Dover House – The Melbourne family 1793 -1830

The next owners of the House were Lord and Lady Melbourne. From the archives of Melbourne Hall we learn that "at the request of Frederick, Duke of York, the Piccadilly House was exchanged for the Duke's House in Whitehall with a lease from 31 October 1792". It was described as a messuage in or near the Cock Pit, Whitehall, and was located between the Horseguards and the Treasury office. York House was renamed Melbourne House and John Fenn, Architect of the King Mews, was called in to repair and alter it. This involved taking down the Old Lottery office and erecting a Coach House at a cost of Ł2,730.

The loss of the old stables was an inevitable consequence of Holland's plan and in 1788 he made an application on behalf of the Duke, for the purchase of a small building abutting the Banqueting House on the other side of Whitehall to provide a site for new stables. This was refused, but a second application in 1792 did succeed and the old building was pulled down and replaced by coach houses and stables. The site was remarkably convenient being almost opposite the House at the other side of Whitehall.

It was thus that the House, which for the next forty years would be known as Melbourne House, became famous as one of several London hives of that brilliant, aristocratic, cultivated, showy, supremely confident yet intellectually curious, Whig society of the day. It was a society that thought little of the court at Windsor, of King George III and his Queen, yet it is ironic that in the first principal room now hangs impressive full length portraits of the same King and Queen. It was also a society in near-permanent opposition to King George's Ministers at Westminster. A frequent guest, also in permanent opposition to his father the King, was George, Prince of Wales. It is recognised that this welcome visitor fathered at least one of Lady Melbourne's children and was godfather to one of the Melbourne grandchildren.

Lady Melbourne was a leading hostess of the Whig society who once wrote that "few men could be trusted with their neighbours' secrets, and scarcely any woman with her own". Lady Melbourne had great political influence which she exerted in a number of ways. After her love affair with the Prince of Wales subsided into friendship, she used her influence at Carlton House to see her husband appointed as an Irish Viscount, Lord of the Bedchamber, and finally an English peer. Until her death she, rather than her staid husband, would be the commanding influence at Melbourne House. In 1805, the Melbourne heir, the Hon William Lamb, at that time a somewhat dilettante young gentleman, gifted with the social graces of his mother, married the sixteen year old Lady Caroline Ponsonby, that young and lively, too lively, niece to another great Whig household in London, that of Devonshire House. After the custom and no doubt in line with the dictates of economy, the young couple settled in Melbourne House with his parents. Although no accurate records remain, it is likely that the young couple occupied the second floor of the building. It is equally likely that Lady Caroline's boudoir was that room with the elegant bed recess and a magnificent view over the Park to what was then Buckingham House. However, a prominent former Scottish Office official, who joined the office in 1929, recalls that Lady Caroline's bedroom was then reported to have been the large room at the north end of the West front, nearest to Horseguards, and he also recalls that there had been at one time a label to that effect on the door.

Lord David Cecil, the biographer of "Young Melbourne", has described the Melbourne House of these days: "A retinue of pages in livery of scarlet and sepia, designed by Lady Caroline". Lady Caroline herself was described as slender, graceful, with short clipped flaxen curls with a soft prettily affected voice.

Open house was kept for morning and afternoon callers, and many were Members of Parliament on their way to and from St Stephen's. William and Caroline gave dinner parties past midnight, after which guests would descend to Lady Melbourne's apartment for supper. One memorable supper party went on until 6 am, and to celebrate the christening of the Melbourne grandson in 1808, the House was illuminated outside and in, for a huge concourse of guests headed by the Prince of Wales.

However, the marriage of the young Melbourne's became increasingly under strain. It could hardly be otherwise with Lady Caroline having had a brief flirtation with Sir Godfrey Webster in 1810. In 1812 Caroline was the talk of the town for having herself carried to the dinner table at Devonshire House concealed in a great silver dish from under which she emerged naked. It was in March of that year, the year of Napoleon's march on Moscow, that through the portals of Melbourne House limped the imposing figure of Lord Byron. This was the day following that on which he and Lady Caroline had first met elsewhere in London and Lord Byron had asked her permission to call some time! As his ardour for Lady Caroline waned, the enterprising Byron's friendship with the ageing, yet still beautiful, Lady Melbourne took on great importance. In that year of 1812 Byron would publish "Childe Harald" with its portrait of an alienated hero, and would make his maiden speech in the House of Lords, which was considered splendid in content but marred by indifferent delivery. It was Lady Melbourne who put him at ease in the top flight of London Society from which he had been shut out.

In a letter written to Lady Melbourne in November 1812, Byron wrote , "I presume that I may now have access to the lower regions of Melbourne House from which my ascent (to Lady Caroline's boudoir) has long excluded me". Byron went on to describe Lady Melbourne as "the best friend I've had in my life and the cleverest". It was Lady Melbourne who hit on what proved to be a fatal stratagem of redeeming Byron's fortunes, and no doubt prising him away from her daughter-in-law, by having him marry her niece, Annabella Millbanke. It was in one of the first floor rooms at one of Lady Caroline's waltzing parties, of which Byron affected such disapproval, that Annabella Millbanke had first set eyes on him and began to nurture the delusion that she could mould that free spirit described by Lady Caroline as "mad, bad and dangerous to know" into something akin to herself.

After Byron finally disengaged himself from Lady Caroline, for some weeks life in Melbourne House was reduced to a succession of appalling scenes in which she stomped and pleaded as her family told her bluntly that she was out of her mind pursuing Byron. In a letter dated 12 August 1812 from Lady Bessborough (Lady Caroline's mother) to Lord Grenville Leveson-Gower she explained the events of earlier that day, "I was at White Hall in the morning, trying to persuade Caro to come with me to Roehampton, and let William join us on the Friday to go to Ireland. She was in bad humour and in the midst Lord Melbourne came in reproached her for some of the strange things she does. She answered so rudely, so disrespectfully, that I was frightened and ran to call Lady Mel. We returned instantly together, but met Lord Melbourne on the stairs, pale as death, screaming to the porter to stop Caroline. It was in vein (sic),' she had disappeared in a moment, too quick for the servants who ran out after her, to guess which way she had turned. I cannot tell you my agony yet I believed for a long time what Lady M. thought probable, that after the first impulse of anger was over she would return. I drove up and down Palt Street in every direction I thought she could have gone, and returned in despair when Lord Melbourne told us she threatened him with going to Lord Byron and he 'bid her go and be' but did not think he would take her. On this she ran down". Caroline did return no doubt sadder but wiser, and in subsequent months in her lonely room she channelled her feelings into the writing of her celebrated roman a'clef, "Glenavon", with Byron thinly disguised and her mother-in-law cast as the Gothic villain, Lady Margaret Buchanan. Her infatuation with Byron did not, however, diminish. Caroline cut herself with a penknife at Lady Heathcote's ball on 5 July 1813 after Byron had made a sarcastic remark about her waltzing. Lady Caroline's public infatuation ended with Byron's marriage in 1814. When hearing the news of his imminent marriage, Caroline demanded the return of letters, pictures and gifts. She made a scene at the Duke of Wellington's ball held at Burlington House on 1 July 1814 and even contradicted the published announcement of his engagement in an anonymous letter sent to the Morning Chronicle. It was in her room in Melbourne House that Lady Caroline died in 1828, aged 42.

Although she had been estranged from her husband since 1824 the couple were reconciled shortly before her death. Caroline's brother William, who throughout her illness had cared for her warmly expressed his sense of 'solace' which her husband's frequent letters had afforded her and the tenderness of his demeanour when he came. William Ponsonby is quoted a saying "William Lamb behaved throughout as I always knew he would".

In spite of all her waywardness and folly, Lamb was beyond doubt passionately fond of his wife. She retained to the last a strong influence over him, and years after her death he used to speak of her with tears and ask moodily 'shall we meet in another world'.

The House was to remain in the Melbourne family until 1830. The formidable Lady Melbourne died in 1818 and the first Viscount died in 1828 allowing William Lamb to accede to the title 2nd Viscount Melbourne. The House was sold to Mr Agar Ellis a young politician of Liberal views who had taken a leading post in the foundation of the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square and was a Trustee of the British Museum. This ended the association of the Melbourne family with the House. Despite the turbulence of this occupation it did not impair the career of William Lamb, the 2nd Viscount, whose political appointments included Irish Secretary 1827, Home Secretary 1830, Prime Minister in 1834 and again from 1835 to 1841. A formidable record indeed. But in many ways it was not the respected politician nor his tempestuous wife who dominated this period in the history of the House but rather Lady Melbourne who it is said gave to the Regency period the stamp of her personality. Byron called her the most talented woman of her generation, a complex and scintillating personality. She was indeed a remarkable woman, as her son William observed after her death, a devoted mother but "not chaste, not chaste".

Printed from: www.scotlandoffice.gov.uk/history/dover-house/melbourne-family.html on 21 August 2008