AFTER 1816, William Lamb's marriage was something to be endured. His
wife became increasingly slovenly and drunken. His son grew physically, but
not mentally, stronger. London life became a terrible burden, so refuge was
sought at Brocket. In its library, Lamb read voraciously and found a little
peace, even if the price he paid was an inability to pursue politics seriously.
Contemporaries wondered that the marriage survived at all. The diarist
Greville noted that the Lambs had had 'a sort of half-laughing, half-resentful
reconciliation. They lived in this queer way.' ¹ The pattern of extravagant
behaviour followed by a penitence that some saw as self-indulgent reasserted
itself. In 1817, Caroline assured Michael Bruce that 'wicked as it may be I
should not so much mind errors of the wandering heart, if I had been
gentle and made William happy but as it is I am miserable and when I die
he will not even be able to love my remembrance'. ² At this time, both
William and Caroline claimed that they had no wish to go on living. ³ They
implored their friends to pray for them. ⁴ There was no career, no acceptance
in society, and little sympathy from friends or relations. Nor would there be
any respite. From 1816, until her death in 1828, Caroline Lamb endlessly
rehearsed her misery before the public by writing more novels and by pro-
voking outrage. Ada Reis, giving a loosely veiled account of the Byron affaire
appeared in 1823. A year earlier, Ginham Hamilton had been published. It tells
a familiar tale. Hamilton loves and marries a cousin. Both young people test
their innocence and virtue against the decadent values of London society, and
both are corrupted by it. They become victims of the 'censorious, officious,
intermeddling world'. ⁵ The wife dies of grief and remorse. The husband flees
to the New World. As in her earlier productions, Caroline portrays herself as
destroyed by vicious social conventions against which an amiable but in-
effective husband could not defend her. It was a version of events to which
William Lamb to some degree assented. He read the manuscript of Graham
Hamilton and corrected proofs, as 'an occupation to him in his lonely hours?'. ⁶
He did not censor the content, only asking that, when the book was

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