The Page Affair

The Page Affair: Lady Caroline Lamb’s Literary Cross-Dressing, by Rosemary March

In 1816, Lady Caroline Lamb hit one of her servants with a hard ball (perhaps a cricket ball) and drew blood. She later narrated her panic to her friend, novelist Sydney Owenson (Lady Morgan):

He was a little espiègle [playful], and would throw detonating balls into the fire. Lord Melbourne always scolded me for this, and I, the boy. One day I was playing ball with him. He threw squibs into the fire, and I threw the ball at his head. It hit him on the temple, and he bled. He cried out, “O my Lady, you have killed me!” Out of my senses, I flew into the hall and screamed, “Oh God, I have murdered the page!”

Lamb later referred to this accident as her "page affair," a statement which be taken as a metaphor for her and Byron’s literary relationship: literally, their written and textual affair with each other’s “pages.” Their famous literary portraits of one another —Glenarvon and Lady Adeline Amundeville —have been much discussed. Their true “page affair,” however, is far more wide-ranging than this, and can be seen in its earliest form in Lamb’s “commonplace books.”

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