ANNE MEE, NÉE FOLDSONE (BRITISH, C. 1770/1775 - 1851)

Lady Caroline 'Caro' Lamb, née Ponsonby (1785-1828), was the fourth child and only daughter of Frederick Ponsonby, 3rd Earl of Bessborough (1758-1844), and his wife, Henrietta Frances Ponsonby (1761-1821). She spent much of her childhood at Devonshire house with her cousins, the children of the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire. In 1805 she married The Hon. William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne (1779-1848), later Prime Minister and advisor to Queen Victoria, and they had one child together, Augustus, born in 1807. The marriage was tempestuous, with infidelities on both sides, the most famous being Caroline's well-publicised fling with Lord Byron in 1812. It was he who gave her the nickname 'Caro' which she adopted publicly and it was she who famously declared him, 'mad, bad, and dangerous to know'. By this time she had become a successful novelist and the upset caused by Byron's eventual dismissal of her manifested itself in her poems and novels. In the Gothic romance, Glanarvon (1816), she portrayed Byron as a satanic villain but Byron hit back and Lady Caroline became one of the subjects of his satirical work Don Juan (1819-1824). Lady Caroline and her husband eventually separated and she spent the declining years of her life at Brocket Hall.