The Criminal Conversation of Mrs Norton, by Diane Atkinson

Caroline Norton seems an unlikely pioneer of women’s rights. Born in 1808, the granddaughter of the playwright Sheridan, she was a black-eyed beauty, a sharp-tongued socialite with a gift for writing. She matters today because she quarrelled with her husband and refused to put up and shut up. That quarrel is the subject of Diane Atkinson’s book.  

Caroline and her two beautiful sisters were brought up in genteel poverty by their widowed mother in a grace-and-favour apartment at Hampton Court. Lack of money meant that when Caroline was 19 she was married off to the first eligible man who came along. 

George Norton, her husband, was the younger brother and heir to a childless peer named Lord Grantley. George was neither so pretty nor so witty as Caroline. He was a Tory, she was a Whig. Caroline mimicked George, snubbed him in front of her smart friends and showed off. An outrageous flirt, she became a favourite of the handsome fifty-something Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne. George was angry and resentful. When they argued, he hit her, usually after he had been drinking.

In 1836 after a violent quarrel, George shut Caroline out of the house and refused to allow her to see their three sons. Atkinson makes plain that George was manipulated by Lord Grantley, a mean-minded curmudgeon with a litigation habit. It was Grantley who whispered in George’s ear that Caroline was having an affair with Lord Melbourne.

Whether Caroline was in fact Melbourne’s mistress remains unproven. Both strenuously denied it. But Atkinson argues convincingly, on the basis of the shared intimacy of their letters, that the relationship was physical, and Caroline certainly claimed that Melbourne was the love of her life.