In Princess Amelia’s verdant garden estate, the little party of a dozen or so genteel guests included Lady Mary Coke, Lord and Lady Spencer, and Horace Walpole. The summer fruits at Gunnersbury had ripened prodigiously, and the guests exclaimed at the luscious fare. But the talk around the table gave the lie to this apparent idyll. There was discussion of Lady Charlotte Finch, the royal governess, who had recently learned that her son George had gone to America as a volunteer under General Howe. George, only in his midtwenties, had inherited his deceased father’s title of Earl of Winchilsea. At the end of June, he secretly took ship at Portsmouth, leaving his friends and his widowed mother in the dark as to his destination. Lady Mary Coke had called on Lady Finch just before the party, and she described to the guests the anguish of the mother, who at first had been unable to control her distress. Lady Finch clung to the belief that the war would be short and Lord Winchilsea would be home by November—an idea that Lady Coke did not wish to discourage.5
In Parliament, men could argue that the fighting would quickly be over, but the wives and mothers, watching their menfolk depart, knew that they were heading into real danger. Since William had left in 1775, Fanny Howe had never been entirely able to hide her anxiety.6 Now Richard’s wife, Lady Mary Howe, was in the same unhappy situation. Although Mary was an experienced navy wife, Caroline described her spirits as only “so so” at best when she parted with her husband in May. Caroline as usual made no mention of her own feelings. Instead, she became preoccupied with the direction of the wind—a west wind was needed to bring news from America. Years later, she confessed to Lady Spencer the sensation of “a little heart ache in the middle of the night listening to a high wind” when loved ones were far away.7
For Caroline, there was a new edge to the tension, as it would be the command decisions of her own brothers that would expose the husbands and sons of friends like Lady Charlotte Finch to potential injury or death. Before long, she would be assessing the accounts of battles in America with apprehension, sending confidences to Lady Spencer that expressed a doleful sense of relief when the list of the dead did not include the names of any officers they knew.8
The Howe women took up their usual wartime posts of overseeing the interests of the brothers in political and court circles. Since the Dowager Lady Howe’s retirement, there was no family member serving at court, but regular ties persisted. Caroline played cards with Princess Amelia, who remained close to her great-nephew George III and entertained his children with skittles and outdoor games at Gunnersbury. One of George III’s sons would later recall that the Howes were “a sort of connexion with the family.”9 Caroline’s regular presence in court circles could only benefit her brothers, and she also had an active ally in her sister-in-law Lady Mary Howe, who attended the drawing rooms and passed on all the news to Caroline.
Drawing rooms were receptions for presentation to the monarch that were attended weekly by both sexes, in contrast to the more formal levees, which were exclusive to men and restricted to high-ranking ministers and nobles. The numbers at the drawing rooms varied, but sometimes they were so crowded that the ladies, in their expensive finery, found themselves crushed ruthlessly against their neighbors. “Oh! Oh! Oh! My hips! My feet! My head!” cried one of the Spencer women after enduring the throng. Even when thinly attended, the drawing rooms were not comfortable for women, who stood in stiff court dresses, managing fans and trains while curtseying. When it was over, a seemingly interminable wait ensued, as coaches queued up outside to carry home the exhausted ladies and gentlemen, who often collapsed as soon as the footman closed the door. But it was all worthwhile, because drawing rooms were venues where the latest news—whether political, foreign, or simply town gossip—was circulated.10
Lady Mary Howe’s visits to the drawing rooms must have been gratifying to her family in the months after her husband’s departure. Throughout 1776, the Howe influence was at its height. Caroline had an open invitation to dine with the Germains, and she could wield patronage on behalf of family friends. One of these, Charles Brett, ran successfully as a member of Parliament for Sandwich in a November by-election because the Howes were “high in Government favour.”11
Christopher D’Oyly, an attorney and the son of an attorney, also benefited from his Howe connection when in May he was appointed an undersecretary in the Whitehall office of American Secretary of State Lord George Germain. Although he had been an MP since 1774, D’Oyly did not stand as high in the world as the Spencers or the Cavendishes. Yet he and his wife, Sarah, had for years been on a familiar footing with the Howes. The families were related, a D’Oyly having married one of the ubiquitous Mordaunts, cousins of the Howes.12 “I am to pass the evening & sup with a very private party; chiefly Howes, at Mr. D’Oyleys,” wrote Caroline to Lady Spencer in 1767, in words that summed up the informal nature of the friendship.13
Outside of Germain’s office, the D’Oylys supported the British war effort in a quite domestic fashion. Warmhearted, and without children of their own, the D’Oylys were at the center of a circle of families that drew together as their men went overseas. Among them were Fanny and Mary Howe, the wives of the commanders in chief, but aristocratic rank was not a prerequisite for inclusion. Another solitary wife who would often call upon the D’Oylys for the proverbial tea and sympathy was Jane Strachey, whose husband Henry, as Lord Howe’s secretary, had departed for America in May. Jane was left with three young children under her care. She was quickly invited to dine en famille with the D’Oylys at their residence in Hampton Court. Whenever Mr. D’Oyly was called away to his office in Whitehall, Mrs. D’Oyly virtually moved into the Strachey house in Greenwich to assist with the children.14
Jane Strachey’s letters to Henry in America, long overlooked, are unparalleled as a glimpse into the thoughts and feelings of an Englishwoman on the home front during the American War of Independence. As the private letters of a wife, they are buried within the collection of Strachey family papers in the Somerset Archives. Yet they are the English equivalent of Abigail Adams’s wartime correspondence, written an ocean away, to her own husband, John, a future president of the United States. A gifted letter-writer, Jane wrote in poignant terms of the British families at home, waiting for news of the war. The feelings of the women and children who stayed behind come alive in lifelike and emotive detail.
In 1776, as the nation waited for news of the outcome of the New York campaign, Jane’s words reflected the feeling of incredulity that the Americans were going to war over seemingly abstract questions of rights:
I say to myself that one of the greatest Evils arising from the ambitious and restless spirit of the Americans, is the interruption they have occasioned in the Domestick Tranquillity of many happy familys in this country, how much more will you say they have hurt themselves?
With characteristic gentleness, she added, “I am not malicious, I only wish them peace, and that my dear Harry may soon appear with the glad Tidings.” For Henry was not in America as a military man, but as part of Lord Howe’s peace mission.15
Henry Strachey was bound for America as secretary to Richard and William Howe in their capacities as peace commissioners. Although Henry credited his friend Christopher D’Oyly with bringing him to the notice of Admiral Howe, he was employed not so much because of who he knew, but rather for his known abilities as an intelligent administrator with an understanding of imperial problems. He was one of a rising category of men from the middling ranks of society, what would come to be called the middle class. A modern civil service did not yet exist, but the needs of government were growing. Government departments had for long offered “do-nothing” positions for impecunious young gentry-folk. Now these were joined by a new breed of earnest men like Strachey who took their work seriously.16
In 1764, Henry Strachey had become private secretary to the dashing and notorious Robert Clive, better known as Clive of India. For the next three years, Henry was in Bengal with his ambitious employer, acquiring a sustained reputati
on for hard work, intelligence, and industry. Clive’s military conquests and aggressive consolidation of East India Company control in Bengal had left him enormously wealthy but mistrusted at home. In contrast, Strachey survived a high-profile parliamentary inquiry with an unsullied reputation.17 Clive was exonerated, but he died soon afterward from an overdose of laudanum. Accident or suicide? The verdict was never in. Caroline suspected the latter, as she wrote to Lady Spencer: “I find there is some foundation for the report that Ld. Clive destroyed himself, Ld. Pig-got who is in town & enquires after you & yours, is vastly sorry for him, gives him the greatest of characters.”18
This was in late 1774, when Caroline was busy secretly wooing Benjamin Franklin over a chessboard. The conscientious Henry Strachey now found himself without a steady income, while needing to support a wife and three young children, the expense of a seat in Parliament, and a risky investment in a Florida plantation.19 The chance to join Lord Howe’s staff could not have been better timed.
Jane said good-bye to her husband on May 8, 1776; six days later, she was composing the first of her many long letters.20 Her method was to write continuously over several days, heading each entry with the day’s date. She did not write in the typical stoical tone of a military wife or sister. She spoke with an open heart of “this long cruel separation” from one whom she loved “above every other being.” “I shall never forget it, I saw your concern at leaving me and your poor little ones,” she recollected feelingly of the day, less than a week earlier, when he bade her farewell.21
Jane’s letters bring to life the emotional cost of a long separation in an age when transportation was slow and communication even slower. She confessed that she never got used to her husband’s absence. Opening each letter from America created a moment of unbearable suspense: “[W]ith what a trembling hand do I break the seals that lock up the intelligence on which all my tranquillity depends.” She dreamt that she had joined her husband in New York, only to find that he was then ordered on a mission that took him hundreds of miles away from her. “This mortification occasioned such distress that it awakened me.” When a well-meaning friend lectured her that Mr. Strachey might be absent for more than a year, she rounded upon him with the retort that, “if ever he threw out such a thing again I would disclaim his acquaintance.”
Their extended separation meant that husband and wife would not look upon one another’s faces for at least a year. This triggered insecurities; nine months after they had parted, on almost the same date, both wrote letters warning of the advancing signs of age. Reminding Henry that she was almost forty, Jane added bluntly, “I am growing old, as you will not want a pair of spectacles to discover this on your return, I may as well drop the subject.”22 A week later, in far-off New York, her husband was beset by the same worry: “I desire you will not be surprised if I appear somewhat older than when I left you,” wrote Henry, though he advanced the possibility that youthfulness would be replaced by rugged good looks: “I flatter myself that a more healthy Look will apologize for the Wrinkles of Age.”23
Jane’s children registered their awareness of their father’s absence according to their own childish perceptions. Interestingly, even the youngest realized the nature of Henry’s business in America. “Little Edward,” reported Jane, “who is louder and stouter than either his Brother or Sister goes upon his [hobby] horse as he tells us several times a day to ‘Make peace in America.’ ” The peaceable Edward was only three. Five-year-old Harry, taken to a military review in Hyde Park, was so shocked by the noise of the artillery that he comforted himself with the fiction that they were not real—“[H]e said he knew the smoke was nothing more than Tobacco,” wrote his bemused mother, but Harry then recalled with fright that his poor papa was in America, where genuine cannon would “make more noise.”24
Jane Strachey did not go to court or attend fashionable card parties, but she understood that etiquette required her to pay a courtesy call upon her husband’s employer. Less than a week after Henry’s departure, she duly visited Lady Mary Howe and was “received with great kindness.”25 This first visit to the admiral’s residence in Grafton Street was described as “paying her respects,” but over the next twelve months, the two women would draw much closer, as Jane became part of a circle of army wives.
LADY HOWE WON Jane’s admiration because she belied the stereotype widely held in the eighteenth century of an aristocratic woman who neglected her family for fashionable living. “[E]xclusive of [Lady Howe’s] civilities to me,” Jane wrote to Henry, “it is impossible for me not to admire her for her uncommon affection, and devotion to her absent Lord, as well as for her extreme attention and regard to her Children. Such Characters,” continued Jane, expressing the prevalent attitude, “are very rare in high Life.”26
Eventually Jane would meet all of the Howe women. She was introduced to Caroline one afternoon at the admiral’s house in Grafton Street. At the D’Oylys’, she met Fanny, the general’s wife—“pretty and agreeable” and very polite. On yet another occasion at the D’Oylys’, the Dowager Lady Charlotte Howe made an appearance, together with her daughter Julie. As a former lady-in-waiting to Princess Augusta, the elderly woman was an object of great respect. Jane wrote to her husband of her gratified pride when the Dowager Lady Howe and Julie visited her soon afterward at her Park Street address.27 Struck by the close Howe family dynamics, she was moved to say, “How very amiable are strong family attachments, and how exceedingly do I respect the Howe family for their Love to each other.”28
Just as the crucible of war brought the Howe men easily into close quarters with fellow soldiers from lower social ranks, so the Howe women welcomed Jane into their circle of those who had to stay behind. Nevertheless, a vestige of self-consciousness remained, for Jane betrayed a feeling of defensiveness when she wrote to Henry of including the Howes in a musical party hosted in her home. Among the guests were the wives of Admiral and General Howe, and also Mary, youngest of the Howe siblings, and her husband, General Pitt. “You will not I hope suppose that I have been guilty of any impropriety in pushing myself to be introduced to Lord Howes family,” she protested. The D’Oylys had encouraged it, and had been present themselves. The Howes loved this sort of informal musical evening. The gentlemen sang popular tunes, there was fiddling, and the young ladies provided musical performances. General Pitt was delighted to discover that he had attended the same academy as some of the other gentlemen guests, and the sparkling occasion finished up with a simple supper of cold chicken.29
In October 1776, William Howe’s aide-de-camp, Captain Nisbet Balfour, arrived in London on a mission to deliver military dispatches, and he quickly became a regular in the private circles of the Howes and their friends. Balfour had first drawn William’s notice in June 1775 at Bunker Hill, where he led a light company and bravely fought on at the bloody rail fence after being wounded. Since then, William had been sure to make use of Captain Balfour. A large, powerful figure of a man, still only in his early thirties, he was charming, gregarious, and popular with men and women alike. As the son of an impoverished Scottish laird, he never married.30 But he was a man of warm feeling. In his will, he remembered a woman who had once been his mistress. She had married elsewhere by the time of his death many years later, but Nisbet bequeathed a generous legacy to their natural daughter, Euphemia.31 Balfour’s friendship with the Howe family was also strong, and we shall see that it would entangle him in the byzantine story of the mismanaged campaign of 1777.
Jane Strachey met Balfour almost as soon as he arrived in town, at an evening party at the D’Oylys’ that included Lady Howe and Caroline. He was “just what you describe,” Jane wrote to her husband, “communicative, good-natured and Chatty.” She observed with gratitude that the captain spoke as much of Henry Strachey as he did of the two “worthy” Howe brothers, carefully answering all of Jane’s many questions while the Howe women listened with kindness. That evening, she pressed Balfour to dine with her family on whatever day suited him;
the children would be overjoyed to have a guest who could give them news of their father, and she promised him a “Scotch song into the bargain” from her young brood, who would prepare a list of questions in advance of the exciting visit.32
But Jane soon discovered that Major Balfour (he was quickly promoted once in London) would be in great demand that autumn. While the Strachey household waited in vain for him to call, he dined in Grafton Street with Caroline and was presented at court by Lord George Germain.33 A week later, Jane confessed that “the young ones and myself staid at home the whole day in expectation of seeing him,” but he did not appear. “I imagine he has much upon his hands,” Jane concluded generously. But it was difficult to explain this to six-year-old Charlotte, who had been wearing her best cap for three days running in hopes of seeing the captain. The children “have a string of questions to ask him concerning their [Papa].” Jane was chagrined to discover that when she finally ventured out to the park with the children, Balfour had stopped by in their absence. Five-year-old Henry’s expectations had been raised so high that he asked a strange officer in the park “if he was not Captn. Balfour.”34
Eventually the major did come, and more than once. Part of his charm lay in an obliging disposition and an easygoing willingness to mix with all levels of people. He joined the Strachey family on a night out at the theater; he was present at the musical party hosted by Jane in January for the Howes; he took Fanny Howe to Portsmouth to view the shipping.35 While on leave in London in late 1776, William’s aide-de-camp functioned as a sort of proxy for the absent male family members.
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