's about real-life women who are changing the world with their courage, creativity, and big, bold ideas.

01:38:12.040 Want to know how Taylor Swift became a superstar?

01:38:15.360 Or hear how Simone Biles became the greatest athlete of all time?

01:38:19.520 From immersive stories, to heartfelt interviews, to super smart advice,

01:38:24.680 Rebel Girls brings you stories that will get you fired up to become your best self.

01:38:29.280 There are over 400 episodes for you to explore, with new episodes every week.

01:38:33.440 So, check it out.

01:38:35.220 Listen to Rebel Girls wherever you get your podcasts.

01:38:38.060 And find us on YouTube.com slash Rebel Girls.

01:38:41.640 And whatever you do, stay Rebel.

Vulgar History - May 06, 2026

Lady Caroline Lamb： Regency Era Manic Pixie Dream Girl

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