Lady Spencer had mixed feelings about the female members of the Circle, but she loathed one woman in particular: Lady Melbourne. Beautiful, clever, and ruthless, Lady Melbourne epitomized the decadence of Georgiana’s friends. The incurable gossip Lord Glenbervie recorded in his diary, “it was a very general report and belief that . . . Lord Coleraine sold Lady Melbourne to Lord Egremont for £13,000, that both Lady and Lord Melbourne were parties to this contract and had each a share of the money.”10 The story might even have been true. Lord Melbourne was an enigma, a silent figure in the drawing room whom visitors to Melbourne House barely noticed. Once Lady Melbourne had presented him with an heir he allowed her the freedom to do and see whom she pleased. He also profited by it. She was not a woman to give her affections indiscriminately. Through her efforts Lord Melbourne was made a viscount in 1781, and later a Gentleman of the Bedchamber in the Prince of Wales’s household. Two of her five children were the offspring of Lord Egremont; another, George, the result of her affair with the Prince of Wales. Only the eldest and possibly the youngest were Lord Melbourne’s.
Before Georgiana’s entry into the ton Lady Melbourne had reigned as its leading hostess. People naturally assumed that they would become rivals, but Lady Melbourne had no intention of setting herself up in opposition to Georgiana. She befriended her and adopted the role of benign older counsel instead. “My dearest Thémire” (the French term for Themis, the Goddess of Justice) was how Georgiana usually addressed her. Lady Melbourne was a natural manager of people. She had a firm grasp of the recondite laws which governed life within the ton, and an unsentimental, even cynical view of humanity. “Never trust a man with another’s secret,” she is reputed to have said, “never trust a woman with her own.” Ferociously practical and discreet, she could also be sarcastic and cutting when irritated. Georgiana was in awe of her temper; “I believe I have been a little afraid of you,” she once admitted.11 “Pray write to me, tell me that you love me and are not angry with me,” she pleaded on another occasion.12
Lady Melbourne provided the comradeship that was missing in Georgiana’s relationship with her mother. Lady Spencer was always commenting and offering advice, but it was hardly ever of the practical kind that could help her daughter out of scrapes. She was too far removed from the Circle to understand the sort of pressures that it exerted. Jealous of Lady Melbourne’s influence, she tried to make Georgiana drop her. Uncharacteristically, Georgiana refused to obey:
I conjure you my Dst. Mama to forgive my warmth about Lady Melbourne today [she wrote after a painful argument]. But I do assure you that everything I have known of her has been so right and her conduct to me so truly friendly and for my good, [that] I was miserable to see her so low in your opinion—I hope you will not object to my continuing a friendship which it would be so terrible for me to break off, and I am sure that next year from a thousand things you will not have to be uneasy about my goings on.13
Georgiana’s “goings on” had become an obsession with the press. Her clothes, her movements, her friends—in short anything new or unusual about her—was considered newsworthy. Rarely did a week go by without a snippet of gossip appearing somewhere. On December 30, 1776, the Morning Post reported that Georgiana and Lady Jersey had all their friends playing “newly invented aenigmas” which, the Post learned, they called “charades.”14 Throughout 1777 a series of anonymous publications appeared addressed to Georgiana, some of them attacking her slavish devotion to fashion, others defending her.15 More often, though, the scandal sheets embroiled her in fictitious escapades with numerous lovers. There were enough stories of licentious behaviour attached to members of the Circle to give any allegation the veneer of plausibility.
Audiences flocked to Drury Lane in May 1777 to see Sheridan’s new play The School for Scandal, partly because it was known to be a satire on the Devonshire House Circle. “I can assure you that the Farce is charming,” enthused Mrs. Crewe to Lady Clermont; “the Duchess of Devonshire, Lady Worseley, and I cut very good figures in it.”16 Sheridan pandered to the audience’s expectations by portraying Georgiana’s friends as a set of louche aristocrats whose moral sensibilities had been blunted by a life of wealth without responsibility. Georgiana is Lady Teazle: young, easily influenced, possessed of a good heart but needing a firm husband to manage her properly. As the play opens Sir Peter Teazle is quarrelling with Lady Teazle over her spendthrift ways and her preoccupation with fashion. “I’m sure I’m not more extravagant than a woman of fashion ought to be,” she retorts. The evil Lady Sneerwell (a mixture of Lady Jersey and Lady Melbourne) connives with the journalist Snake (Sheridan) and Joseph Surface to bring about Lady Teazle’s ruin. But the play ends with Lady Teazle resisting Surface’s attempt to seduce her and renouncing her scandal-loving friends as worthless and silly. Members of the Circle thought it was a tremendous joke to see themselves caricatured on stage, and helped to publicize the play by ostentatiously arriving en masse to watch the first night.
Georgiana’s thoughts on being portrayed as Lady Teazle have not survived, but the play almost certainly made her uneasy. Behind the broad humour was a semi-serious message which did not escape her notice. “I am alarm’d at my own dispositions because I think I know them now,” she told Lady Spencer in August. “I am afraid that the minute I think seriously of my conduct I shall be so shocked, especially with regard to all that has happened this year. . . .”17 Lacking the maturity and confidence to stand up to her friends, Georgiana was being drawn into a life of heavy drinking and compulsive gambling. She often found herself acting against her own judgement but she felt unable to resist the pressures on her to conform.
In November 1777 Lady Sarah Lennox observed that Georgiana seemed to have no ballast. “The Pretty Duchess of Devonshire who by all accounts has no faults but delicate health in my mind, dines at seven, summer as well as winter, goes to bed at three, and lies in bed till four: she has hysteric fits in the morning and dances in the evening; she bathes, rides, dances for ten days and lies in bed the next ten.” Georgiana made periodic attempts to reform. As often as she could she presented Lady Spencer with a positive picture of her life, emphasizing the time she spent with the Duke, her involvement in charity work, the frequent prayers she said, and the sermons she heard. “You see my dearest Mama, how happy I am to tell you of anything I think you will approve of,” she had written in September 1776; “it gives me such real pleasure to feel that I am doing anything that makes me more pleasing to the best of mothers.”18 Inspired by such sentiments, Georgiana would adopt a starvation diet, lock herself away in her room, and see no one for a week, but as soon as she emerged she compensated with all-night drinking and eating binges until she was too exhausted to get out of bed. Her weight fluctuated wildly as a consequence. “You are very apt to be too much so, and run into extremes which your constitution will not bear,” Lady Spencer complained.19 The effect on Georgiana’s general health was catastrophic: she had one miscarriage after another, leading the Duke and the Cavendishes to accuse her of deliberately sabotaging their hopes for an heir. Only Lady Sarah Lennox questioned whether the Duke might not be to blame for neglecting Georgiana when she was young and so vulnerable to suggestion. “Indeed,” she concluded, “I can’t forgive her or rather her husband, the fault of ruining her health.”20
Just as Lady Sarah Lennox made her astute observation, towards the end of 1777, Georgiana met two quite different people, Charles James Fox and Mary Graham, whose impact on her would have far-reaching consequences. She was introduced to Mary in October while taking the sea air in Brighton. Mary was there with her husband, Thomas, and was recuperating from a bout of pneumonia. Georgiana was there in the hope of improving her fertility. Medical opinion cited a weak placenta as the cause of serial miscarriages like Georgiana’s; the only remedy was to take water cures, either bathing in sea water or drinking warm spa water. (There was no concept of male infertility in the eighteenth century, except in cases of impotence.)
Georgiana was im
mediately captivated by her. “Mr and Mrs Graham came the same day as the Duke and Dss,” reported Lady Clermont to Lady Spencer; “she is a very pretty sort of woman, the Dss likes her of all things; they are inseparable, which is no bad thing. I wish she had half a dozen more such favourites.”21 Mary’s father, Lord Cathcart, was formerly the British envoy to Russia, and she had lived abroad for much of her life. Lady Cathcart had died when Mary was fourteen and she had since been obliged to act as a surrogate mother to her baby sister, Charlotte. Georgiana and Mary were the same age and had married in the same year, but Mary lived a very different, sheltered life. She was quiet, serious, and gentle—Georgiana might not have noticed her were it not for her breathtaking beauty: she was known as “the beautiful Mrs Graham.” Gainsborough painted her portrait at least four times in an attempt to capture the serenity of her features.
The obvious mutual attachment between the two women was remarked upon at Brighton, although Georgiana made light of it to Lady Spencer. “I live very much with Mrs Graham,” she wrote en passant. “I think her extremely amiable and we like him too very much—but Lady Sefton does not approve of it as I suppose she expected I should live entirely with her.”22 However, the letters Georgiana wrote to Mary after she had returned home to London show that their feelings for each other had grown into infatuation. The first surviving letter of Georgiana’s is a response to a reproach from Mary for not writing more often. Georgiana was staying at Althorp with Lady Spencer, who regarded the interlude as her chance to initiate some remedial training. She kept a tight rein on her daughter, insisting that she imitate her own daily regimen of early morning walks, hours of improving literature, and endless fussing about the servants. The unaccustomed harshness of the regime so exhausted Georgiana that she was too tired to keep up the promised letter-journal to Mary.
I cannot bear the thought of your thinking me negligent [she replied in anguish after receiving a furious letter from Mary]. I have had scarce any opportunity lately—and besides I have been very busy—in the first place with writing the verses to my Father on his birthday and with the picture—(As soon as I have time to write them out I will send them to you) and then, I have been working very hard for Mama to compose her some reflections to read to the servants on their taking the Sacrament. Would you believe me capable of so serious a work? My dear friend, despite my giddiness I am capable of thought sometimes. You would not think from appearances that I am able to have deep friendships, but, nevertheless you must know how tenderly I love you. It is the same with other things. I am full of madness but I also have a little sense. I perceive I am eulogising myself, but that is characteristic of a bad heart and I have often told you mine is bad. . . . I am falling asleep and must leave you now, but I want to say to you above all that I love you, my dear friend, and kiss you tenderly.23
By the spring of 1778 it was Lady Spencer’s turn to complain that Georgiana’s letters had slowed to a trickle.24 Not only did Georgiana spend all her free time writing to Mary; no other subject interested her: “I made Mr James set by me at supper last night to have the pleasure of talking about you—it is so deliciously sweet for me, my adorable friend, to speak constantly of you—as I am continuously thinking of you it is a subject that I am very well prepared for. . . . I went to see Lady Anne and Lady Margaret, they both talk a great deal about you and my heart applauds their good taste—I have seen your picture too at Gainsborough’s.”25
Both of them were frightened that the intensity of their friendship would become the subject of gossip. Georgiana’s passionate imprecations went far beyond the ordinary endearments written between women friends. “Je t’aime mon coeur bien tendrement, indeed, indeed, indeed, I love you dearly” is one of her typical messages to Lady Melbourne.26 However, even taking hyperbole into account, Georgiana’s letters to Mary were more personal, more intense, clearly separating them from her other correspondence. It was almost impossible to keep such things hidden. Maids and footmen were not above reading their employers’ mail, and there was always the danger of letters going astray or falling into the wrong hands. In one fragment Georgiana wrote: “I have been reading over this curious letter and I am almost sorry I put so much about what vex’d me when I began writing, I must tell you I am quite easy about it now and if I was sure you would get this letter safe, I would tell you all about it—but I don’t dare.”27 Despite the risk of exposure, she urged Mary to accept a small drawing of herself: “You desire me to give you my opinion about the picture, I can not see why you should not have it, I understand what you mean, but I don’t think it would appear odd—consider that in a little time we shall be old friends—however I think I can send you a drawing when I go to town which will not have any of the inconveniences you thought of as you need not shew it—for I shall like you to have something like me.”28
Whether or not Mary actually received the picture is not known. Almost nothing else survives from their lengthy correspondence except a couple of later fragments. Discouraged by the Duke’s freezing civility, Georgiana longed for the tenderness, companionship, and affection she experienced with Mary—and also something else, equally if not more important: relief from having to perform for her relatives or the ton. Lady Spencer, her friends, the Duke and his family all placed expectations on her, often forcing her to play roles which made her feel uncomfortable or inadequate. Only with Mary could Georgiana unburden herself and talk about her confusion and dismay.
The hurry I live here distracts me [she wrote in 1778], when I first came into the world the novelty of the scene made me like everything but my heart now feels only an emptiness in the beau monde which cannot be filled—I don’t have the liberty to think or occupy myself with the things I like as much as I would wish and all my desires are turned upside down—you are the only person to whom I would say this, anybody else would only laugh at me and call it an affectation—I seem to enjoy every thing so much at the minute that nobody can think how much I am tired sometimes with the dissipation I live in.29
Georgiana’s sense of unease about her life of dissipation was turning to disgust but, as she remarked sadly, her friends would only laugh if she tried to explain herself. Her intimacy with Mary helped her to gain a perspective on her situation, particularly on the limitations of her marriage. It was unthinkable, however, for a woman to take a lover before she had supplied her husband with a son. Convention allowed aristocratic women a cicisbeo—a term borrowed from the Italian to mean a platonic lover who provided escort duties and other practical services in place of the husband. In The School for Scandal Lady Teazle says she will admit the wicked Joseph Surface “as a lover no farther than fashion sanctions.” “True,” he replies, “a mere Platonic cicisbeo—what every wife is entitled to.”30 Despite the large crowd of suitors eager to comply, Georgiana was the exception in lacking even this.31 In 1779 her cousin Lady Pembroke remarked to Lord Herbert: “You wrote some time ago terrible things you had heard about the poor Dss of Devonshire, which made me laugh, they were so totally without foundation, and I forgot to answer it. She has never been even talked for any body in the flirting way yet. . . .”32
Whether and to what extent physical intimacy played a part in Georgiana’s relationship with Mary is impossible to determine. Several of her friendships contained an element of flirtatiousness: it was a French habit she had acquired from Madame de Polignac and Marie Antoinette. Since the publication of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s enormously successful Julie ou La nouvelle Héloïse French women had self-consciously imitated the loving friendship between Julie and Claire. However, there were rumours that Marie Antoinette and the Little Po were more than simply friends, which their displays of physical affection encouraged.33*
Rousseau made a deep impression on Georgiana, and her own copy of La nouvelle Héloïse at Chatsworth is scored with her markings.34 She lived on a plane of heightened feeling which her English friends found alluring but also disturbing. “Some part of your letter frightened me,” Lady Jersey once wrote, not altogethe
r sure how to interpret Georgiana’s declarations of love.35 In Mary, Georgiana was seeking her Claire, who would know her every thought, be at her side during the day, share her bed at night, and hold her in her arms when she died. But it was not to be. In 1781 the doctors ordered Mr. Graham to take Mary to a warmer climate: it was the only hope for her weak lungs. They had diagnosed her as consumptive. Georgiana was bereft and searched without success for a replacement.
Charles James Fox, her second new acquaintance, made a great impression on Georgiana, not in a romantic way—that would emerge later—but intellectually. It was Fox, more than anyone else, who led Georgiana to her life’s vocation—politics. Fox was a brilliant though flawed politician. Short and corpulent, with shaggy eyebrows and a permanent five o’clock shadow, he was already at twenty-eight marked down as a future leader of the Whig party when the Marquess of Rockingham retired. Georgiana became friends with him when he came to stay at Chatsworth in 1777. His career until then had veered between political success and failure, between unimaginable wealth and bankruptcy. He confounded his critics with his irrepressible confidence, and exasperated his friends by his incontinent lifestyle. Eighteenth-century England was full of wits, connoisseurs, orators, historians, drinkers, gamblers, rakes, and pranksters, but only Fox embodied all these things.
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