Introduction

30
Vanessa Mangione
entertaining”. Concerning his likeness in Glenarvon he comments that it was a “bad
picture” as he had “sat not long enough” for it (qtd. in Clubbe 214).
In addition, Lamb is known for coining the famous formula describing Byron
as “mad, bad and dangerous to know”. However, this was not her first impression
of Byron but a conclusion after years of reflection. Although less known but yet
still adding to her reputation of an insane woman, were Byron’s comments, calling
her “mad and malignant”, and a “monster” who “cannot be in her senses” (Douglass,
“Madness of Writing” 53). Additionally, he wrote in a letter to Lady Byron
“[H]er whole disposition is a moral phenomenon (if she be not mad) it is not
feminine – she has no real affection … but everything seems perverted in her –
she is unlike every body I know – & not even like herself for a week altogether”
(qtd. in Douglass “Madness of Writing” 53). In other words, Byron himself helped
to spread the rumour of her supposed insanity. Accordingly, Lamb’s formula gets
under this aspect a whole new quality.
Wilson reminds us that Lamb is still remembered as a woman who could not
differentiate between fiction and reality. Her name was and is a synonym for the
melodramatic to this day; it was even used by contemporaries, including Byron, as
an adjective for “self-indulgent emotionalism” (“An Exaggerated Woman” 195).
In addition, he points out that Caroline’s behaviour applied to the “myth of desiring
women” which depicts them as being “damaged and damaging”, as “unnatural,
theatrical, deceptive, duplicitous, witch-like” and “sexually excessive” (“Exaggerated”
199). All of those characteristics were applied to Lamb, and thus her
work has merely been viewed with the focus on the sexual, rather than the political,
on the scandalous affair, rather than on the critic within. McDayter states that
Chew, a well-established Byron critic, evaluated Glenarvon as “the product [of
Lamb’s] hysteria” and therefore, McDayter argues “can be [according to Chew]
summarily dismissed, aesthetically, and politically, in a single satisfying stroke. It is
about sex, not a “legitimate” literary subject such as politics” (“Hysterically Speaking”
155). Chew is not alone with his poor opinion of Lamb’s work. Cecil regards
it as the “merely outpouring of a diseased sexuality” (qtd. in Kelsall 138) and further
as “a deplorable production, an incoherent cross between a realistic novel of
fashionable life and a fantastic tale of terror, made preposterous by every absurd
device” (qtd. in Graham 95). Up until recently, numerous critics agreed that the
only merits of the novel were the powerful depiction of the heroine Calantha and
her affair with Glenarvon because of their biographical aspects. 21
Tuite discusses the decade long double standard of the handling of the affair;
she states that the relationship between Byron and Lamb confirmed his “seductive
21 Henry Blyth. Caro: The Fatal Passion. New York: Haper Collins, 1972. – Mabell, Countess of
Airlie. In Whig Society 1775-1818, Compiled from the Hitherto Unpublished Correspondence of Elizabeth,
Viscountess Melbourne, and Emily Lamb, Countess. Cambridge: Scholar Publishing, 2010. – Elizabeth
Jenkins. Lady Caroline Lamb. London: Sphere, 1972. George Paston and Peter Quennell. “To
Lord Byron”: Feminine Profiles based upon unpublished letters 1807-1824. London: Murray, 1939.