The Duchess

by Amanda Foreman

  He was born in 1749, the second of the three surviving sons of the Whig politician Henry Fox, first Lord Holland, and Lady Caroline Lennox, daughter of the second Duke of Richmond. Although an unscrupulous and—even for the age—corrupt politician, Lord Holland was a tender husband and an indulgent father who shamelessly spoilt his children. No eighteenth-century upbringing has received more attention or encountered such criticism as Fox’s. By contemporary social standards the Holland household was a kind of freak show. There were stories of Fox casually burning his father’s carefully prepared speeches, smashing his gold watch to see how it would look broken, disrupting his dinners—and never being punished.

  Having enjoyed such an unrestricted existence, both materially and emotionally, Fox was similarly open and generous with his friends. He was incapable of small-mindedness or petty ambition. It was this, coupled with his natural talent for leadership, which won him instant popularity at Eton and enduring friendships throughout his life. Before he joined the Whig party Fox seemed to have no ambition except pleasure and no political loyalties except to his father’s reputation. This he vigorously defended in Parliament against charges that, as Paymaster-General during the Seven Years’ War, Lord Holland had embezzled the country out of millions. No one could deny that the family had become unaccountably rich during this period. However, after his father’s death in 1774 Fox did his best to return the fortune to the nation by gambling it away at Newmarket and Brooks’s.

  Lord Holland’s last act before he died had been to pay off his son’s £140,000 debt,36 but this generous gift had no effect on Fox’s behaviour. He stayed up night after night, fighting his body’s urge to sleep with coffee and platefuls of food. According to one anecdote, he played hazard continuously from Tuesday to Wednesday night, winning, losing, recovering, and finally losing all his money. He stopped on Thursday to rush to the House of Commons to participate in a debate on the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England, and went straight back to White’s afterwards. There he drank until Friday morning, when he walked to Almack’s and gambled until 4 p.m. Having won £6,000 he rode to Newmarket, where he lost £10,000.37 Though he very quickly frittered everything away, Fox could always count on friends, including the Duke, to support him financially and politically.* Occasionally he won money, but he avoided games of skill, which he was very good at, for the excitement of games of chance. He spent so many hours at Brooks’s that he was rarely out of his gambling clothes.*

  Fox displayed a sense of fun and theatre that equalled Georgiana’s. The term “macaroni” was coined to describe the fashionable young fops of the 1770s who wore exaggerated clothes about town. The term probably originated in the 1760s, when members of the short-lived Macaroni Club brought attention to themselves by their predilection for all things foreign, especially food. Macaronis were much criticized in the press. The Oxford Magazine complained: “There is indeed a kind of animal, neither male nor female, a thing of the neuter gender, lately started up amongst us. It is called a Macaroni. It talks without meaning, it smiles without pleasantry, it eats without appetite, it rides without exercise, it wenches without passion.”38 Until his gambling debts made him poor, Fox was one of its most visible exemplars. Like Georgiana, he had an eye for colour and a talent for whimsy. The macaroni uniform strove for a super-slim elegance with narrow breeches and short, tight-fitting waistcoats. The flourish was in the finishes: large buttons and extravagant nosegays were essential; high-heeled shoes and a small hat perched on the side of the head added a certain flair. Fox’s particular contribution was to experiment with hair colour, powdering his hair blue one day, red the next. He wore multicoloured shoes and velvet frills, a daring combination which challenged the fainthearted to follow him.

  He went to stay at Chatsworth in August 1777, joining a large house party that included the Jerseys, the Clermonts, the Duke of Dorset, all the Cavendishes as well as their cousins the Ponsonbys, and the violinist Giardini. The week before his arrival Georgiana had written of her alarm and distress “at my own dispositions.” But she hid her feelings from her guests and no one noticed that her liveliness was as much a performance as the after-dinner entertainments.

  Fox’s presence wrought an immediate change in Georgiana; he intrigued and stimulated her. For the first time since her initial attempts to educate herself two years before, she had found someone to emulate.

  The great merit of C. Fox is his amazing quickness in seazing any subject [she wrote to her mother in August]. He seems to have the particular talent of knowing more about what he is saying and with less pains than anyone else. His conversation is like a brilliant player at billiards, the strokes follow one another piff puff—and what makes him more entertaining now is his being here with Mr Townsend and the D. of Devonshire, for their living so much together makes them show off to one another. Their chief topic is Politics and Shakespear. As for the latter they all three seem to have the most astonishing memorys for it, and I suppose I shall be able in time to go thro’ a play as they do. . . .39

  In her next letter Georgiana informed her mother that she was reading Vertot’s Revolutions of Sweden. “I think it is the most interesting book in the world, I really was quite agitated with my anxiety for Gustavas Vasa,” she wrote. “Especially at seeing a generous and open hearted Hero fighting for the liberty of his country and to revenge the memory of an injur’d friend against lawless cruelty and oppressive tyranny.”40 This was the Whig political creed in a single line: the hero fighting for liberty against lawless cruelty and oppressive tyranny. In practical terms, for the Whig party of the 1770s it meant opposition to George III, a mistrust of the powers of the crown, and a vigilance over civil liberties. Fox had probably suggested Vertot to Georgiana. He had only lately converted to the Whig cause, having previously served as a junior minister in the current government under Lord North. Like his father, Fox had planned his political career in the service of the King. But his sybaritic behavior and erratic loyalty to the government line drove George III and Lord North to remove him. “Indeed,” the King wrote in disgust, “that young man has so thoroughly cast off every principle of common honour and honesty that he must become as contemptible as he is odious.”41 After his dismissal Fox became the protégé of Edmund Burke, and under his tutelage he began to absorb the Whig preoccupation with constitutional rights and political autonomy. The politician who declared his contempt for the people: “[I] will not be a rebel to my King, my country or my own heart, for the loudest huzza of the inconsiderate multitude” now claimed that the King “held nothing but what he held in trust for the people, for their use and benefit.”42

  Fox’s ardour moved Georgiana. He talked to her as no one else did, treating her as his equal, discussing his ideas, and encouraging her participation. She had once visited the House of Commons out of curiosity with Lady Jersey (women were banned from the gallery in 1778), but had not repeated the experiment. Fox awakened in her a sense of loyalty and commitment to the Whig party. By the time he left Chatsworth she was his devoted follower. Twenty years later she was still his most loyal supporter. “Charles always had faults,” was all she would concede, “that may injure him and have as a Statesman—but never as the greatest of men.”43 Like his contemporaries at Eton and later at Brooks’s she had fallen under Fox’s spell. His following in Parliament depended as much on his personality as on his views. To be a Foxite meant that one belonged to a gang whose single bond was an uncritical admiration of Fox.

  Fox and Mary’s belief in Georgiana persuaded her that she could make something more of herself. In April 1778 she wrote of her desire to begin afresh. “I have the strongest sense of having many things to repent of and my heart is fully determined to mend,” she told Lady Spencer; she planned to take Holy Communion (a rite less commonly performed in the eighteenth century) after her trip to Derby. But the same letter also hints at entanglements—gambling debts—which she regretted and feared. “By going there I break off many unpleasant embarrassments I am in wi
th regard to others and the quiet life I shall lead there will give me time to think. . . .”44

  The result was a thinly disguised autobiographical novel called The Sylph. Notwithstanding its exaggerations, the book can be read as a roman à clef. Written as a series of letters, the story follows the misadventures of Julia Stanley, a naive country girl married to the dissipated Sir William Stanley, a rake whose only interests are fashion and gambling. When Julia first comes to London she does not understand the ways of the ton, but slowly it seduces her and she becomes trapped. She learns how to live à la mode, how to spend hours dressing for a ball, how to talk, sing, dance, and think like a fashionable person. She realizes that her soul is being corrupted by the cynicism and heartlessness which pervades the ton, but sees no hope of escape. Sir William is cruel, even brutal towards her. His only concern is that she should be a credit to him in public. He flaunts his mistress in front of her, punishes her when she suffers a miscarriage, and is not above assaulting her when angered. As his creditors close in, Sir William forces Julia to sign over all her personal property. (Nor is she the only woman in the book to suffer from male abuse. An aristocratic lady who loses a fortune at the gaming table is blackmailed by a friend into sleeping with him in return for his silence.)* Julia’s friend Lady Besford, who is obviously modelled on Lady Melbourne, urges her to accept her life and find happiness where she can. Julia is facing moral ruin when an anonymous protector, calling himself “the Sylph,” begins sending her letters of advice. Finally Sir William becomes so desperate for money that he sells the rights to Julia’s body to his chief creditor. She runs away, and he shoots himself in a shabby room above an inn.* The Sylph then reveals himself to be Julia’s childhood sweetheart. They marry and live happily ever after.

  Georgiana wrote The Sylph in secret and published it anonymously as “a young lady.”45 The novel was a creditable success, quickly going through four editions; it was not long before people guessed the identity of the author. When challenged in public Georgiana refused to comment, but it became common knowledge that she had admitted the truth in private. There were plenty of clues pointing in her direction, not only in her choice of names, which are all variations on those of her friends, but in the sly references to herself: Julia’s hairdresser protests that “he had run the risk of disobliging the Duchess of D——, by giving me the preference of the finest bunch of radishes that had yet come over from Paris.” Like Georgiana, Julia has a younger sister whom she adores and a worldly, older female companion to whom she turns for advice. The similarities in style and phrasing between the novel and Georgiana’s letters allayed any lingering doubts. Georgiana often wrote of her longing for a moral guide: “Few can boast like me of having such a friend and finding her in a mother,” she once wrote to Lady Spencer, adding how much she depended on her for moral and spiritual advice. “I should be very happy if I could borrow some friendly Sylph (if any are so kind as to hover about Hardwick) and a pair of wings that I might Pay you now and then a visit.”46

  Part of The Sylph’s success was due to its notoriety. Readers were shocked by the sexual licence and violence it depicted. The Gentleman’s Magazine was appalled: the anonymous female author, it thought, showed “too great a knowledge of the ton, and of the worst, though perhaps highest part of the world.” Mrs. Thrale, doyenne of the Blue Stocking Circle, denounced the book as “an obscene Novel.”47 She objected to passages such as the following, where Lady Besford expresses a breath-takingly cynical view of marriage:

  you do not suppose my happiness proceeds from my being married, any further than that I enjoy title, rank and liberty, by bearing Lord Besford’s name. We do not disagree because we seldom meet. He pursues his pleasure one way, I seek mine another, and our dispositions being opposite, they are sure never to interfere with each other. . . . My Lord kept a mistress from the moment of his marriage. What law excludes a woman from doing the same? Marriage now is a necessary kind of barter, and an alliance of families;—the heart is not consulted. . . .

  The Sylph touches on many subjects, not least the loneliness of a bad marriage and the vulnerability of women in a society where they are deprived of equal rights. Georgiana obviously wrote the novel in a hurry, and it does not compare well with Fanny Burney’s Evelina, for example. The significance of The Sylph lies in the rare insider’s glimpse it provides of the ton. Georgiana describes a competitive, unfriendly world peopled predominantly by opportunists, liars, and bullies, a world which encourages hypocrisy and values pretence. The irony did not escape her that even as she hated it she was also its creature. However, in publishing The Sylph she was also claiming her independence.

  CHAPTER 4

  A POPULAR PATRIOT

  1778–1781

  Saturday Morning the Derbyshire Militia passed through the city on their road to Cox Heath. The Duke of Devonshire marched at their head. The whole regiment made a very noble appearance, equal to any regulars whatever. If the militia of the other counties prove but as good, there is no doubt but that they are a match for any force that can be brought against them. The Duchess of Devonshire followed the regiment, dressed en militaire, and was escorted by several attendants.

  London Chronicle, June 20–23, 1778

  One day last week, her Grace the Duchess of Devonshire appeared on the hustings at Covent Garden. She immediately saluted her favourite Candidate, the Hon. Charles Fox.

  Morning Post, September 25, 1780

  Georgiana’s political awakening coincided with a disastrous year for the Whigs. The Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776, proclaimed the American colonies “Free and Independent States . . . absolved from all allegiance to the British crown.” The Whigs supported the colonists against the government but their rousing talk of safeguarding the liberty of the people had signally failed to impress the country. The public rejected their contention that the government was at fault for having tried to force an un-just system of taxation on the colonists, and the press accused the party of conniving with Britain’s enemies to break up the empire. It was an unfair accusation, although it touched on a dilemma for the Whigs: they viewed the American conflict through the prism of Westminster politics and regarded it as part of the struggle between the people and the crown. For this reason they privately hoped that the Americans would win.

  In February 1778 France entered the war on the side of the Americans, transforming what had hitherto been a set of military skirmishes in New England into a trans-continental war. Britain now had to fight on several fronts. Shaken by this new threat, the Prime Minister Lord North hoped to strengthen the cabinet by poaching Charles Fox and one or two others, but his overtures were rejected. The debates in Parliament became bitter as Whig and government MPs accused each other of betraying the country’s interests. The sense of crisis was heightened in April by the dramatic death of William Pitt the Elder during a debate in the House of Lords. The former Prime Minister, now the Earl of Chatham, had risen from his sick bed to make his final speech. He arrived draped in black velvet, and dragged himself to his old seat with the help of crutches. Speaking in the government’s defence, he argued that a surrender to the Americans would signal the end of the empire—the empire he had won for Britain almost thirty years earlier. Only the Duke of Richmond, Fox’s uncle and a committed Whig, dared to answer the respected statesman. He argued that it was impossible to fight a war on two fronts against the Americans and the French. Chatham slowly pulled himself to his feet to reply, but no words came out. He shuddered, clutched his heart, and collapsed to the floor. To many MPs Chatham’s death in the throes of a patriotic speech seemed to symbolize Britain’s approaching demise.

  Having enjoyed two years of a distant war, the country now began to mobilize its defences against the threat of a French invasion. As Lord Lieutenant of Derbyshire the Duke of Devonshire returned to the country to organize a voluntary militia. Most able-bodied men were either already in the army or in stable employment; those available to join the home defence force made
unpromising material. This did not deter the aristocracy, who threw themselves into the task of training their corps with almost childish enthusiasm. Many of them proudly wore their regimental uniforms to the King’s birthday celebrations at St. James’s.1

  Since the French were likely to target London first, the government set up two campsites for its protection: Coxheath in Kent and Warley in Essex. So many sightseers flocked to the camps that a London–Coxheath coach service started. The London Chronicle reported that Coxheath camp would be three miles long, holding 15,000 men and representing the “flower of the nobility.” Workers were building a stone pavilion in anticipation of a royal visit. Meanwhile “the Tradespeople of the neighbouring places are deserting their town residents, and are likewise encamping round us in the various temporary streets. The whole will form one of the most striking military spectacles ever exhibited in the country.”2

  Georgiana accompanied the Duke to Coxheath, where they were joined by many of their friends. She was enthralled by the spectacle of thousands of men mobilizing for war. She walked behind the Duke as he inspected his regiment, imagining herself bravely leading a battalion of men in a bloody engagement against the invaders. Although women were not usually tolerated on the field, the officers indulged her desire to take part in the preparations. “There is a vacant company which the soldiers call mine,” she confided to her brother. “I intend to make it a very good one.”3 The Duke rented a large house for her nearby, but she persuaded him to allow her to live in the camp with him. Their “tent” was made up of several marquees, arranged into a compound of sleeping quarters, entertaining rooms, kitchens, and a servants’ hall. Refusing to equate a state of readiness with austerity, Georgiana decorated it with travelling tables, oriental rugs, and silver candlesticks from Chatsworth. Nevertheless conditions in the camp were primitive and sanitary arrangements nonexistent.