The Duchess

‘As he only went out in secret, or with the King and Queen,’ she also recorded, ‘he formed very few connections with any other woman other than women of the town.’ On his first trip to Drury Lane in 1779 he saw The Winter’s Tale, and immediately fell in love with the twenty-one-year-old actress Mary Robinson, a protégé of Georgiana’s. She was delighted to conduct a very public affair with him, and even went so far as to emblazon a simulacrum of his crest – three feathers – on her carriage. The Prince foolishly wrote her explicit letters, in which he called her ‘Perdita’ – her role in the play – and signed himself ‘Florize’. Like any astute woman on the make, she kept his adolescent declarations – he promised her a fortune as soon as he came of age – and blackmailed him when he grew tired of her.

It was during the Prince’s visits to Drury Lane that he first came into contact with the Devonshire House Circle, and in particular with Georgiana and Fox. George III blamed Fox for deliberately and calculatingly debauching his son, but he had no malicious intent. The Prince had already started to drink and gamble before he met Fox, who simply showed him how to do it in a more refined way. The Prince worshipped Fox who, for his part, genuinely liked the boy, despite the thirteen-year age gap, seeing in him, perhaps, something of his younger, reckless self. The two made an unlikely pair, one of them dressed in exquisite finery, the other unwashed, unshaven, his clothes askew and his linen soiled. On most nights they could be found either at Brooks’s or Devonshire House, playing faro until they fell asleep at the table.

The Prince’s marked attentions to Georgiana, the fact that he constantly sought her advice on every matter – from his clothes to his relations with his father – fanned rumours that they were having an affair. Nathaniel Wraxall was loath to characterize it definitely, and ventured no further than saying, ‘of what nature was that attachment, and what limits were affixed to it by the Duchess, must remain a matter of conjecture’.57 The Prince was almost certainly in love with Georgiana, but she never reciprocated his feelings. Throughout their lives they always addressed each other as ‘my dearest brother’ and ‘sister’, although the Prince was often madly jealous of rivals.58 It was his lack of success with Georgiana, when every other woman in Whig society (including, it was rumoured, Harriet) was his for the asking, that made her so irresistible to him.

The Prince shared with Fox, Lord Cholmondeley and Lord George Cavendish a round robin of the three most famous courtesans of the era: Perdita, Grace Dalrymple and Mrs Armistead. Georgiana heard that Lord George had paid a drunken visit to Mrs Armistead one night only to find the Prince hiding behind a door. Luckily, rather than take offence he burst out laughing, made him a low bow and left. The Prince also pursued Lady Melbourne and Lady Jersey, or perhaps it was the other way round. Less well-informed people speculated that Georgiana was in competition with her friends for the Prince’s affection, but a letter from Lady Melbourne suggests collusion rather than rivalry:

The Duke of Richmond has been here, and told me you and I were two rival queens, and I believe, if there had not been some people in the room, who might have thought it odd, that I should have slapped his face for having such an idea; and he wished me joy of having the Prince to myself. How odious people are, upon my life, I have no patience with them. I believe you and I are very different from all the rest of the world – as from their ideas they do such strange things in certain situations or they never could suspect us in the way they do.59

The Whigs continued their onslaught against the government. On 3 June 1780 the Duke of Richmond, then a radical on the extreme left of the party, moved a resolution that the constitution should be rewritten to allow annual parliaments and universal suffrage. His plan was based on the proposals drawn up by the Westminster Association, an offshoot of Christopher Wyvil’s Association Movement which had led the petitions for parliamentary reform. By an unlucky chance, while the Lords were debating the Duke of Richmond’s proposals, Lord George Gordon, a mentally unbalanced Protestant fanatic, chose to march on parliament at the head of a large mob. He carried with him a petition from the Protestant Association, a sectarian body which opposed giving legal rights to Catholics.

Eighteenth-century society was rarely bothered by the occasional eruptions of the lower orders; the establishment ignored them and the fracas would die down of its own accord. But this mob, intoxicated by drink and whipped up by a crazed demagogue, was more dangerous than the usual over-excited rabble. The crowd blocked all the entrances to parliament while Lord George Gordon stormed into the Commons. The MPs fell silent at his entrance and sat spellbound as he harangued them on the evils of popery. He then rushed out to do the same in the Lords. In between speeches he ran to a window to shout at the crowd outside. Fearing for their lives, MPs made a dash for the stairs and as they tried to leave the House they were punched and kicked by the marchers. The Lords followed suit, ignominiously leaving older peers such as the eighty-year-old Lord Mansfield to fend for themselves. The Duke of Devonshire’s carriage was stopped by the mob until he agreed to shout ‘No Popery’. By nightfall the protest had turned into a riot. Thieves and looters joined in as bands of club-wielding rioters burned down foreign chapels and attacked the shops and houses of known Catholics.

At first Georgiana did not realize the danger facing the capital. Her friend Miss Lloyd, she joked, was dreaming about enraged Protestants hammering on her door.

Lord George Gordon’s people continued to make a great fracas, there is a violent mob in Moorfields, and I have learnt that five hundred guards are gone down there. I could not go to the Birthday – my gown was beautiful, a pale blue, with the drapery etc., of an embroider’d gauze in paillons. I am a little comforted for not going by the two messages I have received from Lady Melbourne and the Duke from the Prince of Wales to express his disappointment at having missed dancing with me for the 3rd time.60

But by the next day, 6 June, the mob was on the point of taking over the city. Ministers and opposition alike hurriedly sent their wives and children out of town and prepared to mount a defence of the streets. But the magistrates were nowhere to be seen and, following a misunderstanding over which authority had the power to mandate the use of firearms against civilians, there were no troops in place. The rioting continued unchecked. The mob sacked Newgate Prison and burned down the King’s Bench. They exploded the distilleries at Holborn so that the streets were flooded with spirits and the water supply to Lincoln’s Inn Fields became alcoholic. Lord John Cavendish condemned the Lord Mayor’s cowardice in standing by while London burned to the ground. He had good reason; the mob targeted the houses of prominent Whigs because of the party’s support for religious toleration. Edmund Burke’s house was surrounded but he managed to fend them off. Sir George Savile was less fortunate and narrowly escaped being burnt to death. Poor Lord Mansfield watched as rioters looted his house and destroyed his celebrated library. The Whig grandees mounted a round-the-clock defence of their houses. Georgiana wrote on 7 June, forgetting her birthday in the midst of the chaos:

I shall go to Chiswick tomorrow, for tho’ there could be no kind of danger for me, yet a woman is only troublesome. I hope and think that it will be over tonight as the Council has issued orders that the soldiers may fire … the mob is a strange set, and some of it composed of mere boys. I was very much frightened yesterday, but I keep quiet and preach quiet to everybody. The night before last the Duke was in garrison at Ld Rockingham’s till five, which alarmed me not a little, but now Ld R’s is the safest place, as he has plenty of guards, a justice of peace, a hundred tradesmen arm’d, besides servants and friends.61

Burke persuaded those MPs who had braved the streets to reach parliament not to revoke religious tolerance legislation, even though some sought only to placate the mob. At last, on 8 June, the army arrived and, aided by volunteers that included MPs, barristers, coalheavers and Irish chairmen, organized a well-armed defence. The mob attempted to seize the Bank of England but its defenders, ably led by Captain Holroyd, beat them off. Devonshire House was well guarded and the expected attack never came. By the ninth only pockets of resistance remained. Lord George Gordon gave himself up and was imprisoned in the Tower. Georgiana was badly shaken. ‘I feel mad with spirits at [it] all being over,’ she wrote; ‘it seems now like a dream.’62 She had stayed on the balcony for four nights, staring at the orange sky as Piccadilly reverberated to the sound of gunfire and explosions. The number of people killed or seriously wounded stood at 458; whole blocks of the city lay in ruins.

The immediate aftermath saw the total discrediting of the reformers and all the Association movements. The Whigs were blamed for irresponsibly fomenting discontent ‘Without Doors’ – the term for the world outside parliament. Lord North seized the political advantage and called a snap general election on 1 September. Georgiana’s assistance was demanded from many quarters: in addition to the canvassing she had to do for the Cavendishes in Derby, the Duke’s family pressured her to persuade Lord Spencer to align his interests with theirs. ‘Lord Richard is very anxious for my father to give his interest in Cambridgeshire to Lord Robert Manners, the Duke of Rutland’s brother,’ she told Lady Spencer. ‘I told him I dare say my father would, and they are very anxious as it is of great consequence to have Mr Parker wrote to directly, that he may speak to the tenants as otherwise they might be got by other people.’63 Her brother’s former tutor Sir William Jones, who was contesting the seat for Oxford University, also asked her to write letters on his behalf.

Sheridan wanted to become a politician, but his lack of wealth and family connections made it impossible for him to contest a seat on his own cognizance. His vanity prevented him from making a direct application to the grandees. It suited him far better to approach his target by a more circuitous route, and for this reason he pressed Georgiana to help him. Although she thought it was a shame for him to throw away his literary career, she arranged for him to stand in the Spencer-dominated borough of Stafford. He was duly elected and wrote her a grovelling letter of thanks: ‘I profited by the Permission allow’d to me to make use of your Grace’s letter as my first and best introduction to Lord Spencer’s Interest in the Town … It is no flattery to say that the Duchess of Devonshire’s name commands an implicit admiration wherever it is mentioned.’64 A week later, on 25 September, Charles Fox invited Georgiana to accompany him on the hustings when he contested the borough of Westminster. The press was shocked by her boldness, even though she stood on the platform for only a few minutes. The Morning Herald and Daily Advertiser made fun of her: she ‘immediately saluted her favourite candidate, the Hon. Charles James Fox. Unfortunately it happened not to be his shaving day; and when the candidate saluted her Grace, it put one in mind of Sheridan’s cunning Isaac, shaking hands with the Graces.’65 Fox was magnificent on the hustings, whipping up his supporters with speeches about parliamentary reform, the rights of the British people and the consequences of royal tyranny. It was on this campaign that he earned his title ‘Man of the People’.

Fox won with a comfortable majority, and his success was unexpectedly duplicated around the country. Despite its recent setbacks, the party had managed to run a well-organized election, clawing back the ground it had lost following the Gordon Riots. North’s majority was much reduced; on paper it was only 28, and he would have to rely on the independent MPs to give their support. The Whigs’ success was all the more remarkable because they had funded their campaign out of their own pockets while North had almost unlimited funds from the treasury. The nearparity of numbers convinced them that it would be only a matter of time before the government collapsed.

* Georgiana had learned the importance of ‘mixing’ from her first days of married life when the Duke had sent her off to Derby to foster good relations with the local voters. She also knew, without the Cavendishes having to tell her, that her behaviour had political implications. The year before at Brighton she wrote, ‘we are very popular here from mixing so much with the people, for Lady Sefton and Mrs Meynel never mixed with the people till we came.’

* I cannot feel at ease.

*Educated opinion excoriated the doctor as a charlatan and his patients as pathetic gullibles, but this did not prevent the credulous from seeking his help. Infertile couples paid an exorbitant £50 a night to make love on the ‘electro-magnetic bed’ in his ‘celestial chamber’ to the strains of an orchestra playing outside, while a pressure-cylinder pumped ‘magnetic fire’ into the room. It was also recommended that they drink from Graham’s patented elixir, costing a guinea a bottle. The Morning Herald and Daily Advertiser ran a successful campaign against Graham, pillorying both him and his clients and eventually he went bankrupt in 1782.

5Introduction to Politics 1780–1782

The concourse of Nobility, etc., at the Duchess of Devonshire’s on Thursday night were so great, that it was eight o’clock yesterday morning before they all took leave. Upwards of 500 sat down to supper, and near 1000 came agreeable to invitation; and so numerous were the servants, that no less than 3500 tickets were delivered out, which entitled each of them to a pot of porter. The company consisted of the most fashionable ‘characters’. With respect to the ladies, the dresses were for the prevailing part, white … The best dressed ladies were her Royal Highness the Duchess of Cumberland, her Grace the Duchess of Devonshire, Lady Duncannon, Lady Althorpe, Lady Waldegrave, and Lady Harrington … The gentlemen best dressed were his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, the Marquis of Graham, and the Hon. Charles Fox.

London Chronicle, 21–23 March 1782

We hear the amiable Duchess of Devonshire is about to propose and promote a subscription among her female friends for building a fifty gun ship, in imitation of the Ladies in France who set the laudable example at the beginning of the war.

Morning Post, 21 September 1782

LORD NORTH clung to office despite the government’s poor showing in the election. Exasperated, the Whigs consoled themselves by fêting the Prince of Wales, who amused them by being rude about his father. He took great delight in annoying his parents; at the ball to mark his official presentation to society on 18 January 1781 he snubbed the ladies of the court by dancing all night with Georgiana. The Morning Herald could not help remarking, ‘The Court beauties looked with an eye of envy on her Grace of Devonshire, as the only woman honoured with the hand of the heir apparent, during Thursday night’s ball at St James’s.’1

Much against her inclination, Georgiana left London just as the new parliament was getting under way. In February she accompanied the Duke to Hardwick, in the words of a friend, ‘pour faire un enfant’.2* Lady Clermont had paid the Devonshires a visit while little Charlotte was still new to the household and was pleasantly surprised. ‘I never saw anything so charming as [Georgiana] has been,’ she wrote to Lady Spencer, ‘her fondness for the Duke, and his not being ashamed of expressing his for her.’3 But relations between them had deteriorated rapidly after Harriet’s marriage to Lord Duncannon in November. To Georgiana’s embarrassment, her sister delighted the Cavendishes by becoming pregnant at once. Despite Harriet’s initial reservations her marriage appeared to be free of the tensions which plagued Georgiana’s. In February 1781 Lady Spencer wrote to inform Georgiana that Harriet’s ‘closet is becoming a vrai bijou, and she and her husband pass many comfortable hours in it. I trust indeed that all will go very well in that quarter.’4

Harriet’s good fortune contributed to Georgiana’s fear that her own failure to produce a baby was a punishment from God.5 ‘I will not hear you give way to disappointment so much,’ chided Lady Spencer. ‘If you were of my age there would be some reason why you should suppose you would never have children, but as it is there is no reason why you should give it up.’6 Sitting alone in cheerless Hardwick every day while the Duke went out hunting, Georgiana saw every reason why she should. The empty, silent afternoons were too much for her to bear and she blotted out her days with large doses of opiates. ‘I took something today,’ she wrote, ‘but I shall ride tomorrow.’7

The Duke was disgusted when Georgiana still showed no sign of pregnancy after a month at Hardwick. Deciding that their stay was a waste of time, he gave orders for Devonshire House to be prepared for their imminent arrival. After their return Georgiana rarely appeared in public. The papers remarked that she had ‘become the gravest creature in the world’ and complained about her absence from society.8 On 24 March she appeared briefly at the King’s Theatre to support the dancer Vestris, an Italian immigrant and one of the most famous dancers of the time. He was performing a new dance which he and Georgiana had invented together during a private lesson at Devonshire House. Nine hundred people filled the theatre. ‘We were in the greatest impatience for the Duchess of Devonshire’s arrival,’ reported the Morning Herald and Daily Advertiser, ‘and our eager eyes were roaming about in search of her. We spied her Grace at last sitting in her box … alas! We soon found out, that her Grace was only there to pay a kind of public visit to the Vestris, for the Devonshire minuet, which was received with very warm applause, and was no sooner over than the Duchess disappeared.’9

The reason for Georgiana’s sudden retirement was not only the disappointment of Hardwick but a crisis concerning Harriet. Less than two months after Lady Spencer had written of the Duncannons’ ‘comfortable hours’ together Lord Duncannon shocked them all by shouting at Harriet in public. Questioned afterwards, Harriet confessed that she was frightened to be alone with him, since the slightest provocation made him lose his self-control. The Cavendishes regarded Duncannon’s abusiveness towards his wife as a disgrace to the entire family. Another incident at a ball in April moved his cousin, the Duke’s sister the Duchess of Portland, to write him a warning:

You say I did you great injury by exposing you publicly to all the room – You exposed yourself, and I am concerned to say I have too often seen you do the same before … when you left the room, there was not any of the company present ( your father in particular) who did not applaud my conduct, and censure yours in the strongest terms possible … Indeed, the very first evening that you came to me after that conversation, the night of the Ridotto, I never felt more ashamed or hurt than I did for you, and I must tell you that your Behaviour did not escape the notice of the Company who heard it as well as myself with astonishment. The cards were going to your mind, nothing had happened to put you out of humour, but upon Lady Duncannon’s coming into the Room, as I thought very properly dressed, your temper was immediately ruffled because she had put on her diamonds, (a consideration I should not have thought worthy of the mind of a man). Indeed such sort of behaviour in a man is so perfectly new that I do not know how to account for it or reason upon it. You are very young and have had very little experience … The World in general was inclined to think well of you. Your friends and relations thought you were all their hearts could have wished, but do not flatter yourself that your conduct has escaped observation. It is becoming the subject of ridicule, and your best Friends begin to fear your want of understanding.10

Lord Duncannon apologized; his behaviour, he explained, was caused by worry over Harriet’s pregnancy: he feared that she would miscarry like Georgiana. The Duchess of Portland’s reply showed her contempt: ‘the frequent agitations that I have perceived your conduct to occasion her may have been the cause of this unhappy event. I trust in God she will recover [from] this, and that it will hereafter be uppermost in your mind to reward her affection for you with that confidence which she so well deserves.’11 Threats and warnings were the only weapons available to the Spencers or the Cavendishes. Eighteenth-century law granted a husband the freedom to treat his wife as he pleased, except in the case of imprisonment and physical torture. Even then, the shame of public scandal deterred upper-class women from seeking legal redress in all but the most extreme circumstances.*

Georgiana had ceased to entertain at Devonshire House immediately after the discovery and spent her time caring for Harriet. The Spencers were frightened to leave their daughter alone with Duncannon when she was so vulnerable. They kept her away from him as much as they could until she gave birth to a son, the Hon. John William Ponsonby, on 31 August 1781. Not long afterwards Lord Spencer became deaf and suffered a partial paralysis on one side of his body. The double anxiety over Harriet and Lord Spencer drove Georgiana to the gaming tables, and Lady Spencer with her. ‘I can never make myself easy about the bad example I have set you and which you have but too faithfully imitated,’ Lady Spencer had written bitterly in November 1779.12 Now she found herself writing again: she had committed ‘twenty enormities which oblige me to conclude my letter with the usual charge that you must attend more to what I say than what I do’.13 Harriet followed her mother and sister, but with less than a tenth of their income, and without the resources to pay her creditors.

George Selwyn described incredible scenes at Devonshire House to Lord Carlisle. ‘The trade or amusement which engrosses everybody who lives in what is called the pleasurable world is [faro],’ he wrote. Georgiana had arranged the drawing room to resemble a professional gaming house, complete with hired croupiers and a commercial faro bank. Lady Spencer was there most nights, throwing her rings on to the table when she had run out of money:

poor Mr Grady is worn out in being kept up at one Lady’s house or another till six in the morning. Among these, Lady Spencer and her daughter, the Duchess of D. and Lady Harcourt are the chief punters. Hare, Charles [Fox], and Richard [Fitzpatrick] held a bank the whole night and a good part of the next day … by turns, each of the triumvirate punting when he is himself a dealer. There is generally two or three thousands lying on the table in rouleaus till about noon, but who they belong to, or will belong to, the Lord knows.14

Faro was a complicated game, involving one banker and an unlimited number of players who staked their bets upon the dealer turning over particular combinations of cards. Although it was a game of chance, the odds in favour of the banker were second only to those in roulette. It was first played in resort towns such as Tunbridge Wells, but in fifty years it had become the most popular game in high society. Women were said to be particularly addicted to it, but it was also the favourite of Charles Fox. Georgiana set a new trend by illegally charging farodealers fifty guineas a night for the right to set up tables in her house.*15 But she relied on professionals of questionable honesty to run the farotable and bank, and Selwyn complained of underhand dealings ‘at Devonshire House … Charles [Fox] says, he is not allowed to take money from the bank; he means for the payment of debts, but yet I hear some are paid, such as O’Kelly and other blacklegs.’ The carelessness with which people threw their money about attracted shady characters to the house. One in particular, a man called Martindale, lured Georgiana into a ruinous agreement. According to Sheridan, ‘the Duchess and Martindale had agreed that whatever the two won from each other should be sometimes double, sometimes treble the sum which it was called … the Duchess … was literally sobbing at her losses – she perhaps having lost £1500, when it was supposed to be £500.’16