Page:Wives of the prime ministers, 1844-1906.djvu/62

WIVES OF THE PRIME MINISTERS made the acquaintance of Isaac Nathan, the musical composer who had been intimate with Byron, and for whom Byron wrote the "Hebrew Melodies" for Nathan to set to music, and asked him to come and sing to her. "Come," she writes, "and soothe one who ought to be happy but is not." Nathan composed the music to many of her own verses, which he published in 1829 in a curious little volume entitled Fugitive Pieces. It contains the lines written by Lady Caroline that form a strange comment on her husband's well-known inveterate and incurable habit of decorating his conversation with oaths:

Hobhouse went to see her at Melbourne House, in 1824, and had a two hours' talk with her, and found her furious at what she considered the misrepresentation of her and of her attachment to Byron in Medwin's Conversations with Byron. She wrote Medwin a long letter which, making allowance for her vivid imagination, may be regarded as her apologia. She also sent Hobhouse sixteen quarto volumes of journals kept by her since 1806, which he re-36