The Duchess

by Amanda Foreman

  Lady Spencer knew her husband could be generous and sensitive. Margaret Georgiana Poyntz, known as Georgiana, met John Spencer in 1754 when she was seventeen, and immediately fell in love with him. “I will own it,” she confided to a friend, “and never deny it that I do love Spencer above all men upon Earth.”9 He was a handsome man then, with deep-set eyes and thin lips which curled in a cupid’s bow. His daughter inherited from him her unusual height and russet-coloured hair. When Lady Spencer first knew him he loved to parade in the flamboyant fashions of the French aristocracy. At one masquerade he made a striking figure in a blue and gold suit with white leather shoes topped with blue and gold roses.10

  Georgiana’s mother had delicate cheekbones, auburn hair, and deep brown eyes which looked almost black against her pale complexion. The fashion for arranging the hair away from the face suited her perfectly. It helped to disguise the fact that her eyes bulged slightly, a feature which she passed on to Georgiana. She was intelligent, exceptionally well read, and, unusually for women of her day, she could read and write Greek as well as French and Italian. A portrait painted by Pompeo Batoni in 1764 shows her surrounded by her interests: in one hand she holds a sheaf of music—she was a keen amateur composer—near the other lies a guitar; there are books on the table and in the background the ruins of ancient Rome, referring to her love of all things classical. “She has so decided a character,” remarked Lord Bristol, “that nothing can warp it.”11

  Her father, Stephen Poyntz, had died when she was thirteen, leaving the family in comfortable but not rich circumstances. He had risen from humble origins—his father was an upholsterer—by making the best of an engaging manner and a brilliant mind. He began his career as a tutor to the children of Viscount Townshend and ended it a Privy Councillor to King George II. Accordingly, he brought up his children to be little courtiers like himself: charming, discreet, and socially adept in all situations. Vice was tolerated so long as it was hidden. “I have known the Poyntzes in the nursery,” Lord Lansdowne remarked contemptuously, “the Bible on the table, the cards in the drawer.”

  “Never was such a lover,” remarked the prolific diarist and chronicler of her times Mrs. Delany, who watched young John Spencer ardently court Miss Poyntz during the spring and summer of 1754. The following year, in late spring, the two families, the Poyntzes and the Spencers, made a week-long excursion to Wimbledon Park. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind about the outcome and yet Spencer was in an agony of anticipation throughout the visit. At the last moment, with the carriages waiting to leave, he drew her aside and blushingly produced a diamond and ruby ring. Inside the gold band, in tiny letters, were the words: “MON COEUR EST TOUT À TOI. GARDE LE BIEN POUR MOI.”*

  The first years of their married life were happy. The Duke of Queensberry, known as “Old Q,” declared that the Spencers were “really the happiest people I ever saw in the marriage system.” They delighted in each other’s company and were affectionate in public as well as in private. In middle age, Lady Spencer proudly told David Garrick, “I verily believe that we have neither of us for one instant repented our lot from that time to this.”12 They had “modern” attitudes both in their taste and in their attitude to social mores. Their daughter Harriet recorded an occasion when Lord Spencer took her to see some mummified corpses in a church crypt because “it is foolish and superstitious to be afraid of seeing dead bodies.”13 Another time he “bid us observe how much persecution encreased [the] zeal for the religion [of the sect] so oppressed, which he said was a lesson against oppression, and for toleration.”14

  The Spencers were demonstrative and affectionate parents. “I think I have experienced a thousand times,” Lady Spencer mused, “that commendation does much more good than reproof.”15 She preferred to obtain obedience through indirect methods of persuasion, as this letter to eleven-year-old Georgiana shows: “I would have neither of you go to the Ball on Tuesday, tho’ I think I need not have mentioned this, as I flatter myself you would both chose rather to go with me, than when I am not there. . . .”16 It was a sentiment typical of an age influenced by the ideas of John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose books had helped to popularize the cult of “sensibility.” In some cases the new, softer attitudes ran to ridiculous excesses. The biographer and sexual careerist James Boswell, whose views on children were as tolerant as his attitude towards adultery, complained that his dinner party was ruined when the Countess of Rothes insisted on bringing her two small children, who “played and prattled and suffered nobody to be heard but themselves.”17

  Georgiana’s education reflected her parents’ idea of a sound upbringing. During the week a succession of experts trooped up and down the grand staircase to the bare schoolroom overlooking the courtyard. There, for most of the day, Georgiana studied a range of subjects, both feminine (deportment and harp-playing) and practical (geography and languages). The aim was to make her polished but not overly educated. The royal drawing-master and miniaturist John Gresse taught her drawing. The composer Thomas Linley, later father-in-law to the playwright Richard Sheridan, gave her singing lessons. The distinguished orientalist Sir William Jones, who was preparing her brother, George, for Harrow, taught her writing. She also learned French, Latin, Italian, dancing, and horsemanship.18 Everything came easily to her, but what delighted Georgiana’s mother in particular was her quick grasp of etiquette. Lady Spencer’s own upbringing as a courtier’s daughter made her keenly critical of Georgiana’s comportment in public; it was almost the only basis, apart from religion, on which she judged her, praised her, and directed her training.

  Lady Spencer’s emphasis on acquiring social skills encouraged the performer in Georgiana. In quiet moments she would curl up in a window seat in the nursery and compose little poems and stories to be recited after dinner. She loved to put on an “evening” and entertain her family with dramatic playlets featuring heroines in need of rescue. While Georgiana bathed in the limelight, George concentrated on being the dependable, sensible child who could be relied upon to remember instructions. Harriet, despite being the youngest, enjoyed the least attention of all. Perhaps in another family, her obvious sensitivity and intelligence would have marked her out as a special child. But with a precocious and amusing sister and model brother, she had no special talent of her own to attract her parents’ notice. Instead she attached herself to Georgiana, content to worship her and perform the duties of a faithful lieutenant. Even here poor Harriet often had to compete with George. He was proud of Georgiana’s talent and at Harrow would show round the verse letters he had received from her. “By this time there is not an old Dowager in or about Richmond that has not a copy of them; there’s honour for you!” he informed her. On one occasion he imagined the two of them achieving fame by publishing her letters under the title, “An epistle from a young lady of quality abroad to her Brother at School in England.”19

  Georgiana could think of nothing more delightful than a public exhibition of her writing. Despite being the clear favourite of the family she was anxious and attention-seeking, constantly concerned about disappointing her parents. “Although I can’t write as well as my brother,” she told them plaintively when she was seven, “I love you very much and him just as much.”20 Adults never failed to be charmed by Georgiana’s lively and perceptive conversation and yet she valued their praise only if it made an impression on her mother and father. Her ability to attract notice pleased Lady Spencer as much as its origins puzzled her: “Without being handsome or having a single good feature in her face,” she remarked to a friend, “[she is] one of the most showy girls I ever saw.”21 Lady Spencer never understood her daughter’s need for attention or its effect on her development. In later years, when forced to examine her part in Georgiana’s misfortunes, she blamed herself for having been too lenient a parent.

  In 1763, when Georgiana was six, the stability she had enjoyed came to an abrupt end when the Spencers embarked on a grand tour. Lord Spencer had trouble with his lungs and his invalid c
ondition made him bad-tempered. Lady Spencer, worn down by his moods, urged him to rest and heal in the warmer climate of the Continent. Most of their friends were going abroad. Britain had been at war with France for the previous seven years and, although the fighting had largely taken place in outposts—in Canada, India, and the Caribbean—visits across the Channel were severely curtailed. With the advent of peace, travel became possible again and the English aristocracy could indulge in its favourite pastime: visiting “the sights.”

  Georgiana accompanied her parents while George and Harriet, both considered too young to undertake such a long journey, stayed behind. The Spencers’ first stop was Spa, in what is now Belgium, in the Ardennes forest. Its natural warm springs and pastoral scenery made it a fashionable watering place among the European nobility, who came to drink the waters and bathe in the artificially constructed pools. But Lady Spencer’s hopes that its gentle atmosphere would soothe her husband’s nerves were disappointed. A friend who stayed with them for a short while described the visit as one of the worst he had ever made: “If you ask me really whether I had a great deal of pleasure in it I must be forced to answer in the negative. Lord S’s unhappy disposition to look always on the worst side of things, and if he does not find a subject for fretting to make one, rendered both himself and his company insensible to much of the satisfaction which the circumstances of our journey might have occasioned us.”22

  Undaunted, Lady Spencer decided they should try Italy. She wrote to her mother in July and asked her to come out to Spa to look after Georgiana while they were away. She admitted that she was leaving Georgiana behind “with some difficulty,” but she had always placed her role as a wife before that of motherhood. For Georgiana, already missing her siblings, her mother’s sudden and inexplicable abandonment was a profound shock. “Miss Spencer told me today she lov’d me very well but did not like to stay with me without her mama,” her grandmother recorded in her diary.23 For the next twelve months Georgiana lived in Antwerp with her grandmother, who supervised her education. Believing, perhaps, that her parents had left her behind as a punishment for some unnamed misdeed, Georgiana became acutely self-conscious and anxious to please. She imitated her grandmother’s likes and dislikes, training herself to anticipate the expectations of adults. “We are now 38 at table,” Mrs. Poyntz wrote in June 1764, ten months after Georgiana’s parents had left Spa. “Miss Spencer is adored by all the company, they are astonished to see a child of her age never ask for anything of the dinner or desert but what I give her.”24

  When her daughter and son-in-law returned Mrs. Poyntz was amazed at the intensity of Georgiana’s reaction: “I never saw a child so overjoy’d, she could hardly speak or eat her dinner.”25 Lady Spencer immediately noticed that there was something different about her daughter but she decided she liked the change. “I had the happiness of finding my dear Mother and Sweet girl quite well,” she wrote to one of her friends; “the latter is vastly improved.”26 Although Lady Spencer did not realize it, the improvement was at the cost of Georgiana’s self-confidence. Without the inner resources which normally develop in childhood, she grew up depending far too much on other people. As a child it made her obedient; as an adult it made her susceptible to manipulation.

  Three years later, in 1766, a tragedy occurred which had repercussions for the whole family. Lady Spencer had become pregnant with her fourth child and, in the autumn of 1765, gave birth to a daughter named Charlotte. The child symbolized a much needed fresh start after the Spencers’ eighteen-month absence from England, which was perhaps why she engrossed Lady Spencer’s attention just as Georgiana had done nine years before. “She is a sweet little poppet,” she wrote.27 This time Lady Spencer breastfed the baby herself instead of hiring a wet nurse, and persevered even though it hurt and made her “low.” Georgiana’s notes to her mother when Lady Spencer was in London suggest that she was more than a little jealous of the new arrival.28 But infant mortality, although improved since the seventeenth century, was still high. Charlotte died shortly after her first birthday.

  Lord and Lady Spencer were shattered by the loss. “You know the perhaps uncommon tenderness I have for my children,” Lady Spencer explained to her friend Thea Cowper. Three years later, in 1769, Charlotte was still very much in her heart when she had another daughter, whom they called Louise. But she too died after only a few weeks. After this the Spencers travelled obsessively, sometimes with and sometimes without the children, never spending more than a few months in England at a stretch. Seeking an answer for their “heavy affliction,” they turned to religion for comfort and Lady Spencer began to show the first signs of the religious fanaticism which later overshadowed her life.

  At night, however, religion was far from their thoughts as they sought distraction in more worldly pursuits. They set up gaming tables at Spencer House and Althorp and played incessantly with their friends until the small hours. Lady Spencer tried to control herself: “Played at billiards and bowls and cards all evening and a part of the night,” she wrote in her diary. “Enable me O God to persevere in my endeavour to conquer this habit as far as it is a vice,” she prayed on another occasion.29 The more hours she spent at the gambling table, the more she punished herself with acts of self-denial. By the time Georgiana was old enough to be conscious of her mother’s routine, Lady Spencer had tied herself to a harsh regimen: up at 5:30 every morning, prayers for an hour, the Bible for a further hour, followed by a meagre breakfast at nine, and then household duties and good works until dinner. But in her heart she knew that her actions contained more show than feeling. “I know,” she wrote, “that there is a mixture of Vanity and false humility about me that is detestable.”30 However, knowledge of her faults did not change her ways. Twenty years later a friend complained: “She is toujours Lady Spencer, Vanity and bragging will not leave her, she lugg’d in by the head and shoulders that she had been at Windsor.”31

  The children were silent witnesses to their parents’ troubled life. Sometimes Georgiana and Harriet would creep downstairs to watch the noisy scenes taking place around the gaming table. “I staid till one hour past twelve, but mama remained till six next morning,” Harriet wrote in her diary.32 When the children were older they were allowed to participate. Harriet recorded on a trip to Paris: “A man came today to papa to teach him how he might always win at Pharo, and talked of it as a certainty, telling all his rules, and when papa told him he always lost himself, the man assur’d him it was for want of money and patience, for that his secret was infallible. Everybody has given him something to play for them, and papa gave him a louis d’or for my sister and me.”33

  Georgiana reacted to the loss of Charlotte and Louise by worrying excessively about her two younger siblings. She also became highly sensitive to criticism and the smallest remonstrance produced hysterical screams and protracted crying. Lady Spencer tried many different experiments to calm Georgiana, forcing her to spend hours in prayer and confining her to her room—to little effect.34 It was in her nature to oversee every aspect of a project, and from this time forward Lady Spencer left nothing in Georgiana’s development to chance. Even her thoughts were subject to scrutiny. “Pray sincerely to God,” Lady Spencer ordered her, “that he would for Jesus Christ’s sake give his assistance without which you must not hope to do anything.”35

  When she reached adolescence Georgiana’s tendency to over-react became less marked, but not enough to allay her mother’s fear for her future happiness. In November 1769 both George and Harriet were dangerously ill and Lady Spencer confided to a friend that the twelve-year-old Georgiana had shown “upon this as upon every other occasion such a charming sensibility that it is impossible not to be pleased with it, tho when I reflect upon it I assure you it gives me concern as I know by painful experience how much such a disposition will make her suffer hereafter.”36

  Georgiana was only fourteen when people began to speculate on her choice of husband. Lady Spencer thought it would be a dreadful mistake if she marrie
d too young. “I hope not to part with her till 18 at the soonest,” she told a friend in 1771.37 Her daughter’s outward sophistication led many to think that she was more mature than her years. In 1772 the family embarked upon another grand tour, this time with all three children in tow. The rapturous reception which greeted Georgiana in Paris confirmed Lady Spencer’s fears. According to a fellow English traveller, “Lady Georgiana Spencer has been very highly admired. She has, I believe, an exceedingly good disposition of her own, and is happy in an education which it is to be hoped will counteract any ill effect from what may too naturally turn her head.”38

  Georgiana combined a perfect mastery of etiquette with a mischievous grace and ease which met with approval in the artificial and mannered atmosphere of the French court. Wherever Georgiana accompanied Lady Spencer people marvelled at the way in which she seemed so natural and yet also conscious of being on show. Many were daunted by the complex and highly choreographed set-pieces which passed for social discourse in French salons. “It was no ordinary science,” reminisced a retired courtier, “to know how to enter with grace and assurance a salon where thirty men and women were seated in a circle round the fire, to penetrate this circle while bowing slightly to everyone, to advance straight to the mistress of the house, and to retire with honour, without clumsily disarranging one’s fine clothes, lace ruffles, [and] head-dress of thirty-six curls powdered like rime. . . .”39

  The family travelled around France for a few months and then moved on to Spa, where Georgiana celebrated her sixteenth birthday, in the summer of 1773. They found many friends already there, including the twenty-four-year-old Duke of Devonshire. His family had always been regular visitors: it was at Spa that his father the fourth Duke had died in 1764, aged forty-four, worn out after his short but harrowing stint as Prime Minister in 1756.* The Devonshires ranked among the first families of England and commanded a special place in British history. They had been involved in politics since the reign of Henry VIII, when Sir William Cavendish oversaw the dissolution of the monasteries. Sir William was the second husband of four to the redoubtable Bess of Hardwick, the richest woman in England after Elizabeth I and the most prolific builder of her age. He was the only one whom she married for love, and when she died all her accumulated wealth went to her Cavendish sons. The eldest, William, used his mother’s fortune to purchase the earldom of Devonshire from James I for £10,000. His descendants followed his example and devoted their lives to increasing the family’s wealth and power.