[H]e has been at a great deal of trouble & for some time, & I believe had not great hopes of succeeding, I was as you would be certain of, quite wild with joy, when I heard he had carried his point, the division was 154 to 45, all the minority of course were with us, we had also the Duke of Grafton’s interest, . . .
“I am happy that the captains of the navy have triumphed over the misère of Downing Street,” wrote Lord Chatham approvingly when he heard the news.63 Like all the Howes, Richard was a political pragmatist, but one who was willing to take a stand when he knew the cause to be a just one. His care of those subordinate to him in rank in the naval service was a conspicuous attribute, and one that made him a popular officer. Richard’s maintenance of independence in the political arena, without being a radical or an agitator, was a significant factor in the role he was to play in the American crisis that was just a few years away.
In late August 1769, Caroline Howe, just forty-seven, suffered a seismic change in her life when John Howe died suddenly at their London home in Bolton Row.64 He was barely sixty. No letters on Caroline’s side survive, but Lady Spencer’s concerned replies give an idea of their tone—open, straightforward, and honest, conveying a natural sense of her loss of a husband and a married life that had been one of quiet companionability. “Your letter my Dear Howey conveys every sentiment a heart like yours must feel, in the most natural & consequently the most affecting manner, I flatter myself the writing of it was some relief to you, & I assure you the reading it was to me.” Howey, she urged, must write again soon: “I shall be impatient to hear from you toward the latter end of the Week, when I trust you will be much Calmer.” Caroline could be relied upon not to make a fuss. “I depend upon your own fortitude & resolution to support you,” wrote Lady Spencer hopefully, for she was unable to pay an immediate visit to her friend, “& I have the Comfort of being sure you will exert it to the utmost.”65
Fourteen years later, when Lady Spencer in turn lost her husband, she would react very differently, churning out an emotional diary and a voluminous cache of letters addressed to Caroline that minutely documented her feelings as the events surrounding the death of Lord Spencer played out.66 The need to vent to a sympathetic listener seemed to be a Spencer family trait; Lady Spencer’s famous daughter the Duchess of Devonshire regularly poured her heart out to her bosom companion, Lady Elizabeth Foster. Caroline, meantime, spent the month following the death of her husband recuperating in the countryside. In October 1769, back in London, she told an inquiring friend that she was well, with only “some degree of nervous complaints.”67 After that, life seemed to go back into the usual grooves.
But of course, something very important had changed for Caroline. She was now an independent widow in her late forties, with more personal freedom than at any other time in her life. No longer did she need to frame her plans to Lady Spencer with “Mr Howe discourages it,” or “he leaves me quite at liberty to determine for myself.”68 The most striking difference was that her life became more centered on London. John Howe’s favorite hunting grounds at Wakefield, Euston, and Grantham receded into the background. Hanslope, too, became a thing of the past, although Caroline would not finally sell Stokes Manor until 1774.69
In 1771, Caroline moved into a townhouse at Number 12 Grafton Street in the Mayfair district of London. This would be her home for most of the rest of her life. The house was part of a new development on land held by the Duke of Grafton. Richard moved at the same time, into Number 3. The two houses were just around the corner from their mother Charlotte’s house in Albemarle Street. Richard’s new residence, larger than Caroline’s, was part of “the grandest section of the whole scheme,” and perhaps this is why Number 3 still stands today. Caroline’s house was an ordinary gentrified dwelling of the time in its dimensions, but all of the new houses were unique and incorporated the elegant features characteristic of Georgian London’s luxury premises, such as vaulted entrance halls, ornate plasterwork, and classical columns in both the exterior doorways and the blind arcades of interior walls.
Photographs survive of the north terrace of Grafton Street before its demolition, with the striking canted bay windows of Number 12 in evidence. Caroline also acquired the adjacent house at Number 11. MP John Crawfurd—“Fish” Crawfurd, as he was known—lived at Number 10 and was one of the many regular callers on Caroline in her new, stylish townhouse.70
Number 12 Grafton Street, viewed from Albemarle Street, London. The bay windows of Caroline’s house are visible. The house was redressed with a terracotta façade in the nineteenth century; originally its facing resembled that of Number 11, barely visible here on its left. When this photograph was taken in 1964, Number 12 was the premises for Sawyer Booksellers. It has since been demolished.
At Grafton Street, Caroline Howe was not a political hostess in the style of her friend, Lady Spencer. The influential aristocratic hostesses of the period required wealthy husbands and correspondingly palatial London residences that could accommodate large formal dinners and balls. Widows of the period were unlikely to have the requisite domestic space, and, in any case, Caroline lacked the income for extravagant entertainment.71 Nevertheless, as we will see, the politically active found their way with regularity to her Grafton Street drawing room. The widowed Mrs. Howe kept abreast of the doings of London society—its political battles, domestic conflicts, heartbreaks, and aspirations—by drawing people to her fireside. She could not enter the exclusively male domains of her brother Richard, but her wit, her warmth, and a deck of cards often brought the denizens of that world to her.
The first-floor landing of Admiral Howe’s residence at 3 Grafton Street. Located on the west terrace, it forms part of the grandest section of dwellings on the street. The exterior of Number 3 is plain, apart from handsome columned door frames, but the interiors boast marble staircases and magnificent plasterwork.
Once she settled into her new home, Caroline’s drawing room became a gathering place for a select group of friends, relatives, and political gossips. The Howes, the Spencers, the Devonshires, and many others came and went. She left a lively description of a typical afternoon. Sitting down to her household accounts at noontime, “before I cd. get thro’ that, Col Mordaunt came, & soon after Sir Fran[ci]s Molyneux. As he rose to go in walked Ld Fred: [Cavendish] who greeted me with a how do you.” No sooner was Lord Frederick dispatched when “Mrs Heywood came. After all were gone” (by this time it was 3 p.m.) “I finished my money matter, have writ thus far, must now read my newspapers, then dress my head for the opera.”72
Much of the cast of characters on this particular occasion were relatives of one sort or another. Cousin Mordaunt, one of Aunt Anne’s sons, was also a regular part of the Spencer set and a member of the Althorp Hunt.73 The Molyneux family were distant kin and neighbors from Caroline’s juvenile years in Nottinghamshire. “Mrs Heywood” was Catherine Heywood, née Hartopp, the sister of Lady Howe. Lord Frederick Cavendish was an army officer and an old comrade of Richard’s from the amphibious raids on France. One of the aristocratic and politically influential Cavendish family, he remained for life a handsome bachelor and called frequently at Number 12.74
Caroline liked male company, sometimes telling her servants not to admit ladies: “[Y]ou understand the diff[erence] of letting in men only,” she explained to Lady Spencer,
one picks up news, one can say go, one likes their chat in general better than what one has with the other sex, still I mean in general, reasons sufficient I think. Sad paper this;—well! I read a note, set about answering it, in walks [my brother] William, we talked whilst he franked [a letter], then another dear man came; it was [George Spencer] Ld. Althorp, he went away a minute before William, . . .
and Caroline resumed her note until she heard once again upon her front door “a rap; up they brought Ly Irwin, very pleasant and agreeable, a sensible companion is she, we talked & talked” until joined by Lady Waldegrave and Miss Lloyd. And so the day flew by.75 It is no wonder that Horace
Walpole called Caroline well informed.76
In the privacy of her home, Caroline could indulge her lifelong love of learning, purchasing the latest publications in science, exploration, and fiction. Her letters over many decades throw up a serendipitous picture of her literary tastes, which were profoundly eclectic: Smollett’s Humphry Clinker, Miss Burney’s Evelina, The Female Quixote by Charlotte Lennox, all testify to her avowed love of novels (“idle books,” she called them). She admired the plays of Colley Cibber, and scolded Lady Spencer: “What never read before The Careless Husband? I believe it is reckoned the best of Cibbers, & has been much admired. You do come out sometimes with some pretty ignorancies.” She consented to read Hugh Blair’s immensely popular Sermons, much commended by Lady Spencer, but remarked, “I do not expect he will cause me to submit more quietly than I already am disposed to do, & which all people in their senses should do, to any evil, that is absolutely unavoidable.” She read Shakespeare and Pope, Swift and Addison, Cumberland and Voltaire. Benjamin Franklin would find that she followed keenly the most recent scientific discoveries in the publications of the Royal Society. At the age of forty, she was commenting to Lady Spencer that it was horrid weather for everything “but reading Hooke,” hardly an enthusiastic endorsement for what was probably The Posthumous Works of Robert Hooke, the natural philosopher. She read the classics—the names of Virgil, Plutarch, Homer, Aeschylus, Horace, and Thucydides all appear.
She enjoyed studying languages. She could read fluently in French, and also, with a little effort, in Italian. From her youth, she could read and write in Latin, and, at the end of the American War of Independence, she and Lady Spencer began to study ancient Greek together. She was struggling with a Greek translation on Christmas Day in 1783, and the joint labors of the two friends would continue over many years, as usual with a vein of competition on Caroline’s part. “You are got so forward & so far beyond me [with ancient languages], that I will not read a word of either Greek or Latin whilst I am on my next visit to you, & expect you will answer to this, Vanity, envy & Jealousy—may be so, but so it must be.”77 Book catalogs kept Caroline up to date with the latest publications, and she purchased the most intriguing titles just as soon as they came out—for example, Lord Chesterfield’s Letters to His Son in 1774, and, three years later, Robert Watson’s The History of the Reign of Philip the Second, King of Spain, the first authoritative book in English on the subject. Living as she did in an age of exploration, travel books abounded, and Caroline, who had never been abroad since she was a girl in Barbados, loved them. She read Joseph Banks’s Letters on Iceland and Eyles Irwin’s A Series of Adventures in the Course of a Voyage up the Red-Sea in 1780, the year both titles appeared. She was lucky enough to have access to the manuscript version of an early account of New South Wales, An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island, published in 1793 by naval officer John Hunter, who was serving on HMS Queen Charlotte under Lord Howe at the time. Australia had captured her imagination since its earliest British settlement, and in 1802 she snapped up the second volume of David Collins’s An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales.78
This was the heyday of the famous Bluestocking circle, a network of intellectuals and lovers of learning whose meetings were hosted at the homes of a set of wealthy women. Inspired by the French salons of the eighteenth century, the Bluestocking assemblies aimed to be enjoyable as well as intellectually stimulating, but they eschewed the cardplaying and political gossip that was endemic at fashionable West End parties. In this respect, they were not the natural environment of Caroline Howe. Nevertheless, she counted the eminent Bluestocking hostesses Elizabeth Montagu and Elizabeth Vesey among her friends, writing to Lady Spencer, “I was very much amused at a blue stockings at Mrs. Vezey’s & staid till betwixt 11 & 12 without being in the least tired.”79 Elizabeth Montagu left a brief tribute to Caroline shortly after the death of George Augustus Lord Howe in the Seven Years’ War, writing to a friend, “I am very glad you are acquainted with Mrs. Howe, and do not wonder you are charmed with her. There is an inexpressible magnanimity about her without any thing fierce or masculine.”80 Men described Caroline as masculine; Bluestocking hostesses did not.
WHEN SHE WALKED OUT of her front door onto Grafton Street, a wide world of choice confronted Caroline, for a well-to-do middle-aged widow could visit many places in Georgian London without a male escort. Like her Aunt Pembroke, she loved the opera. By the time Caroline had moved into Grafton Street, King’s Theatre in Haymarket was one of the leading European venues for Italian opera, which, with its exotic settings and continental performers, had electrified London aristocracy since the days of George I. It remained both expensive and exclusive throughout the century, but it also made attendance at other musical performances both fashionable and popular. Concert halls of many flavors were proliferating, but Caroline remained devoted to the opera.81 It was not just the music. The irrepressible tendency of Georgian London to turn every venue into a club meant that King’s Theatre was a center for court intrigue, gossip, and flirtations by the wealthy.82
In the same year that Caroline moved into Grafton Street, the Ladies’ Coterie opened at Almack’s Club in Pall Mall. This was the first mixed-sex club for gambling and sociability. Despite its name, both men and women were admitted. It was the brainchild of a set of leading society ladies.83 No records of the club’s activities survive, but Caroline—who called it the Ladies’ Club, and attended regularly—mentioned cardplaying and dining. Members had to be admitted by ballot.84 Caroline’s brother Thomas, and her sister Charlotte and husband Robert Fettiplace, were among the earliest members, as well as a host of other members of her West End circle.85
However elevated its membership, the Ladies’ Coterie came under fire in the newspapers as another instance of the deplorable trend toward female independence that ill-became the high-ranking women who joined.86 The Bath Chronicle published a satirical account of “a brilliant meeting of the members of the Coterie,” supposedly attended by a list of well-known adulteresses, including the former Duchess of Grafton, Lady Ossory.87 Attacks of this sort had no effect on Caroline, who described the club a year later as “very flourishing.”88
With her expenses as a widow now entirely under her own control, Caroline was free to indulge her liking for betting at cards. She referred good-naturedly to “me, & my gambling,” tacitly admitting the risky recreation as part of who she was. She played weekly at the residence of Princess Amelia—“My princess day,” as she called it to Lady Spencer.89 It was five years after the death of John Howe that Lady Mary Coke, another regular attendee in Amelia’s circle, wrote of being ushered into the drawing room of the princess, “where I found the usual party, but a change in the playing that I extremely disapprove.” Caroline Howe had raised the stakes significantly, “for which I think her much to blame,” and Lady Mary told her so.90 Caroline made a practice of ignoring the fastidious Lady Mary, of whom more later. Over the years, she won and lost, but she had too much good sense to risk the financial ruin that befell so many of her aristocratic contemporaries.
When Caroline ventured outside of London as a widow, she typically visited the Spencers at Althorp, her brothers, and her sister Mary Pitt. William Howe became lieutenant governor of the Isle of Wight in 1768.91 He and Fanny stayed at Somerley in West Sussex. In 1772, Richard purchased a country seat at Porter’s Lodge in Hertfordshire, which became his principal residence for the rest of his life.92 Sister Mary and her husband, William Augustus Pitt, still serving in the army, lived at Heckfield Park in Hampshire.93 And Battlesden, where Aunt Page had lived alone since becoming a widow in 1763, continued to be frequented by Caroline and her siblings, just as they had done in childhood.
Caroline also visited her husband’s old friend Matthew Raper at his home in Thorley, Hertfordshire. No longer did she sit apart while the men “conjured” on scientific questions of the day and the activities of British explorers. Caroline was interested in these
things in her own right, and she was a favorite with confirmed bachelor Mr. Raper. Despite the fact that he was old enough to be Caroline’s father, her sister Julie disapproved of the unchaperoned stays at Thorley Hall. She confided to Lady Spencer, “Howey is at Battlesden, she goes from thence next Saturday for a week to Mr Rapers, which I don’t approve of at all for her.”94 Yet Matthew Raper was an old friend whose discretion Caroline could count on; she would rely on him soon, in the crisis over the American colonies that followed the Boston Tea Party.
Other changes were in the wind for Caroline. In 1771, Thomas, who was living with his sister Julie and his mother, the Dowager Lady Howe, fell seriously ill. It began in August. Julie described pain and swelling in his legs, sickness, and weakness, calling it “very bad rheumatism.” At the time, “rheumatism” could encompass a wide range of disorders. The illness dragged on for weeks. Thomas made the most of it as long as he could, getting up for meals and speaking of when he would be well again. Caroline visited the invalid, but she felt she could do no good. “Tom lived entirely by himself whilst I was last at Richmond wd. not let us read to him or sit with him,” she wrote unhappily.
Concerned for her brother, Caroline wanted to cancel visits to her sister Mary at Heckfield and brother William in Somerley in order to stay close, but her mother would not hear of it. Caroline must visit William, the Dowager Lady Howe insisted. Caroline gave way to her mother, writing to Lady Spencer, “[S]he could not imagine why we all wanted so much to have me with her just now, that we cd not persist.” But the truth was that elderly Lady Howe was herself unwell, with symptoms suggestive of heart disease.95 No one dared tell her, so Caroline went on her round of family visits while Richard took charge at home. He moved both Tom and Lady Howe to his more spacious house in Grafton Street, where the doctors could be at hand. He kept distant siblings informed and stood ready to summon them if either of the patients became critically ill, while trying not to panic his mother and sister Julie.
The Howe Dynasty Page 17
