William Lamb, the 2nd Viscount Melbourne – or Lord Melbourne as he was most commonly known – was Queen Victoria’s first Prime Minister. He is memorialised in the lower reaches of North Adelaide in association with another British Prime Minister in Edward Geoffrey Stanley.
Stanley Street runs parallel to Melbourne Street, which has been the main thoroughfare from the city of Adelaide to the north-eastern suburbs since the middle of the twentieth century. Both of these men came to the notice of the Street Naming Committee in succession, one because he was Prime Minister; the other as Colonial Secretary. Both were in office at the time the South Australia Act 1834 passed.
Melbourne was of an older generation and much removed from the young employees of the South Australian Commission who sat at the table. Nevertheless, he was a household name in Britain well before the idea of a settlement in South Australia was ever conceived. As a longstanding Whig MP with an excellent reputation as the Home Secretary, Melbourne was first asked to form a coalition government with the Philosophical Radicals in June 1834. He did so with some reluctance, just two months before the South Australia Act was presented in the House of Commons by William Wolryche Whitmore. Melbourne is named in the streets of Adelaide because he was Prime Minister at this time.
Lord Melbourne held the reins of government at the time the Wakefield experiment came to fruition, and although he was from a long line of Whig nobility stretching back to the time of James I, he was a little uneasy about the alliance forced upon his party by the infusion of radicals as a result of the Reform Bill of 1832. As Lytton Strachey posits: ‘By temperament he was an aristocrat, by conviction a conservative, [and paradoxically] he came to power as the leader of the popular party, the party of change.’ Nevertheless, history will always claim Melbourne as a reformer.
Given that as a young man Melbourne was a close confidant of Leigh Hunt, Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Hazlitt, Lord Byron and Thomas Barnes, his casual manner, complete self-confidence and entrenched disdain for outspoken, self-righteous liberal progressives places him in a unique mould that makes it difficult to categorise him. In many ways he was an enigma.
Lord Melbourne was certainly of a different political and religious inclination from those who held the balance of power on the Street Naming Committee. He didn’t believe in the ballot; he thought free trade illusory and democracy unattainable. In his mind the raison d’etreof government was to ‘prevent crime and to preserve contracts’. He was against education for the masses and thought the admission of non-conformists to both Cambridge and Oxford destabilising to the Anglican establishment. These were typical views among the more conservative aristocracy who generally thought it was their right, rather than a privilege, to serve in government. Prime Minister Melbourne was of the same inclination but firmly believed he should ‘not risk collision … nor agitate society by gratuitously pressing reforms upon a community indifferent to them’.
William Lamb was born in Melbourne House, Piccadilly on 15 March 1779. This was the London home of the dissolute and somewhat ineffectual Irish Peer Peniston Lamb MP, who became the 1st Viscount Melbourne in 1781 and who was part of the Royal Household of the Prince of Wales. Earlier generations of the Lamb family originally settled in Southwell, Derbyshire, where they were linked with the Cokes of Melbourne as early as the sixteenth century.
William’s mother was the vivacious Lady Elizabeth Lamb (nee Milbanke) who sprang from a distinguished Yorkshire family in Halnaby, in 1751.William was Elizabeth’s second son and was widely reputed to be the love child of Lord Egremont and not the natural son of Viscount Melbourne.
By 1781 Elizabeth had become the 1st Viscountess Melbourne and held court at Melbourne House, where she charmed polite London society, especially the literati and the powerful Whig lobby. It might almost be said that she was a mentor for Lady Holland who, by the opening of the nineteenth century, had become the hostess for all Whigs in London at Holland House, conveniently within proximity to Westminster. These were heady days of Whig supremacy in agriculture, politics and commerce.
Elizabeth found her first son, Peniston, somewhat of a disappointment, as she did his father. As a result, she began to invest much of her affection in William. Some say he became a mama’s boy, but there was no doubting either his intellect or his good looks. Elizabeth was exceedingly proud of him.
In 1788 William was sent to Eton, where he apparently escaped the ridicule of other students, despite his bookish pursuits. Wearing his hair long and never seeing the need to carry a timepiece, he could often be found in a quiet corner with his head in one of Shakespeare’s plays. He loved poetry and the theatre and even wrote the epilogue for Sheridan’s adaptation of Pizzaro.
At Eton and later at Cambridge he avoided the physical, with little interest in games and an aversion to the traditional English sports of hunting, fishing and shooting birds or animals of any kind. Most if not all of his spare time was spent reading. He was essentially self-educated.
In October 1796 he went to Cambridge to study arts and law. Never wanting for confidence, ability or poise he found he could run with the ‘fast set’ socially and still maintain good study habits. At the point of graduation he won the Declamation Prize first offered at Cambridge by Dr Hooper in 1763. It was awarded to the student who best delivered an oratorical essay. William’s essay was so good that on the death of Francis, the Duke of Bedford, Prime Minister Charles Fox quoted one of the most elegant passages from it in his parliamentary eulogy: ‘Crime is a curse only to the period in which it is successful; but virtue, whether it be fortunate or otherwise, blesses not only its own age, but remotest posterity, and is as beneficial by its example, as by its immediate effects.’
With such public prominence it is little wonder that William Lamb was destined for politics. He spent a brief period in Scotland where he studied under the erudite John Millar, but the excessive, compulsive conscience of Scotland’s educational reformers did not appeal to him in any way and he returned to London with the intention of practising law.
Lamb completed his studies at Lincoln’s Inn and was eventually called to the Bar but only at Michaelmus in 1804. After only one brief on the Northern Circuit at the Lancashire Sessions, his older brother, Peniston, the rightful heir to the family peerage, died unexpectedly. In 1805 William suddenly found himself heir to both a peerage and all the estates in Derbyshire and Hertfordshire. He was thenceforth and rather unexpectedly a very rich young man with extremely good prospects.
His mother dashed about seeking patronage on his behalf. Following family tradition he entered politics in the Whig cause. While he may have considered it his right to be a parliamentarian, he had little inclination to pursue philanthropic causes. In fact, he was equivocal about politics and couldn’t bring himself to enthuse over some of the reforms other Whigs found so appealing. This probably explains why he moved between so many parliamentary seats between 1805 and 1827.
In the House of Commons, Lamb was not particularly impressive when on his feet and for many years, apart from a few flashes of brilliance, he was not considered to be an orator of any note. However, when George Canning became Prime Minister, William was immediately drawn to his politics, even though he was described as a ‘liberally inclined’ Tory. The middle ground made more sense to Lamb and it was not long before he came under notice by Canning, prompting a search for a ministerial borough. The seats of Newport and Bletchingley suited perfectly and he was promoted to the ministry as Chief Secretary for Ireland. Much to the surprise of many, Lamb was extremely successful in this role, so much so that after Canning’s death both Lord Goderich and then the Duke of Wellington kept him on. He was clearly able by this time to walk both sides of the fence and his ability to administer his portfolio was noted with some acclaim. His political ambivalence explains so much.
Apparently Melbourne was extremely attractive to the opposite sex and always at ease in the company of women. After his brother died, his eligibility, or more correctly his marriageability, among the aristocracy received a welcome boost and in that same year he married Lady Caroline Ponsonby. They had two children – a son called Augustus, who showed much intellectual promise in childhood but who became developmentally challenged as he grew older, and a daughter born in 1809 who sadly died a few days after her birth.
Lady Caroline is best described as a beautiful but highly strung aristocratic woman with a flirtatious disposition. She began to tire of Melbourne and when introduced to Lord Byron one evening she gave him a ‘come hither’ look, telling all within earshot that he was ‘mad, bad and dangerous to know’. These now famous and widely used words reverberated throughout the room and Byron immediately and equally famously began to seduce her. A very public and scandalising dalliance ensued, which both titillated and outraged London society. Melbourne remained at home in retreat with his books and bibles. Somewhat unsurprisingly, Lady Caroline was eventually and publicly cast aside by the profligate, inimical Byron for Lady Oxford.
William Lamb was a tall man with a commanding air, heavy eyebrows and insouciant demeanour. He had a big appetite and was given to fine dining, mostly at Brooks Club, Holland House or wherever the smart Whig set lingered. At the Reform Club in London, his name appears under the heading ‘Viscount Melbourne’ on the inaugural list of members in 1836, although it is presumed that many others also on the list were far too liberally progressive for him.
Some of the most telling revelations about Melbourne’s character come from the pen of historical painter Benjamin Robert Haydon, who thought Melbourne affable, amiable, sagacious, shrewd and full of good humour.
Two things about Melbourne’s tenure as Home Secretary and his premiership which might stand out to an Australian audience were his reactionary stance to unrest in the countryside and his later personal attachment to Queen Victoria. He was always in support of maintaining the status quo, so when civil disorder broke out in rural England and in some of the industrial or coastal cities like Bristol, he quickly put a stop to it with what some thought was an overreaction.
The relationship between Lord Melbourne and the young Victoria following her ascension to the throne is legendary. There have even been films made about it, as recently as 2009. Melbourne Street, however, was named by the Committee before Alexandrina Victoria became Queen, although it was known at the time that unless she predeceased her uncle, King William IV, her accession was inevitable. She was the immediate heir to the throne. The moment Victoria was advised of the death of her uncle in June 1837, she called upon Prime Minister Melbourne to stand by her side. Thenceforth and for the next four years they were inseparable. Melbourne agreed to take her under his wing, to tutor her in all the necessary protocols she was likely to face as Queen, and to be her faithful and enduring servant. She was just 18 and he was 58. They formed a platonic but highly charged emotional and intellectual attachment as she grew from a hesitant princess into an accomplished Queen and monarch. The bond between them was unshakable, at least until such time as she began to consider marriage and her cousin Prince Albert as a potential consort.
Melbourne’s relationship with Victoria lasted until 1841. He was resolute in his defence of and support for her. He spent as much as six hours a day with her. He ate with her. He rode out on horseback with her. He always sat on her left-hand side at state banquets or whenever or wherever they dined. He even had his own bedroom at Windsor. Melbourne surrounded her with a totally Whig household to which she became so attached that when he couldn’t form a government in May 1839 and stood down voluntarily, Victoria refused to bow to protocol and denied the incoming Prime Minister Peel his traditional right to introduce any Tory ladies-in-waiting to the Royal Household. This was unprecedented, as it was customary for the Prime Minister to place some of his supporters at the disposal of the monarch. Peel was so offended by the snub that he promptly resigned as Prime Minister and Victoria invited Melbourne to again assume control. Victoria was so biased towards the Whigs and her loyal ladies-in-waiting that she could not countenance a Tory government or household.
It is beyond the realm of this short biography to try to encapsulate all of the detail which made Lord Melbourne such an influential Prime Minister. However, there were some issues during his premiership which should be recorded. William Lamb took up his hereditary peerage and a seat in the House of Lords on the death of his father in 1828. Despite his aversion to change, he would at times make interesting and sometimes contradictory calls, which only heighten the complexity of the man. He made some highly unusual declarations: he thought Henry VIII the greatest man who ever lived, despite his brutal exercise of power; he refused to move into No. 10 Downing Street when he became Prime Minister; and by doing so he made it entirely clear that he didn’t want to be too close to the day-to-day management of government. He preferred to let most matters lie at rest, but when he did move it was as likely that he would decide something while playing cards at Brooks Club or Holland House or some other outpost of Whig sentiment and repartee in London.
Melbourne held strongly to the Corn Laws, even though he knew they were partly responsible for much of the poverty in the cities. This put him at odds with most of the radicals on the Street Naming Committee in Adelaide and in the parliament, in that they generally supported the abolition of the Corn Laws. Melbourne could not see the inequity inherent in these laws and was against their repeal to the last. Nevertheless, on some other radical issues he did vote for change. Despite his reluctance to support parliamentary reform, he surprised both Houses of Parliament by supporting the idea of the £10 franchise in the Reform Bill of 1832. He also supported the introduction of the Penny Post, a monumental reform for its time, conceived by the incipient radical Rowland Hill, Secretary to the South Australian Commission.
Melbourne’s last years were not particularly happy ones. He succumbed to detachment and bitterness or perhaps what can more rightly be described as depression. Just as he had been devastated when most of Westminster burned to the ground in 1834, an event which he saw as the symbolic closure to the privilege and halcyon days of both the Regency and Georgian periods, he now faced a time where both his Queen and his power were removed from his life.
All that he stood for seemed to be in tatters, and as the merchants and businessmen of the industrial revolution began to exercise their muscle, his aristocratic distaste for the nouveau richeand their extravagant excesses and appalling bad taste galled him. Ironically, many of those associated with the colony of South Australia were among these rising middle classes and a good proportion of them made their wealth because of the good habits and discipline engendered by their dissident religious beliefs.
Melbourne’s meaning in life by contrast was draining from his body. The Queen he pined to the end and his health, which began to suffer in 1842, all made for an unfortunate decline. He had suffered a stroke that paralysed the left side of his body. Unfortunately, his recovery was only partial, so he spent his last years mostly confined to Brocket Hall, where his brother Frederick, then Lord Beauvale, and his sister-in-law Adine cared for his needs.
As he approached 70 he suffered a series of seizures, and on 24 November 1848 he passed quietly. His mortal remains were interred in the family vault at Hatfield, near Brocket in Hertfordshire.
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