Noble Blood - Let Him Be Hanged There for a Lamb

Episode Date: November 12, 2019

Lord Byron has become synonymous with the romantic, creative hero. But it may have been Lady Caroline Lamb, his most famous lover, who truly embodied the spirit of the age. Their romance led to blood, tears, fire, and pubic hair. Poets, am I right? Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. What's up, everyone? I'm Ago Vodam. My next guest, it's Will Ferrell. Woo, woo, woo, woo. My dad gave me the best advice ever. He goes, just give it a shot.

But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, The cat, just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck.

Listen to Thanks, Dad, on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of IHeart Radio and Aaron Manky. Listener discretion is advised. The first week of December in 1812, when a frost had just barely begun to cling to the expansive lawns of Brockett Hall, Lady Caroline Lamb ordered that a massive bonfire be built. Since Lord Byron had first arrived in London society a little under a year ago, Caroline Lamb's behavior had become increasingly strange, outrageous even. The staff had learned not to ask too many questions.

From the nearby village of Wellwyn, Caroline gathered a group of local girls and told them all to dress in white. Within minutes, she was leading them down the road, in a ghostly procession towards the sky-licking orange flames. She was like a pied piper, pulling them forward not with music, but with the implacable magnetic force

of her single-minded resolve and her gleeful anger. While the village girls danced around the flames, Caroline Lamb revealed an effigy she had built of Lord Byron, made of straw but unmistakable. She threw it onto the flames. As the fire leapt higher and began to consume the figure of straw,

Caroline Lamb began tossing other things into the fire. Letters, quills, books, rings, and a golden locket. And then, once everything Caroline Lamb had left of her former lover was burning, she began to recite a poem that she had written. Burn, fire, burn, while wondering boys exclaim, all gold and trinkets glitter in the flame. Any chill in the December air was gone. Caroline Lamb was so close to the heat of the fire

that her hair clung with sweat to her forehead. She stood so close to the flames that they reflected in her dark eyes. Yellow, orange, and dancing with a hellish fury. Caroline Lamb didn't seem to blink. Although history has made Lord Byron synonymous with the wild passions of poetry, it's his most famous lover, Caroline Lamb, who I confess I believe makes a more fitting figurehead for the romantic era. Caroline Lamb was a woman driven mad with love, who shed all vanity, all concerned for society

or propriety, and devoted herself entirely to the object of her affection. She, quite literally, lost herself in poetry. Byron, charming, handsome, vain, miserable Byron, was talented. But he never lost sight of his exact position in society and where he might move next. He was impatient and easily bored. Isn't passion supposed to run deep? On that December night in 1812,

Caroline Lamb burned all of the trinkets she had of her affair with the era's most famous writer. But Byron's hold on her heart would last for the rest of her life. The two were locked in her wretched, beautiful dance, and when Caroline Lamb was scorned, she was happy to leave ashes in her wake. I'm Dana Schwartz, and this is Noble Blood. Lord Byron's story began when he was a toddler, living with his mother, and the two got word that his father, Mad Jack Byron,

had died and in his will left all of his debts to his three-year-old son. Mad Jack had only married Byron's mother for her money. Everyone knew that, and it took about a year or so before he worked his way through it. After another year, he was so heavily in debt that he was forced to go into exile, leaving his wife and newborn son alone to fend for themselves. Byron and his mother lived in Scotland above a shop, but then a stroke of luck. When Byron was eight, his uncle, the Baron Byron, died without an heir. Young George Gordon Byron, future poet, inherited his title.

It was a low-ranking title, sure, but it was still a title. And so young Byron and his mother made their way from their home in Aberdeen, down to the estate that Byron now owned. Newsted Abbey. Newsted Abbey was a wreck, a crumbling stone facade with a half-caved-in ceiling and uneven floors. It would be impossible to live in, and its upkeep would be a drain on Byron's finances for the rest of his life.

But still, it was undeniably beautiful. There were sweeping grounds and ancient edifices. It was a gorgeous gothic fantasy playground for the young Byron's imagination. Newsted Abbey, even in Decay, represented everything in the world that Byron wanted. Even the poet Byron couldn't see the poetic irony of it being uninhabitable. After studying at Cambridge, Byron went on a grand tour of Europe, during which he published the first two cantos of his epic semi-autobiographical poem, child herald's pilgrimage.

Byron returned to England as a celebrity. Women swooned reading his poetry about a young, disaffected man, searching for meaning and failing to find it among the hedonism and revelry of high society. Who before Byron had so perfectly captured that exquisite pain of being surrounded by people but feeling alone,

then stirs the feeling infinite, So felt, in solitude where we are least alone. Lady Caroline Lamb was born to the type of family that Byron could have only dreamed of. She was the daughter of an earl and a countess, niece to the famous Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire, and wife of a man who would go on to become Prime Minister. At 26, when she received an advanced copy of Byron's child Harold, She was one of the most eminent women in London.

Caroline Lamb was immediately smitten. She had heard stories about Lord Byron, about his rakeish adventures. She had heard about when he was a student at Cambridge and he had been forbidden from keeping his dog with him as a pet. And so, because the rules did not explicitly forbid it, Byron had brought with him a pet bear. And now Caroline read his poetry.

It was irresistant. She begged their mutual friend Samuel Rogers to introduce her. But Rogers knew Byron, and more importantly, he knew Byron's reputation with women. Child Herald was already a sensation, and Rogers was flooded with requests from increasingly desperate women begging him to introduce them to his famous friend. And so with Caroline Lamb, Rogers demurred. He told her that Byron, who bit his name, he told her that Byron, who bit his name, nails that had a club foot and eyes too close together,

was almost certainly nowhere near as attractive as the man that Caroline Lamb conjured in her mind while reading Child Herald. The sensitive, lonely poet she imagined when she read lines like, There is a pleasure in the pathless wood. There is a rapture on the lonely shore. But Caroline Lamb would not be dissuaded for meeting him. If he's ugly as Aesop, I must see him, she informed. She decided to write Byron a letter. She addressed it to Child Herald. I have read your book

and cannot refrain from telling you that I think it beautiful. You deserve to be and you shall be happy. Do not throw away such talents as you possess in gloom and regrets for the past and, above all, live here in your own country which will be proud of you. She left the letter anonymous. Lord Byron had been receiving a lot of letters from female admirers. He had been receiving so many letters, in fact, that when women requested locks of his hair, he started sending back clippings from his dog, Boat Swain. But Caroline Lamb could do something that none of the other women writing to Byron could. She could imitate him, his poetry rather, almost perfectly. And so, Just two days after she sent the first anonymous letter, she sent a second, in which she wrote

14 lines with the same meter of child Harold, a perfect homage. Strong love, I feel for one I shall not name. What I should feel for thee could never be the same. But admiration interest is free, and that child Harold may receive from me. for a man who loved himself as much as Byron did, Caroline Lamb figured correctly there would be almost nothing more appealing than his own talent reflected back at him. She signed this letter.

Ardent, as her passions were, she was still a married woman, and discretion was needed. Caroline Lamb ended the second letter by asking Byron to leave his response for her at the circulating library on Bond Street. under the false name Mr. Sidney Allison. Caroline Lamb waited. And waited. And waited. No response came.

It was a rare thing for a woman like Caroline Lamb, astronomically aristocratic, not to get what she wanted. But her moment with Byron would come soon enough. She saw him for the first time, just a few days later in person, at a ball held by Lady Westermoreland, where he stood so pale and still

that he looked like a marble statue come to life. Byron was sometimes described as an alabaster vase lit from within. He was not classically handsome, but he was impossible to look away from, so charming and compelling that he had both women and men desperate for just a moment of his attention.

He was standing at the edge of the ballroom. Byron, born with a club foot and always self-conscious about it, never danced, but over the years in his bedroom alone, he had figured out exactly the right way to stand, so his club foot was impossible to see, so that from a distance he looked tall and straight and striking. He was an incredibly vain man. He would go days eating only biscuits and water to maintain his sling,

slender figure. He kept his neck lines low to show off the curve of his collarbone, and he knew just how to look at a woman from underneath his dark curls to make it so that she would never be able to think of anyone else. At the party, Lord Byron saw Caroline Lamb, and Caroline Lamb saw him flirting with other women. But the two made eye contact from across the room while she danced, and Byron, proud of himself for declining to answer her letter, for making her wait, prepared to make his introductions. But before he could approach her, Caroline Lamb was gone. She had left the party early. Byron was enthralled, a woman that first not only had written to him, but then had chosen to shrug her shoulders and glide out of a party

before they could meet in person. If he hadn't written back to her, she figured, he could be the one to chase her. But cool and elegant as she had seemed leaving the Westermoreland ball, when Caroline got home, her heart was pounding with the memory of that strange and handsome man.

In her diary that very night, she wrote the words that would be associated with Byron for centuries to come. Mad, bad, and dangerous to know. But she wrote another sentence about Byron, less remembered, yes, but for Caroline Lamb, far more prophetic. That beautiful, pale face, she wrote, will be my fate. One morning, without announcing himself, Lord Byron came with his friend Samuel Rogers

to Caroline Lamb's house. She had not been expecting guests, and she entered the house hot and sweaty from a morning of riding. Byron had come with a gift, a rose. Your ladyship, I am told, likes all that is new and rare for a moment, he said. It was done. Caroline Lamb was in love, and the two began an affair that turned aristocratic London on its head for months. Byron called on Caroline Lamb frequently, bringing her books and holding her young son Augustus on his knee.

Caroline Lamb and Byron shared interests in gardening and dogs and philosophy. They spent long evenings in rooms lit only by dwindling fireplaces, reading the castle of O'Tronto side by side, or gossiping about people that they met at parties. He called her Caro, and she adopted that nickname with everyone. The two wrote each other multiple times a day. Byron told Caroline Lamb's secrets he had never shared with anyone else. He told her about his first love, his cousin Mary, who broke his heart, when he once overheard her saying,

Do you think that I could care anything for that lame boy? Byron told Caroline Lamb about his love affairs at university with the chorister John Edelston and two other boys. Homosexuality was still a capital offense in England, one that could get Byron hanged. Kara sent Byron a lock of her pubic hair cut so close to the skin that it clung to dried blood.

Byron sent back a golden locket, engraved with his family motto. Creede Byron. Have faith in Byron. But even when the two were in love, it was never an easy, domestic love. The two were artistic spirits, and they craved drama.

Caro invited Byron to a waltzing dance, and though he accepted, he seethed internally. His club foot made him unable to dance, and he hated seeing Caroline with other partners. He had to spend the party talking to Caroline's beautiful, dull religious cousin, Annabella Millbank, in the corner. After that night, Byron forbade her from waltzing, and Caroline acquiesced. Their friends tried to keep them apart. they were fire and gasoline, flint and steel, and sooner or later there would only be rubble left. Caroline was a powerful woman, but she was impulsive and jealous.

Having an affair when you were married was all well and good if you could be subtle about it, but Caroline was finding that increasingly difficult, especially once she saw how much attention Byron was getting from all of the other women in London. Annabella Milbank chucklingly dubbed it Byromania, but even she couldn't resist asking her cousin Caroline to pass along one or two of the poem she had written to the famous Byron. Caroline was born statused, and she didn't give a lick what other people thought of her. But Byron, low-born Byron, craved approval,

and more importantly, he needed money. If he was to establish himself in proper society, he would need a rich and staticed wife. And finding one would be all the more difficult if he was scandalized by a wild and public liaison with a married woman. When Caroline flippantly gave Byron a few of Annabella's poems, he asked Caroline whether he thought that she might make a good wife for him.

Annabella was pretty, and she was rich, and unlike Caroline Lamb, she was unmarried. Caroline said that she was probably going to marry a man they knew. knew named George Eden. And for good measure, Caroline composed a sarcastic poem for Byron, where she sardonically wrote that Annabella would be a fond mother and a faithful wife. Nothing could possibly be less appealing to the impulsive, impossible to please Byron, so easily bored. Nothing was boring about Caroline Lamb. But as the months drew on, and she felt Byron's attention begin to wane, her own.

devotion to him became all the more zealous. She became more public and more reckless in her ardor. Byron's own friends were urging him to keep his distance. Byron found that challenging, especially when Caroline Lamb wouldn't admit that she loved him more than her own husband. It's not that Byron could actually have her. He didn't even particularly want her anymore, but God damn it if he didn't need to hear her say that she loved him above all else. So he hinted at elopement. Caroline Lamb responded too eagerly. His bluff was called,

and at the urging of his friends, he retreated from London to Newstead without saying goodbye. Caroline Lamb was baffled and heartbroken. She sent dozens of letters to Newstead, all of which went without a reply. It was maddening. Caro became increasingly frantic, and when she heard that Byron might have returned briefly to London, she was manic.

She showed up at his home, 8 James Street, in the middle of the day, disguised as a page boy. She wasn't thinking of what a scandal it would cause to have a married woman alone at a man's house. All she could think of was Byron. Byron told her to leave. Caroline Lamb pulled a letter opener from his desk and tried to step. herself, weeping with love and anger and frustration and loneliness. Didn't he remember how it felt? Hadn't he felt that loneliness, that yearning when he had written child Harold?

Byron held her until she was calm, until the knife dropped from her hand. Things had gone too far. Byron's friends could see it, and Caroline's family could see it. Seeing her declining mental health, her in-laws insisting, that she spent some time away from London society in Ireland. With Caroline Lamb safely out of the country, Byron felt it was safe to write intimately again. The affair was over,

but he didn't want to lose the flattery of having a noble woman like Caroline Lamb be madly in love with him. And so in his goodbye letter, he wrote, I was and am yours freely and most entirely to obey to honor love and fly with you when, where, and how you yourself might and may determine. Throw her a bone, he figured. Caroline Lamb was out of the country and out of his head,

and Byron began a new affair, another older, titled woman, a friend of Carolines, actually, the Countess of Oxford. But love could not so easily extinguish itself in Caroline Lamb. She wrote him from Ireland, endlessly. She stopped eating. She devoted herself, body and soul, to the memory of her affair with Byron and the dream of rekindling it. If Byron thought he could dismiss her with a kiss on the cheek, he was incorrect.

And so Byron had to be more explicit. Finally, after months of letters, he wrote her back. Correct your vanity, which is ridiculous. Exert your absurd caprices upon other. and leave me in peace. The letter was harsh and unsympathetic, yes, but Byron did something a step further. He added to the letter a final piece of nastiness

that would cause the blood to leave Caroline Lamb's face and ignite in her a new white-hot furnace of humiliation and fury. In a final act of cruelty, Byron had sealed the letter with his new lover, Lady Oxford's, wax stamp. Caroline Lamb became obsessed. Eventually, she and Byron both returned to London, officially exes, and Caroline Lamb became desperate to enact her revenge on the man who had helped her see the poetry in the world and then thrown it out with a scornful laugh.

Caroline wrote to Lady Oxford and threatened to tell the world of their affair. Lady Oxford laughed at the threat, but Byron was incensed and paranoid. The emaciated Caroline Lamb would show up to parties and spend the night clutching a glass and staring at Byron. He joked to friends that he was being haunted by a skeleton. Caroline wrote to Byron and asked him to return her letters and all of the tokens of her love that she had sent along to him. He obliged, more or less, some of the trinkets he had already given to other women.

Caroline threw them all into a bonfire and danced around his smoldering effigy. She made up new buttons for her staff to wear. No creedé Byron, they said, a takeoff on his family crest. Have no faith in Byron. No one knew Byron like Caroline Lamb, and so no one knew like Caroline Lamb exactly how to get under Byron's skin. When she showed up at his home unannounced one afternoon to find him out, She snuck up to his desk and flipped open the inside cover of the book Vathek by William Beckford. Remember me, she wrote inside.

The threat was implicit. Beckford was famously bisexual, and Caroline knew all about Byron's attraction to men. Byron responded with a poem he never published. Remember thee, remember thee. To leith quench life's burning stream. remorse and shame still cling to thee and haunt thee like a feverish dream. When Caroline Lamb heard that Byron wanted to give

one of his favorite portraits of himself to his new lover, Lady Oxford, she used her talent for mimicry once again. She forged a letter from Byron and brought it to his publisher where they kept the portrait. They gave it to her. Byron was furious. He was less angry that the person,

portrait was gone, although it had been a very good one of him, and far more outraged that Caroline Lamb had been good enough to imitate his writing. Caroline Lamb agreed that she would give him his portrait in exchange for a lock of his hair. In his scorn, Byron agreed, but he sent along a clipping not of his hair, but of Lady Oxford's. Byron and Caroline's final confrontation occurred at a party. I assume I'm allowed to waltz now, Caroline said to her former lover, who was standing as he always did on the sidelines.

Well, of course, Byron responded, You do it so well, and with everybody. Caroline Lamb broke a glass in her hand and made as if she were to cut herself with one of the shards. They wrote about it in the papers the next day. Byron joked that, Ever the lover of theatrics, she had performed the dagger scene from Macbeth. Eventually, even Lady Oxford would leave Byron's favor.

When Byron's half-sister, Augusta Lee, came to town, the two were so inseparable that even polite society couldn't help with murmur about possible incest. I mean, they were inseparable. And then the murmurs became a little louder after Augusta Lee had a baby. But Byron needed to get married to an heiress. Caroline Lambs, rich, well-behaved, Apple Cheek's cousin, Annabella Milbank, agreed to marry him the second time he asked. It was a disastrous decision from the onset. Byron never really wanted to marry her, but the fact that she had once turned him down meant that she was irresistible.

He had to get her. Even Annabella realized she had made a mistake. When Byron's best man gave her a wedding gift and wished her many years of happiness as he sent them off on their honeymoon, the new Lady Byron replied, if I am not happy, it will be my own fault. On the way back from the ceremony, Byron had a panic attack. It's too late now, it's done, it cannot be undone, he snapped at his new bride as they exited the carriage. He smacked her hand away from his. That night, he slept in the master bedroom with his head. half-sister Augusta, while his new bride slept on the couch in the dressing room. Alone, Byron became increasingly despondent, and his financial troubles mounted. He rejected all income from his writing. As a gentleman, he believed it wasn't appropriate for him to be paid for his poetry. He was manic and sour, drinking heavily and highly suspicious that his new wife was sneaking

through his private things. Annabella told friends that she was afraid her husband had gone mad. Just after their one-year anniversary, one month after their daughter Ada was born, Annabella took Ada and left to stay with her parents. Neither Annabella nor Ada would ever see Byron again. In an effort to ensure that Ada didn't descend into her father's poetic madness, Annabella steered her daughter toward mathematics. It seemed to take.

Ada Lovelace, Byron's only legitimate child, is often credited as the world's first computer programmer, thanks to her work on the analytic engine computer, alongside Charles Babbage. As for Caroline Lamb throughout all of this, love and hate are impossible to disentangle completely. She comforted Annabella during her separation. proceedings, giving Annabella all of the information she could so that she could settle the divorce

on her terms. Caroline spread rumors of Byron's incestuous affair with his half-sister. But at the same time, she wrote to Byron, comforting him and claiming to be on his side through it all. Even after he broke her heart, she couldn't allow herself to be hated by him. Byron, perhaps sensing her duplicity, pulled away disgusted. And so, in 1816, Caroline Lamb played her final hand. In order to burn Byron, she would immolate herself and let them go up in flames together. She published a novel called Glen Arvon,

a thinly veiled account of her affair with Lord Byron in which a scandalous rake named Lord Ruthven corrupts a young married woman named Calantha. It was an immediate sensation, with all of London society desperate to read such an intimate and scandalous reflection of their own lives. Caroline's reputation was ruined, and she would never make her way into high society again. As for Byron's side of the story, we'll never read it. At least, not completely. Byron died young at the age of 36 of an illness while he was in Greece.

where he held the romantic fantasy of leading an army up against the Ottoman Empire. After his death, his friends assembled to read his memoirs. After they finished, they unanimously decided to burn them. Should they be made public, they said, they would have damned him to everlasting infamy. If you're interested in learning more about Lord Byron, you can check out a book I wrote called The White Man's Guide to White Male Writers of the Western canon.

It's exactly like this, only much less history and much more jokes. So almost nothing like this, but I think you'll like it. It's available now at your local bookstore. And if you want to hear about how Lord Byron inspired one of the most famous characters in all of literature, keep listening after this brief sponsor break.

What's up, everyone? I'm Ago Vodom. My next guest, you know from Step Brothers Anchorman, Saturday Night Live and the Big Money Players Network. It's Will Ferrell. Woo, woo, woo, woo, woo. My dad gave me the best advice ever. I went and had lunch with them one day, and I was like, and Dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.

I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings. I'm working my way up through, and I know it's a place they come, look for up and coming talent. He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet. Yeah. He goes, but there's so much luck involved. and he's like just give it a shot

he goes but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore it's okay to quit if you saw it written down it would not be an inspiration it would not be on a calendar of you know the cat just hang in there

yeah it would not be right it wouldn't be that there's a lot of luck yeah listen to thanks dad on the iHeart radio app Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast You can have opinions, you can have like a strong stance. And then there's your body having its own program. I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive scientist and hosts of the podcast, a slight change of plans,

a show about who we are and who we become when life makes other plans. We share stories and scientific insights to help us all better navigate these periods of turbulence and transformation. There is one finding that is consistent, and that is that our resilience rests on our relationships. I wish that I hadn't resisted for so long the need to change. We have to be willing to live with a kind of uncertainty that none of us likes. Listen to a slight change of plans on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Scandalized by his separation and the incessant rumors of incest, Lord Byron left England for the final time in 1816.

With his personal doctor, John Polidori, he settled for the summer at the Villa Diodati at Lake Geneva in Switzerland. Joining him was the poet Percy Bish Shelley, his future wife, Mary Shelley, and Mary's step-sister Claire Claremont, who had had an affair with Byron in London, was madly in love with him, and who had been the one who more or less forced Mary,

and Percy to spend the summer with Byron so she could tag along. It was a famous and scandalous group. Hotels from across the lake charged guests to look through telescopes for the chance to see them. But guess who paid up hoping to witness some orgy outside on the sand were woefully unlucky. The summer was miserable that year. Wet, cold, raining incessantly. And so, the group of writers. stayed inside and decided to engage in a contest to see who could write the best ghost story.

Famously, the contest's winner was 18-year-old Mary Shelley, who wrote the beginnings of what would become Frankenstein. But that wasn't the only significant work that began with that little contest. In his short story, John Pouladory wrote about a mysterious man who arrived in London, a man with impossibly pale skin and dark hair who seduced women and left a trail of bodies in his wake. 81 years before Bram Stoker wrote Dracula, Polidori wrote the first piece of Gothic literature ever to feature that folklore creature, the vampire. And in Polidori's story, the vampire's name is Lord Ruthven. You see, in case he had been too subtle, Polarie's story, Polaro's story, Polaro's name is Lord Ruthven.

Lodori borrowed the pseudonym that Caroline Lamb had created for Lord Byron in her novel. It was the name she used for the man who took her blood, who took her heart, and who took whatever was left. Noble Blood is a production of IHeart Radio and Aaron Manke. The show is written and hosted by Dana Schwartz and produced by Aaron Manke, Matt Frederick, Alex Williams, Anne Trevor Young. Noble Blood is on social media at Noble Blanky. And you can learn more about the show over at noblebloodtales.com.

For more podcasts from IHeartRadio, visit the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. What's up, everyone? I'm Ego Vodom. My next guest, it's Will Ferrell. Woo, woo, woo, woo, woo, woo. My dad gave me the best advice ever. He goes, just give it a shot. But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat. Just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be.

Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck. Listen to Thanks Dad on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.