The Mistresses of Cliveden: Three Centuries of Scandal, Power and Intrigue in an English Stately Home

by Natalie Livingstone

  The Duchess of Sutherland in her Coronation Robes. Harriet played an important role in Victoria’s coronation.

  Lord Melbourne was also a vocal admirer of Harriet, to Victoria’s occasional irritation. Victoria’s journals from the late 1830s recount a number of episodes that illuminate the various jealousies, suspicions and loyalties of this three-way relationship. ‘I never liked letting the Duchess of Sutherland sit near him (which she happened to do)’ the queen noted one evening in August 1839, ‘as she always took him quite away, by talking to him … Lord M. said it was not her fault, and laughed.’19 In spite of her occasional jealousy, Victoria usually stood up to Harriet, even if it meant disagreeing with Melbourne: in December 1839, the queen rebuked Melbourne for accusing Harriet of flirting with the Duke of Richmond.20 These were minor episodes of tension in the otherwise solid friendship between the queen and her Mistress of the Robes. Soon, however, the women’s friendship would come under the national spotlight in the first political crisis of Victoria’s reign.

  Chapter 6

  CRISIS IN THE BEDCHAMBER

  ‘ALL ALL MY happiness gone!’ Victoria mourned in her journal. ‘That happy peaceful life destroyed!’1 In the spring of 1839, the young queen faced the biggest crisis of her reign. Events had unfolded at an alarming pace. On 7 May, her beloved Lord Melbourne was forced to resign due to insufficient parliamentary support. The next day, Victoria reluctantly summoned Robert Peel to form a new ministry. Under Peel’s leadership, the Tory party had taken steps away from the reactionary politics of the Duke of Wellington and was increasingly referred to as the Conservative Party. But their disagreements with the Whigs were still significant and Peel was only willing to form a ministry on the condition that Victoria dismiss her ladies of the bedchamber, in particular her Mistress of the Robes. If Victoria acquiesced, she would lose Harriet, her dearest and most loyal ally. If she refused, she would appear truculent and spoilt at best, at worst autocratic and absolutist. Overwhelmed with a mixture of fear and fury, the 20-year-old queen agonised over the decision. ‘I felt too wretched; the change; the awful, incomprehensible change that had taken place, drove me really to distraction,’ she noted in her journal, ‘and with the exception of walking up and down the room… I could do nothing.’2

  Peel had made a convincing case for Victoria to dismiss her ladies. It would be impossible, he argued, to head a new Tory ministry without the complete support of the queen. Although a monarch was expected to keep a dignified distance from political partisanship, it was widely known that Victoria had Whig sympathies. The Times of 15 May 1839 highlighted this by listing each Lady of the Queen’s Bedchamber and their political allegiance: Victoria was demonstrably surrounded entirely by Whig appointees. Aware of the Whig dominance in the royal household, Peel insisted that Victoria replace her Whig attendants with the wives of Tory politicians.

  At the core of Peel and Victoria’s disagreement lay a constitutional question concerning the role of the bedchamber.3 It had been over a century since there was last a queen regnant, Queen Anne, so the precedent for who controlled appointments to the queen’s bedchamber was unclear. While Peel viewed the bedchamber patriarchally as an extension of the political sphere, and therefore the rightful domain of the current prime minister, Victoria saw it as a domestic space. ‘Was Sir Robert so weak,’ she taunted him, ‘that even ladies must be of his opinion?’4 She even argued, rather tenuously, that they never discussed politics – only ‘music and horses’. The public responded sceptically to these claims, and Victoria’s protestations of neutrality were widely perceived as a ploy by Melbourne to maintain influence over the queen during Peel’s ministry. In one cartoon a satirical parallel was drawn between the bedchamber crisis and the taking of Zhoushan, in what is now known as the First Opium War (1839–42). It was reported in The Times that when British troops took the port of Zhoushan, they found the place deserted, except for one old man holding a sign that read: ‘Spare us for the sake of our wives and children’. In the cartoon, Melbourne is represented as a Chinese man, holding a similar sign, as a last-ditch attempt to keep possession of the government against the advancing Tories.5

  There was also a moral dimension to Peel’s argument. Shortly before the bedchamber debacle, a political scandal had erupted over Lady Flora Hastings, a lady-in-waiting to the Duchess of Kent, Victoria’s mother.6 Lady Flora was from a Tory family and was known to hold Tory sympathies. In early 1839, Victoria had noticed a swelling in Flora’s abdomen and became convinced that she was pregnant with the child of John Conroy, the favourite of the Duchess of Kent. The queen was furious and insisted Flora be summarily dismissed from court. A subsequent medical examination, however, revealed that Lady Flora was not pregnant, but gravely ill. When she died in July 1839, the Tory political press made much of this scandal, portraying Flora as the innocent victim of a callous monarch presiding over a depraved Whig court.7 The Flora Hastings affair became, for many detractors of the queen, a symbol of Victoria’s abuse of power. Seen in this context, Peel’s attempt to remove Victoria’s existing Whig ladies of the bedchamber was an effort to solve the queen’s public image problem. However, by acquiescing to his demands, Victoria would be conceding that her Whig ladies were a malign influence.8

  After three more days of pacing, hysteria and self-imposed starvation, Victoria came to a decision. Incandescent that political exigencies had stripped her of Melbourne, she adamantly refused to sacrifice her ladies, especially Harriet. Faced with losing her dearest friend or maintaining the stability of her government, Victoria chose the former. On 9 May she informed Peel that the ladies of the bedchamber were of no concern to him. Enraged by Victoria’s intransigence, and without a political majority in the House of Commons, Peel declined to form a new ministry. Lord Melbourne was reinstated. The unyielding, headstrong queen had got her way.

  On the morning of 16 May 1838, Harriet had given birth to her eighth child, a daughter named Victoria. The christening had taken place at Stafford House and Victoria recorded the duchess looking ‘lovely’ in an off-white dress. On her wrist she wore a gift from Victoria – an enamel bracelet decorated with the queen’s likeness. On 19 June 1839, only weeks after the bedchamber crisis, baby Victoria suffered a seizure and died. The queen lamented that she was ‘so very sorry’ about little Victoria’s death, ‘particularly as she was my godchild’.9 Although deeply affected by the loss, remaining ‘pale, sad and low’ for some weeks, Harriet did not succumb to the depression she had suffered after Blanche’s death. This was in no small part due to Victoria’s unswerving support. The queen corresponded with Harriet on a daily basis, sometimes writing to her twice in one day. She frequently dined with her, visited her at home, spent time with her children and accompanied her to church. In August, Harriet showed her appreciation for Victoria’s support by throwing a banquet in her honour. The queen recorded the evening in her journal, marvelling at the splendour of Stafford House. ‘The Duchess showed us all the pretty rooms downstairs, and then took us up to see her beautiful bathroom, bedroom, dressing room, and sitting room,’ Victoria noted. ‘We then went upstairs, and the hall and staircase, lit up, with a band in it, was really the handsomest thing I ever saw.’10 Victoria finished the evening as she had ended so many others, by sitting next to Harriet on the sofa in an intimate tête-à-tête.

  In October 1839 Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg, Victoria’s cousin, visited Windsor Castle. Victoria was impressed by his good looks and youthful zeal. ‘Such beautiful blue eyes, an exquisite nose and such a pretty mouth,’ she noted in her journal, ‘a beautiful figure, broad in the shoulders and fine waist.’11 Protocol dictated that as Queen of England, Victoria had to propose to her future husband. The wedding took place on the rainy day of 10 February 1840; Victoria wore a white satin dress trimmed with English Honiton lace, and a simple wreath of orange blossom on her head. Harriet accompanied her in the carriage from the Palace to the Chapel Royal at St James’s.

  Meanwhile, the consequences of Victoria
’s intransigence continued to be felt in Parliament. Victoria’s refusal to capitulate to Peel had consigned Lord Melbourne to two more years of ineffective minority government. By early May 1841, his position had once again become untenable. The prospect of another governmental collapse resurrected the controversy over appointment to the bedchamber. On this occasion, however, the topic was handled differently, to a large extent due to the stabilising influence of Victoria’s new husband.

  The political negotiations of 1841 were led by Albert’s secretary, George Anson, who represented a far more conciliatory queen than Peel had encountered two years earlier. It was thus agreed that, if the government resigned, the queen would draw up a list of acceptable replacements as ladies of the bedchamber; Peel would choose his appointees from this shortlist. The government in fact decided not to resign but to request the dissolution of Parliament. The ensuing general election of 1841 provided the Tories with a parliamentary majority and a new ministry was formed in August. In the following days, the three main Whig ladies at court – the Duchess of Bedford, Lady Normanby, and Harriet – tendered their resignation. They realised that Peel’s vision of a politically subservient bedchamber had, with time and marriage, won out over Victoria’s opposing view.

  Victoria, although saddened by the loss of Harriet, was more sanguine this time. ‘I saw the Duchess of Sutherland and said how grieved I was to lose her,’ she noted on 28 August 1841, ‘but that I only consider it temporary and should always consider her as belonging to me.’12 The hiatus in Harriet’s official role was to last five years. In 1846, a new Whig government under Lord John Russell was formed and, in keeping with the precedent of 1841, Whig ladies were once again invited into the bedchamber. Harriet was reinstated as Mistress of the Robes. ‘The Duchess of Sutherland will accept, & I had a very kind letter from her about it,’ Victoria wrote in relief.13 This pattern of appointment and resignation as governments rose and fell was to continue for the next 20 years of Harriet’s life.

  During the 1840s, Harriet’s family continued to grow. In 1843, she gave birth to Albert, for whom Victoria’s husband stood as godfather; baby Ronald followed two years later. In 1848, at the age of 43, Harriet gave birth to her last child. Victoria was appointed godmother to the ‘lovely’ Aline, whose name was a shortening of Alexandrina, the given first name of the queen.

  The exuberance of Aline’s christening celebrations belied the aristocracy’s apprehension at the resurgence of political unrest in Britain and throughout Europe. In 1848, the Continent was struck by a series of revolutionary upheavals that were, and are, without parallel in European history. The first significant revolt occurred in Sicily in January, though this was little commented upon at the time. In February, revolution in France led to the overthrow of Louis-Philippe’s constitutional monarchy, and the establishment of the French Second Republic. During the spring, there were revolutions and attempted revolutions in Germany, Denmark, Poland, Ireland, across the Habsburg Empire, and in several Latin American countries. In Britain, meanwhile, the pacifying effect of the 1832 Reform Act had worn off. Protests for parliamentary reform erupted across the country once again: this time the demand was for full male enfranchisement.

  On 10 April, 150,000 people marched to Westminster to present to Parliament the ‘People’s Charter’, an immense petition demanding drastic reforms such as universal male suffrage, annual elections to Parliament and the secret ballot. The Charter was signed by five million people, making it so large that it would have to be taken to Parliament on a farm wagon pulled by four horses. Its delivery was preceded by a ‘monster rally’ on Kennington Common, an event that remains the biggest political rally in British history, and was captured in one of the earliest political photographs. Royals and aristocrats held their breath. Was this to be a peaceful call for reform or a presage to bloody revolution? Harriet and Victoria would have been well aware that a ‘Charter’ had marked the beginning of the demise of the regime of Charles X in 1830. In anticipation of the People’s Charter, 85,000 men were recruited to supplement the 4,000-strong police force of Sir Robert Peel, and 8,000 troops were summoned to the capital. Volumes of Hansard were used to barricade the doors of government offices against the crowd, and Victoria was advised to take refuge on the Isle of Wight.

  In the final analysis, fears of a British revolution proved to be overstated and the ‘Chartists’ protested peacefully. But the scare highlighted how easily a government might be toppled under the weight of popular protest. Victoria noted many occasions on which she was booed and hissed at as she travelled through London. On 19 May the following year an attempt was made on the queen’s life by Irishman William Hamilton, who fired a pistol at her carriage as it crossed Constitution Hill. As it turned out, the pistol contained powder but no bullet, but it was enough to shatter the already frayed nerves of the court. Despite claiming she was unruffled, in the immediate aftermath of the incident Victoria sought comfort in the reassuring company of Harriet. ‘Saw the Dss of Sutherland with my godchild who is a real beauty,’ she wrote the day after the shooting, ‘with such blue eyes & a very small mouth.’14

  Harriet also craved refuge from the tumultuous events of the time. She needed respite, a base away from the seething metropolis of London, but sufficiently close to her beloved queen. It was vital for Harriet to maintain what she would later refer to as ‘that privilege of place and intimacy’. She found her answer in Cliveden.

  Chapter 7

  A MARRIAGE, A DEATH AND A BLAZE

  HARRIET FIRST VIEWED Cliveden in early 1849. In terms of scale and grandeur, Cliveden could not compete with Stafford House, but Harriet was drawn to its charm and potential as a domestic retreat. It was the view from the back of the house, what her son Ronald would remember as ‘Cliveden’s secret landscape’, that most appealed to her. Because of the legal doctrine of coverture, under which all of a married woman’s rights and obligations were subsumed by her husband, it was necessary for George to buy the house and then sign a conveyance that gave Harriet effective ownership of the property by permitting her to ‘hold, occupy and enjoy the said hereditaments [Cliveden] for her life and during her coverture as her separate estate and freed in all respect from the interference of the said George Granville Duke and Earl of Sutherland his heirs or assigns.’1 The property had come on the market due to the death of its previous owner, the politician Sir George Warrender, who had bought the house from the Orkneys in 1824, and commissioned the architect William Burn to replace the main block, which by that time had been burnt out for some 30 years. From the outset, the Sutherlands had decided that Cliveden would be Harriet’s house. It was a perfect family home and later an ideal setting in which to entertain her political circle. For the next 20 years, Cliveden would become Harriet’s most rewarding project, her calm retreat and enduring legacy.

  On 27 June 1849, before the conveyance had even been processed, Harriet hosted her first event at Cliveden, the wedding of her eldest son George, now 20, to Anne Hay Mackenzie. Due to the failing health of Anne’s father, Harriet had volunteered to oversee every aspect of the nuptials. The silk weavers of Spitalfields, whom Augusta had championed a century earlier, were commissioned to create gowns for the bridal party. Harriet’s own dress was a white silk and lace affair, while Anne chose a more modest white lace dress to reflect her bridal innocence; she carried a wreath of orange blossoms and myrtle, a homage to Queen Victoria’s wedding bouquet.

  Decades later Harriet’s son Ronald recalled the bustling activity of the wedding day.2 Scores of servants scurried around the grounds placing large vases brimming over with Harriet’s favourite white camellias; vast platters of meats garnished with rare chutneys and spices from India were arranged on an immense banqueting table, to be followed by sherbets and ice creams, and platters of ripe and jellied fruits. Wax candles in ornamental gold candelabras decorated the spread. George and Anne’s wedding cake towered over this decadent feast. It was a rich, dark fruitcake, with white royal icing and decorated wi
th sprigs of flowers. As had been the fashion since Queen Victoria’s wedding in 1840, a model of the bride and groom surveyed the room from atop the cake. The rail link from London had opened during Warrender’s ownership, and all morning a steady stream of carriages transported London’s elite, from Taplow station, to the estate. At ten o’clock in the morning, Anne swept into the drawing room, which had been designated for the ceremony, and shortly after, the Dean of Lichfield pronounced the couple man and wife.

  Later, as the party was in full flow, a maid summoned Harriet to Aline’s room. The previous day Aline had been well enough to go out in the grounds and pick flowers for the wedding bouquets, but during the ceremony she had developed a fever. The child’s condition had deteriorated precipitously in the course of the afternoon, and she now looked dangerously ill. In the absence of a doctor, Aline was tended to by the maids, who were unable to do anything more than cool her with wet towels. Just before dawn she stopped breathing. This was the third daughter Harriet had lost, and Aline’s death was even more sudden and senseless than the previous two.

  Harriet was inconsolable; the dark shadow of depression that had possessed her after the death of Blanche crept over her once again. In her grief she withdrew herself from society, rejecting even Victoria’s company – between Aline’s death in June and the following November, there are virtually no references to Harriet in the queen’s journal. Cliveden, which just months before had represented an exciting future, was now a painful reminder of Aline. In her grief Harriet fled to the Highlands, where she and George retraced their melancholic steps of 1832 back to Dunrobin Castle. Her decision to spend time away from Cliveden would have catastrophic consequences.