The Duchess

by Amanda Foreman

  Georgiana was distraught. “The family mourn and D of D allows me to mourn as deeply as I chuse,” she told her mother on March 8. “I go in a few days with the Morpeths to Chiswick as I cannot bear the sight and commiseration of people who think they have a right to see me.”15 She did not attend his funeral in case she betrayed her feelings. Her absence was noticed: the London Chronicle reported on March 16, “The Duchess of Devonshire was so much affected on receiving the account of the Duke of Bedford’s death that her Grace has ever since been indisposed.”16 But her secret was safe; Bedford had ordered the destruction of all his papers and no one knew about the loan. Georgiana had some satisfaction in watching the Duchess of Gordon make a fool of herself by insisting that the two had been officially engaged, in flat contradiction of Bedford’s brother, now the sixth Duke, who claimed that his brother had never expressed any intention of marrying Lady Georgiana.

  In answer to Lady Melbourne’s anxious enquiries about Georgiana, Bess wrote: “The Dss really scarcely coughs—she eats well (generally) and is in good spirits and tho’ very nervous at times, yet on the whole she is well. . . . her cold was not of that kind, and her vessels in general appear’d full—for you know when she is well she is apt to forget all caution and eats and drinks a good deal and yet don’t take exercise enough, but I really think her well or nearly so.”17 Georgiana was determined not to fail in her resolution to change. She curbed her personal expenditure and dedicated herself to organizing charity galas and fund-raisers. Among the artists who had cause to be grateful to her was Mrs. Jordan. “Was not this very handsome?” she asked the Duke of Clarence after Georgiana offered to be the patron of her benefit night.18 In June the London Chronicle carried a typical report: “On Saturday evening the Duchess of Devonshire gave a very superb entertainment to about 200 persons of distinction. . . . Previous to the supper there was music. The Prince of Wales was of the party, and the company did not depart till near four o’clock in the morning.”19 Something of Georgiana’s former celebrity had returned and she was mobbed whenever she appeared in public. Lady Spencer was not very sympathetic, “as to the crowds that follow you,” she wrote, “it is a small inconvenience to anybody used to crowds as you have been.”20

  However, Georgiana was plagued by more than crowds. Everyone in the family began to receive spiteful anonymous letters, even her daughters. Harriet wrote, “I found my Sister in a great fuss at one she had also receiv’d, very abusive of us all—Bess, K [the Duke of Devonshire], our whole Society, not omitting your Brother’s wife and Lord Carlisle, but chiefly again attacking me, saying my Sister had forbearance enough to stop short of danger and only took money from her lovers but that I . . .”21 Harriet suspected that the author was the same person behind the nasty paragraphs which appeared about them in the Morning Post: Sheridan. He had altered since his marriage to Hecca. Instead of being a drinker he was now a drunk, his love of melodrama had turned into a propensity for hysteria, and his humour had slipped into sarcasm and cynicism. Harriet was revolted by Sheridan now, but she had become an obsession for him. He stalked her movements and terrified her with his violent monologues. In August 1802 she was at home on her own, writing to Leveson Gower who was away (“alas! no chance of hearing your Step upon the stair”), when Sheridan barged his way into her hall. “I do not know why,” she related to Granville, “but I took a horror of seeing him, and hurried Sally down to say I was out. I heard him answer: ‘Tell her I call’d twice this morning and want particularly to see her, for I know she is at home.’ Sally protested I was out, and S answer’d: ‘Then I shall walk up and down before the door till she comes in,’ and there he is walking sure enough.”22

  It was no wonder that Georgiana and the Duke discouraged Sheridan from visiting Devonshire House. However, he was not their only worry. In the spring of 1803, a satiric novel about aristocratic society called A Winter in London became a cause célèbre. Its author, a previously unsuccessful writer named T. S. Surr, cruelly caricatured Georgiana in it as the Duchess of Belgrave, a well-meaning but hopelessly muddled woman who is continually involved in scrapes with fraudsters. In one incident she is tricked into paying a bribe to stop the publication of a libellous memoir about herself. In another, she tries to pawn some borrowed jewels, but is robbed by the maid she sends to the jeweller’s. “The Duchess was dreadfully hurt at the novel,” remembered Samuel Rogers, a Devonshire House acquaintance. “It contained various anecdotes concerning her which had been picked up from her confidential attendantes, and she thought, of course, that the little great world in which she lived was intimately acquainted with all her proceedings.”23 The portrayal was a hideous distortion and yet also accurate in some respects. The Duchess of Belgrave lends money she doesn’t have to people whom she has helped to get into debt, thereby compounding the evil to herself and others. “I will own to you I have been deeply hurt,” Georgiana told Coutts. It did not help that the Duchess of Gordon was also caricatured: in fact she received far worse treatment as the scheming Duchess of Drinkwater, who is ugly, bad-tempered, and only interested in securing rich dukes for her daughters.

  It hurt Georgiana to be reminded of her past just when she longed to make a fresh start. In a letter to Coutts she wrote, “I must make my future life (if I can snatch it from blame) an eminent example of good. And how is this to be done?” No one seemed to be prepared to forget. A few months before, she had been mortified when, during the general election in July 1802, the Morning Herald had mischievously claimed, “The Duchess of Devonshire, reports say, has commenced an active canvass in favour of Sir Frances Burdett.”24 Georgiana hastily denied the report:

  pray, Dst M., remember that tho’ Sir Francis is as a Derbyshire man supported by the D. and the Cavendishes, I never canvas, and have never done so since the great election [of 1784]. It was our stupid lawyer gave the toast meaning to allude to former times. The Duke says as he supports Sr. Francis I ought not to contradict the paragraphs because, if I ever did canvas, I must, of course, for the person he supports. But I wish you could convey this to my brother and Lavinia, that since the year 84 I never have ask’d a vote for Westminster or Middlesex, and the toast would not have been given but in the zeal of Mr Lowton our lawyer, who, I suppose, having the Duke’s orders for Byng and Burdett thought it right to pay a compliment to my former patriotism.25

  She was relieved when the Prince personally contradicted the story to the Queen, who, naturally, had been ready to believe the worst.

  Bess was not much help to Georgiana. All she could think about was her humiliation at the hands of the Duke of Richmond. She could not bear to live as Georgiana’s dependent friend again, so she chose instead to go to France. After the peace thousands of British tourists were flocking to Paris. Bess left in October 1802 with Caroline St. Jules and Frederick Foster to join the sightseers. She had an excuse for being there, and for her wretchedness, since they travelled with her niece Eliza Ellice, who was dying of tuberculosis. Georgiana had wanted the whole family to accompany her, but the Duke would not travel because of his gout. Her distress at being separated from her friend may have cheered Bess up a little. Georgiana wrote to her almost immediately after her departure:

  but I must not allow myself to tell you what I have felt and do still feel. I have been battling with my sad self all day not to make my head ache or make Ca uncomfortable, for he is very sorry too for our dr Racky [Bess]. And indeed I only feel now what I shall feel all the time you are gone. We had so pleasant a drive that Ca did not but regret the not having gone with you to Calais. . . . December may perhaps take us to you, and December will then become July. . . . Write me all the gossip dearest, and all the news. . . . Do you perfectly understand what it is to be separated by the sea? Since 87 we have breath’d the same atmosphere, and our separations have always been within the power of our own will to be reunited in a very few hours, but I will only hope as I most sincerely pray that ev’ry good and happiness may attend you. . . .26

  Bess was not alone fo
r long: Harriet and Lord Bessborough followed with their son Duncannon, who had recently alarmed them all by falling in love with Harryo, only to jilt her for Lady Jersey’s daughter Elizabeth. Harriet declared it would kill her to have Lady Jersey as her son’s mother-in-law, and the family hurriedly decamped to Paris. Morpeth and Little G, who was pregnant, also went to visit. Half of Whig society, including Fox and Mrs. Armistead, the Hollands, James Hare, and Robert Adair, followed. Just before his departure Charles Fox had informed his friends that he and Mrs. Armistead had been secretly married for seven years. The inhabitants of Devonshire House accepted the news calmly, and Georgiana wrote congratulating him; but “all his friends are very angry with him,” Harriet recorded. For herself, she saw nothing wrong in his formalizing a liaison of sixteen years. “The odd thing is that people who were shock’d at the immorality of his having a mistress are still more so at that mistress having been his wife for so long.”27 The new Mrs. Fox’s appearance created a squall among the English society ladies in Paris; no one wanted to recognize her, but no one wanted to be the first to issue the snub lest a duchess or some great lady broke ranks. Her visit proved to be a mixed success.

  Georgiana was miserable at being left behind to nurse the Duke. She promised her French friends that she would come over as soon as possible, knowing the Duke would find an excuse not to go. The English visitors found Paris much changed; no money had been spent on maintaining the fabric of the city for the past ten years because of the political instability there, and the centre was run-down and dirty. Bess complained that deference among the lower orders was non-existent, although she encountered little actual hostility. She made a half-hearted attempt to socialize with the new and ancien nobility. She was also aware of how much Georgiana’s children disliked her, and dreaded the Morpeths’ arrival. Georgiana argued with Little G about Bess and succeeded in making her promise to be kind. “I know how painful it is to force oneself, but in cases like this one must and for your sake as well as Bess’s,” she wrote. For them to ignore her “all the time you remained in Paris would have been extraordinary and would have been as bad for poor Bess as for you.”28

  The letters exchanged between Georgiana and Bess show the deep bond that existed between the two women. When they wrote to each other it was in the language of parted lovers: “My dear Bess,” Georgiana wrote plaintively in December. “Do you hear the voice of my heart crying to you? Do you feel what it is for me to be separated from you, or do new scenes and occupations obliterate the image of a poor, dull, useless, insignificant being such as myself?”29 In turn, when Bess was low she imagined Georgiana no longer needing her: “don’t forget,” she pleaded. “I don’t mean that, but don’t accustom yourself to do without poor little me.”30 The reports of Georgiana’s activities as the doyenne of the Whig party made her feel unwanted and insignificant. Devonshire House was regaining its former stature, and with the peace looking unsteady there was speculation that Addington’s government would have to go.

  Georgiana was better informed of Napoleon’s intentions than most government ministers. In the manner of his predecessor, Count d’ Adhémar, the French ambassador Andreossi treated Devonshire House as if it were his club, coming to dine most days in order to glean information which was casually exchanged there.31 After the French annexed Piedmont in September, and invaded Switzerland in October, it was clear to almost everyone that they had no intention of honouring the Treaty of Amiens. But Georgiana hoped—mistakenly, since Napoleon had no wish for peace with Britain—that if Fox were Prime Minister his reputation as a Francophile might make it easier for him to negotiate with the First Consul. She wrote to Fox at the end of October 1802, asking him to return quickly to resume his old place in politics.

  Only three issues, Fox claimed, interested him now: parliamentary reform “in some shape or other—Abolition of all Religious Tests as to Civil Matters, and Abolition of the Slave Trade.”32 He replied to Georgiana’s letter, saying, “I am more and more for complete retirement.” She did not believe him and as soon as he arrived in London arranged for him to meet her brother for an informal talk. George and the Grenvilles were debating whether to make a stand against Addington, and a coalition with Fox was not out of the question. Georgiana was certain that if they did not make the mistakes of the nineties, the old opposition and new opposition might coalesce. “Do you not therefore think we may at least see Mr Fox in office? It is not only my ardent wish from my opinion of him independent of my love for him, but I have 1,000 reasons for wishing it.”33 Georgiana spent the next few months consolidating her contacts in each of the factions by holding political dinners almost every night. There were sympathizers from the old Whig party who had joined Pitt, such as Lord Fitzwilliam and Thomas Grenville, who were more than happy to sit down with their former colleagues.

  Fox, however, was still absurdly insisting that Napoleon wished for peace with England right up until the French invasion of Malta. He refused to attack Addington as long as the Prime Minister maintained his pacific stance. Since Fox was not interested in participating, Georgiana could do little with the links she was forging between the main political factions.

  Bess returned to England just before Britain declared war on France on May 18, 1803. Eliza Ellice, her niece, had died. Bess had wanted to stay longer to look after her sister-in-law Lady Hervey, but it was not prudent for English visitors to remain abroad. Several thousand of them, including James Hare, were trapped and declared prisoners of war when war broke out. Bess’s depression lifted when she saw how the domestic situation at Devonshire House had changed during her absence. The Duke and Georgiana had entered a bad patch and were both desperate for her company. Georgiana’s re-emergence as a popular political figure may have been the cause, since she no longer had the time nor the inclination to devote herself to his needs. The Duke missed having her constant attention, and remembered with nostalgia how well Bess had played the part of nurse. He wrote to her several times emphasizing how anxious he was for her to come and assuring her of his “fixed and unalterable” friendship. Bess accepted his offer of her old position without hesitation. She resumed her role as intermediary between the Duke and Georgiana even before she reached home: “Ca tells me that he has not been quite well for these ten days,” she counselled Georgiana. “I think perhaps you have mistaken his not being well for being in a moo.”34

  Bess’s arrival in London coincided with Harryo’s and Caroline Ponsonby’s presentation. She made no attempt to have Caroline St. Jules presented as a French émigrée, although some people thought she might, but watched enviously as Georgiana’s daughter rode off in a train of carriages. Whatever had been given to her in life, she felt, had been offset by what lay out of her reach. She also noticed that Georgiana’s welcome was a little distracted; politics was consuming all her time. As usual, there was fierce debate in the party over strategy. The resumption of war was an important development, but Fox was not sure what benefits it would bring the Whigs: “But tho’ the present state of things has certainly given a kind of importance to our Party which it has not had of late years,” he mused, “it is by no means clear how we ought to use what little power we have.”35

  Georgiana disagreed. The way forward was clear to her: the Whigs should join forces with the other opposition parties.

  CHAPTER 23

  THE DOYENNE

  OF THE WHIG PARTY

  1803–1804

  The Duchess of Gordon pretends to have traced to a rival Duchess, the expressions attributed to Lord Cun[ningha]m. Their Graces met at the Drawing Room on Saturday last and exchanged looks.

  Morning Herald, June 8, 1803

  His Grace the Duke of Bedford has erected in the Garden at Woburn, a Temple consecrated to Friendship, and decorated with busts and poetical tributes to his most valued intimates. The bust of Mr. Fox is honoured with some beautiful lines, from the elegant pen of the Duchess of Devonshire.

  Morning Herald, July 2, 1804

  Among the tourists
returning from France was the new Duchess of Bedford, the former Lady Georgiana Gordon. The sixth Duke had naturally gone out of his way during his visit to Paris to be courteous to his late brother’s putative fiancée and, almost in spite of himself—certainly in spite of his Whig friends—found himself proposing before he departed. Georgiana attributed the engagement to the Duke’s generosity of heart, which had prompted him to rescue the girl from her ambitious mother. The woman in question strode into the Opera House on her return to London with an air of triumph such as befits a mother who has married off her daughters to three dukes and a marquess. The audience turned as one to hail the Duchess of Gordon’s entrance and applauded her as she took her seat.

  Georgiana tried very hard not to be bitter about the marriage and instead concentrated on preparing Harryo for her season. She did not feel as comfortable with Harryo as she had with Little G: Harryo was too quick to judge and not afraid to speak her mind, which disconcerted her mother. Harryo’s obvious contempt for Bess also strained relations between them. The terms under which Bess had returned to Devonshire House had not escaped Harryo’s notice, and it made her resent the woman more than ever. As for her father—she despised him for preferring the ridiculous Bess to her mother. While the family was staying in Bath she complained to Little G: “Our mode of life is not diversified. We are still in this Hotel, Papa thinking it, I believe, Paradise regained. Lady Eliz. and Sidney [the dog] both unwell, both whining and both finally as agreeable as you know I always think them. Mama, in an hotel, as everywhere else, kinder more indulgent and more unlike the Lady or the Dog, than I can express.”1