The Duchess

by Amanda Foreman

  On December 29 Georgiana wrote: “my business goes slow.” Nothing was yet decided, but there seemed to be less pressure on her to leave. Lady Bristol had written several times to Bess asking her to visit, and she could put it off no longer. The Devonshires left Chatsworth at the same time. “I suspect the reason of their going by Milton is that she may join them on the road and go to Town with them, but this is only my own ill-natured conjecture,” wrote Lady Spencer.80 On the last day of the year Georgiana’s future still looked uncertain but less precarious than before. George allowed himself to feel a little hope: “A calm has ensued in a certain quarter as I supposed it would when the first violence of the storm had spent itself. How long either will last it is impossible ever to conjecture, but that there will be frequent transmitting from the one to the other is all that one can be certain about.”81

  CHAPTER 11

  QUEEN BESS

  1787

  On Monday last, the Constitutional Whig Grand Lodge of England held their anniversary at the Intrepid Fox, Wardour St, Soho, in commemoration of the Landing of the Great Deliverer, William the Third. . . . among the toasts were “The Noble House of Cavendish, root and branches—May the blossoms of Liberty never be blighted, nor the Duchess of Devonshire ever be slighted. . . .”

  Morning Herald, November 8, 1787

  The Duke regarded himself as an injured man. He required two things of Georgiana: not to gamble away the family estate, and to produce an heir, and she seemed to be incapable of performing either one. He was also furious that she had been deceiving him about her debts for the past two years. But his habit of shutting out unpleasant thoughts spared Georgiana a repetition of the scenes at Chatsworth. “He is calm,” she wrote, until “an occasional event, letter, etc., that requires discussion and thought renews the sensation.”1 By Christmas, three months after her confession, the Duke was beginning to have mixed feelings about the proposed separation. He was not so blinded by his love for Bess nor so bitter towards Georgiana that he wanted to see her publicly humiliated. Although he preferred Bess’s company, he liked having both women around, competing for his attention. When they were together they kept each other’s quirks in check.

  Bess was torn: should she complete her triumph over Georgiana or intercede on her behalf? If she pushed hard enough she could probably force the Duke to separate from Georgiana. But much as she fantasized about taking Georgiana’s place, Bess knew that without her she would not be able to live at Devonshire House or at Chatsworth. Life as the Duke’s acknowledged mistress would be dull and constricting. She would become a non-person—ostracized by polite society and despised by Georgiana’s friends and family. That was not the sort of life Bess wanted for herself. She hesitated until Georgiana unwittingly made up her mind for her. instead of accusing Bess of disloyalty for her wavering, Georgiana apologized to her for lying about her debts. All she hoped, Georgiana told her, was that her folly in wasting “dear Canis’s” fortune would not make Bess despise her. This was the last thing Bess had expected. It had been much easier for her to resent Georgiana when she could question the strength of her friend’s attachment. The realization that in Georgiana she had a friend who truly loved her was a revelation to a woman who had always believed herself to be alone. As a consequence, her behaviour towards Georgiana subtly changed. The naivety of Georgiana’s love brought out a protectiveness in Bess: she became motherly, even strict, and, though the jealousy remained, there was no further attempt to usurp her place and no more talk of separation.

  The Duke took Georgiana to London, where they engaged Sheridan’s help to resolve the Martindale problem. No stranger to the art of putting off creditors, Sheridan coached her on what to say. “The bargain with Martindale entirely depends upon his thinking it my doing unadvis’d,” she told her mother, “and therefore I must close it by seeing him.”2 She had persuaded him to consider only £25,000, but was hoping that he would accept £6,000. They met alone, as arranged, and Georgiana acted her part just as she had been told. To her surprise he believed her display of innocence and confusion and he agreed to settle at the lower sum.* With the resolution of this degrading episode life at Devonshire House returned to a semblance of normality. Yet it was a fragile truce: Georgiana was terrified of upsetting the Duke, and he was so suspicious of her now that she admitted, “I dare not press the Duke nor give him reason to imagine I have a wish or design of my own.”3

  The Duke insisted on certain conditions before he dropped his plans for separation. Georgiana was not to stay in London any longer than necessary, and her income was to be sharply reduced, not only because it might hinder her free-spending habits but also because he agreed with Heaton that the money saved should go towards retaining a few more servants. Several had to be sacked in any case, some of the horses and carriages sold, and all capital projects halted. “We are distressed, but prudence will set us right,” wrote Georgiana cheerfully.4 “I have made a good beginning, having forbid all milliners etc., Dst. M., I shall be with you in the Lottery time and will only have 2 tickets and no insurance of any kind.”5 She was not concerned by the reduction of her income, thinking that it would be offset by her residing in Bath or in the country, where commodities were cheaper and fashion more sedate. The Duke was also determined to live quietly for a few months while Heaton straightened out their financial affairs.

  Georgiana ought to have felt relief: she had owned up to her mistakes and the Duke had forgiven her. But when she confessed about Martindale she had told a stupid and terrible lie. The Duke had asked if there were any other debts, and she had admitted to only about a fifth of the total. She lost her only chance of living her life free from secret worries. The difficult steps she had taken to clear her debts should have brought about her deliverance; instead they were the beginning of a new misery. Henceforth all her ingenuity would be focused on concealing the truth from the Duke and, to a lesser extent, from Bess, all her energy spent in keeping creditors at bay.

  Georgiana’s encounter with Martindale had taught her how to appear plausible. The ease with which she charmed him made her realize that the same technique might be used on others. Her friends and acquaintances became a potential source of wealth that she shamelessly mined for loans and gifts. Mary Graham was one of the first to receive her begging letters and gave as much as she could until her husband found out. But there were many others, some of them near strangers, whose snobbery might be exploited by a Duchess in need. The inventor Sir Richard Arkwright soon regretted his impulse to lend her several thousand pounds when she not only defaulted on her repayments but pleaded for a further loan. In January 1788 he wrote, “I flattered myself with the hope that everything had turned out as you wished. I am sincerely sorry to find I was mistaken. . . . I must also request your Grace will say whether I may rely upon the other notes being all regularly paid. . . . Nothing has dropt from me to any person living that could lead to suspect what your Grace wishes to remain a secret.”6 The story was always the same: she was desperate, she needed the money to save her from immediate exposure and ruin, and it had to be a secret.

  Fortunately Georgiana was not alone. Most of her close friends were like her, gamesters and always broke. Fitzpatrick, Hare, Sheridan, Fox, and the Prince of Wales were all constantly harried by creditors. None of them would have condemned her if they had known what lengths she was forced to go to in order to obtain ready money—she was not the first person in the Devonshire House Circle to beg her jewellers to buy back some of her purchases. Most of the Circle relied on the willingness of one banker, Thomas Coutts, to keep them afloat. A cautious Scot with a weakness for titles, Coutts disliked living among banking society and was determined to drag himself and his wife, a former servant, into the refined society of the ton. He courted the Prince of Wales and his Whig friends, seeing in the relationship future lucrative government contracts for the bank and social advancement for his daughters. He expected to be rewarded for his generosity when the King, now in his fifties and in poor health,
died and Prinny inherited the throne. Coutts and Georgiana were perfect partners since they both believed that money could solve their problems.

  In March 1787 Georgiana asked Coutts to become her private banker. “With very little acquaintance, and that acquaintance having only given you a knowledge of my extravagance, I feel myself perfectly unauthoriz’d to the address I am making to you, and yet I cannot help applying to you and feeling . . . a kind of confidence that you will befriend me.”7 She hinted that without his help “my distress would . . . I am afraid drive me to every ruinous expedient.” He was only too glad to be of assistance to a charming woman who pleaded, “I am so ignorant of business.”8 He agreed to oversee her accounts, to provide her with unsecured loans without the Duke’s knowledge (a risky and illegal undertaking), and to take on the edifying role, he thought, of her financial adviser.* He made a similar offer to the Duke of Devonshire, without revealing his arrangements with Georgiana, and loaned him £7,000 without security and with no time limit.9

  Coutts assumed that he would be Georgiana’s sole banker, and hoped that the personal relationship between them would be as important to her as the financial one. “I will confess a selfish view,” he wrote on May 23, 1787, “tho’ I disclaim any interested one, in desiring this vizt that it will give me the opportunity perhaps of more frequently having occasion to see or correspond with your Grace.”10 The truth was far more complicated than he realized: Georgiana had inveigled the Parisian banker, Comte Pérregeaux, into a similar relationship to help her manage some £40,000 or £50,000 worth of debts in France. She did not know how much she owed in total, nor did she want to. She gave everyone different figures which represented different debts: gambling debts, purchases, loans from private money lenders, as well as burdens she had assumed on behalf of others. Lady Spencer thought Georgiana’s income would now be £1,000 a year; Coutts thought it £2,000 but with £500 a year marked out for annuities she had allocated to needy friends and relations, “which keep me very poor, as you may imagine, yet I cannot bear to stop them.”11 She told Coutts that the Duke knew about all her debts except for £4,500, but the figure was closer to £60,000, and perhaps even more. The first step had to be a complete cessation of all forms of gambling—Coutts urged her to reflect on what “you risk to gratify this destructive passion. . . . a gamester goes on in the vain hope of recovering lost sums, till he loses probably all that remains, and along with it everything which is precious.”12

  Even if her sincere desire to change had been matched by her will power there were almost insuperable obstacles in her way. Temptation was everywhere: the Duke was not prepared to curb his card playing and Lady Spencer saw no harm in inviting Georgiana to join her little gambling parties at home. “Tho’ she has lost considerably for the moderate play we have had,” she reported to the Duke on one occasion, “it has been from a most obstinate and unalterable run of ill luck and not from gambling. As a proof of this, I who have been her partner can answer for having won in the whole time but one single rubber at whist of two guineas.”13 Georgiana brazenly asserted to Coutts and others that she had indeed given up: “I have the pleasure to assure you that I have not play’d once the whole season. . . . I am under a sacred promise with regard to playing at faro and insurance at the lottery, which no temptation could break.”14 Yet she was secretly doing both not merely for the thrills but also, as Coutts so eloquently warned against in his homily, in the vain hope of winning back some of her losses.

  Nor did Georgiana act alone. Harriet joined her in every scheme and was often the more enthusiastic of the two. She had her own reasons for seeking relief at the gaming table. Duncannon was not only unfaithful and unpredictable, he was also deeply suspicious of his wife. He opened all her correspondence and rationed the visits she might receive. Her family were afraid to interfere lest they made her situation worse. Georgiana was careful to keep her letters to Harriet light and impersonal—they communicated with each other through secret messages—so she was ignorant of Harriet’s latest problem with Duncannon. It was George who discovered it by chance. He paid one of his discreet visits on a February morning in 1787, while Duncannon was out, and found Harriet crying with fear. Duncannon had just left the house, having roughly informed her that he had lost a large sum of money at faro. It had to be paid immediately and he wanted Harriet to get it for him. Rather like the evil Sir William in The Sylph, Duncannon promised her she would regret it if she failed.

  “Harriet was quite at a loss,” George wrote afterwards to Lady Spencer, “as well she might, and was very apprehensive of the consequences of his disappointment.” Duncannon had ordered her not to tell anyone, which naturally made it impossible for her to raise the money from friends or family. Ominously, he also brought up the subject of her dowry—Georgiana’s heroine Julia had been beaten into relinquishing hers—and he tried to make her sign it over. Harriet was too frightened to refuse, but thinking quickly had added that her brother, as her guardian, would have to give his consent. “I don’t know whether it is or no, but if it is I certainly shall never grant it,” George wrote.15 He did not know how to help his sister: he could not deny her the money and yet he hated to see it go to her bullying husband. “I cannot advise giving assistance or even being security,” counselled Lady Spencer hardheartedly. “Future help (when ruin which I fear is inevitable sooner or later makes it necessary) may be of essential use, but nothing else. I hope for the sake of the children nothing will be given up.”16 She wanted George to hold out until Duncannon had promised to stop gambling, but for Harriet’s sake he and Georgiana insisted on going ahead. They paid the debt themselves and kept it a secret from the Cavendishes.

  In May 1787 Georgiana and Harriet joined a consortium behind a new faro bank which included the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Rutland. Georgiana had to fight for her place because her creditworthiness was so poor. “The Duchess of Devonshire is in debt to all the banks she has ever been connected with; so that must keep her from a claim to be in debt to us,” decided one of the organizers, Daniel Pultney, before her persistence made him relent.17 Neither Georgiana nor Harriet could wait for the operation to begin, and they irritated him by their incessant enquiries about the scheme’s progress. In the meantime they spent the money they had set aside for the bank.

  The faro project, though so essentially advanced by your Grace’s means, is, from the absence of some of the gang from town, in no condition to commence this summer [Pultney wrote to Rutland], though some of our allies at Bath (the Duchess of Devonshire and Lady Duncannon) are in a rage at our having suffered Sir Watts Horton to set up a mushroom bank of £500 in their absence. Little as I can pretend to any great knowledge of the ladies, I cannot foresee what obstacles the very proposers may suggest in future. All I know is that it is as much as their interest as mine, and . . . as much as their inclination. Lady Duncannon sold £200 a year for £1600 to a Jew, about six weeks ago, and showed me overnight a £1000 note, which she was determined to keep for this subscription, and in three days it was all gone; though, as to her share for this subscription, that can easily be borrowed for her.18

  A poignant letter of Georgiana’s to Bess, written some time in 1787, reveals the extent to which she had become a victim of her addiction. It also shows the complete reversal of power between them since the happy summer of Plympton in 1782. Now it was Georgiana who desperately clung to Bess, resorting to emotional blackmail when necessary.

  This is the last time perhaps you will ever speak to or love me—I really am unworthy of you and Canis and you must be shocked at my levity all today but there was no medium. When I first told all my debts to Ca at C[hatsworth] I had reserved £500 which I had agreed to insure in this Lottery as a hope of regaining him some money—My good genius often prompted me to stop this but as I had agreed to do it and paid the money into Baker’s hands for the purpose I resolved unwillingly to do it. I went to Newmarket and left an insurance meaning to stop—but I had some money distress about Mr Cater which I will expl
ain to you. Oh God Bess, I have gone on and lost an immense sum—I dare not tell you that it is 6000—It is madness and I ought not to live on with Canis—but what am I to do? You must not tell him this—and you shall advise me when I return what I am to do—whether to tell him or not—it could be settled without and so that it should never come to him—you know he could not forgive me. My Bess, I am desperate. If the Eyebrow [Fox] had been here I should have thrown myself into his arms, to have completed myself—you see that doating on Ca how I have used him. I scarcely have pleasure in looking at my Babes. Say nothing to him until I return—Oh Bess!19

  Bess could not resist such an appeal. No one had ever needed or trusted her as much as Georgiana. But that didn’t prevent her from extracting her own reward. Inexorably, she eradicated the boundaries between them, the friends, the interests—even the better aspects of Georgiana’s character such as her passion for the arts—she adopted or co-opted as her own. There is no mention of little Caroline in any of the correspondence but it was probably at this point that Bess disclosed her existence to Georgiana—now that her ascendancy over both Devonshires was complete there was no longer any reason to keep the child or its paternity a secret. Georgiana’s reaction has not been recorded; however, she had long since renounced her claims to the Duke. But, irritatingly for Bess, the Duke did not renounce his claims to his wife. He refused to live in a monogamous relationship with Bess, or to grant her the precedence she sought over Georgiana. His sometimes brutal reminders of her position prevented her from being complacent: “I go for a week to Tunbridge,” she wrote in her “diary” in August, “return and am foolish and capricious because they dined out—but suffered severely by the D taking it ill of me. We made it up at Chiswick and have never quarrelled since—passed a happy week there.”20 She also missed her sons, Augustus and Frederick, who were still in Ireland with their father, and from time to time she made attempts to see them.