Lady Caroline Keppel’s sad love song immortalised young Robin Adair

This edited article about Robin Adair originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 283 published on 17 June 1967.

George Keppel, Earl of Albemarle and disapproving father of Lady Caroline Keppel

It was early in the 18th century when an impulsive young Irishman, Robin Adair, studying to become a doctor in Dublin, got into money difficulties and decided to flee the country. He made his way to Holyhead with the intention of travelling on to London, which to him was a legendary city where the streets were paved with gold.

But when young Adair reached Holyhead, he was penniless. So he set out to walk the rest of the way.

He had not gone many miles when, rounding a corner on the road, he saw a woman sitting on the grass verge weeping while a coachman struggled to get an overturned coach back on its wheels. Adair told her he was a doctor and asked if he could do anything to help her.

He soon found that she was not seriously hurt. She was suffering from shock, and he did what he could to calm her down. The coach was righted and, as the coachman waited to continue the journey, Adair explained to the lady that he had come from Dublin and was on his way to London, where he hoped to make a name as a doctor.

The lady explained that she was on her way to London and, being still in a nervous condition, would be only too grateful for his companionship on the journey.

Robin Adair gratefully accepted the offer and they continued the journey. On arrival the lady gave him a hundred guineas as a reward and told him to visit her house as often as he liked.

This was good luck, Adair told himself, for he had started with nothing in his pocket and now felt quite rich. He did go to her house. She entertained lavishly and he met many well-known people.

One night at a party there, he found he was to be partnered in a dance by Lady Caroline Keppel, second daughter of the Earl of Albemarle. She was the loveliest girl in the room, and they fell in love at first sight.

They met secretly for a while, but the parents discovered this and decided that Robin and Caroline must not meet again. Their daughter must marry someone better than an unknown young Irishman.

They tried to persuade Caroline to give him up, but she refused. She was then sent abroad in the hope that time would help her to forget him. But when she returned some time later, she was still in love with Robin.

It was while Caroline was staying in Bath that she wrote the song which made him so famous. She dedicated it to him:

What’s this dull town to me? Robin’s not here.
He, whom I wish to see, wish so to hear.
Where’s all the joy and mirth,
Made life a Heaven on Earth?
O! They’ve all fled with thee, Robin Adair.

Caroline became so ill and so sad that her parents had to relent to save her life, and Caroline and Robin were married.

Robin’s luck seemed to change at once. Soon after his marriage he was appointed Inspector General to Military Hospitals, due to the influence of his wife’s family. He became a Surgeon-General and, because of the skilled treatment he gave the Duke of Gloucester, he was offered a baronetcy, but declined it.

Lady Caroline died young, after the birth of her third child. Robin, who never married again, lived to old age, dying in 1790. He never forgot the girl who wrote the words about him:

What’s this dull town to me? Robin’s not here.