The Spencer Family

by Charles Spencer

  Georgiana’s life changed dramatically with the onset of widowhood. She announced that she would observe a period of mourning of two years, and that she would retire to Holywell, the Duchess of Marlborough’s childhood home, leaving Althorp for her son, George John, his wife, Lavinia, and their baby heir, Jack, born a year before the First Earl’s death.

  The Spencer family took stock of its possessions, on the death of the First Earl, and it was stunned to find that a life of unremitting extravagance had, in under forty years, reduced the entire estate to less than a quarter of its assumed size. The elections, the books, Spencer House, the gambling, the art collection, the high living, had each taken a hand in reducing the once fabulous wealth to an altogether more modest level. The resentment felt by John’s immediate descendants at this irresponsibility can be detected in Jack, the Third Earl Spencer’s, pious observation of his grandfather that: ‘Whether he [John] was a religious man or not, I do not know; but it is clear, from the total absence of all self-command which was exhibited in his conduct, that the true principles of Christianity could not have entered fully into his mind.’

  Georgiana, on the other hand, demonstrated in her widowhood a side of her character that had previously been obscured by material concerns: a devout Christianity, which led her to dedicate her remaining years to good works.

  By the terms of her husband’s will, she had been left as sole guardian to the three children of the marriage, as well as the only executor of the will. George John, now Second Earl Spencer, was left the furniture of Althorp and Spencer House, as well as the Duchess of Marlborough’s stunning silver. But Georgiana, who had always hankered after a simple life, agreed to hand everything over to her son, in exchange for his agreeing to pay off all her husband’s debts and allowing her to take whatever furniture she might need for her modest St Albans home.

  During her husband’s youth, the couple had spent tens of thousands of pounds every year on themselves and their pleasures. Now, Georgiana was left with an allowance of £3,000, which George John insisted on increasing to £4,000 annually. Georgiana was touched by this gesture, knowing that there was not that sort of money to spare from the overstretched resources of the estate: ‘As I had fully made up my mind to live upon this £3,000, the additional, £1,000 makes me quite rich,’ she gamely wrote, ‘and I cannot but receive with pleasure an obligation from such a son ... All I am anxious about is to have my Lord’s kindness to me known to those who care about me.’

  Holywell was nothing like Althorp in terms of scale or style, but it had two attractions for the dowager countess: it was manageable, and it was perfectly situated, half-way between Althorp and London, to guarantee visits on a regular basis from her family and friends. It was regarded by her contemporaries as an eccentric choice of home for a lady of title to live in, The Topographer periodical carrying an article in October 1789 describing ‘A Tour through the Midlands’, which read:

  Early in the morning on opening our windows we were pleased with looking down upon the trees and white house of the Countess Spencer, at the bottom of the street which descends very rapidly. The name of it is Holywell House. It was built by old Sarah, the famous Duchess of Marlborough, whose family we presume by an inscription we saw in the abbey church were natives of this place. It is now Lady Spencer’s jointure house. On strolling out before breakfast, we found that the back part of this house and each side looked entirely into the countryside, incommoded by the town. The garden is, however, small, and surrounded after the old fashion with brick walls. Altogether it had not the appearance of the house of nobility.

  And yet it was exactly what Georgiana wanted. She had moved into Holywell when it had not been a home, merely a stopping-off point for changing horses or staying the occasional night, functions the house had served for two generations. Despite its twenty fire-places, visitors found it a cold place. This Georgiana was determined to change, bringing her love of informality to her dower house, and transmitting it to her guests. A friend, Hannah More, reported in March 1784, just a few months into Georgiana’s widowhood, ‘Lady Spencer is very composed and cheerful, [and] lives with great regularity ... There is no ceremony or form of any kind, as you will believe, when I tell you that I have not changed my dress till today, though we have many noble visitors …’

  Georgiana, Countess of Carlisle, Georgiana Spencer’s granddaughter, recalled her childhood visits to Holywell with enormous affection — entering the double courtyard in front of the white house, past ‘fat old Joe’ the porter, into the hall with its old clock, noting how extremely clean everything was, and how the living arrangements were grand, but somehow homely — even the full-length Gainsborough of Georgiana Spencer’s brother, William Poyntz, appearing more family portrait than imposing masterpiece.

  Outside, the garden was laid out with a simplicity that was ideal for a middle-aged, then elderly, woman to oversee and enjoy. There was a bowling green, where the family would take their coffee. To the right of that a canal, where Georgiana kept a boat, and from which John Ward, the butler, would catch carp and tench for the table. Opposite the house was an open grove, bordered by a high wall. The terrace beside the grove had a greenhouse in the middle of it, and a small plant nursery alongside that.

  Georgiana Carlisle’s memories were of a place — as her grandmother intended — entirely suited to the needs and appetites of the children of the house, except for the regimented timing of meals in the dining room.

  Oh! The good dinners in this room at half past three o’clock! I remember I was so hungry — the time appeared to be very late. The true English cookery of jenny Matthews ... How good were the breakfasts and teas in this room, and the brown bread and butter with sage leaves sometimes stuck thereupon; the honey in the honeycomb ... My grandmother coming in tired sometimes with the business of the day ... in a peculiar sort of dress something between a riding habit and a Joseph, particularly not young looking, as my mother said of her in her verses on Holywell, written many years before:

  For though she tries her face to hide

  In covered cap and bonnet wide,

  And more one’s judgement to surprise,

  With spectacles conceals her eyes,

  Yet still all bounteous and serene

  The every look the Fairy’s seen;

  And were she not, in every word

  Her powerful sense and worth is heard,

  And every hour her deeds impart

  The stamp of a superior heart.

  The last two lines of this verse refer to the first Lady Spencer’s life of good works. She had turned to Christianity after the death of her daughters Charlotte, in 1766 — shortly after her first birthday — and Louise, three years later. Frederick, Fourth Earl of Bristol, had noticed Georgiana Spencer’s concern for the less privileged during a visit he paid to Althorp in 1779:

  Lady Spencer you know is my model of women, and having seen her in retirement and in all her domestic employments, my admiration and respect of her increase: she has so decided a character that nothing can warp it, and then such a simplicity of manner one would think she had never lived in it — Her charitable institutions are worthy of her, both for their object and their direction. She has reclaimed the manners of a most vicious parish [Brington, next to Althorp], merely by her charitable institutions in it and is so bent upon having the parishioners neat as well as religious and virtuous that she is paving every path through it — not ostentatiously but with a single flag-stone, just to give the inhabitants a taste for cleanliness.

  In her widowhood, such charitable impulses only increased. After Sunday schools were introduced in England, she was an early champion of the initiative to bring children into the Christian faith in a gentle but structured way. At first, she funded one such school in Brentford, under the care of a Mr Trimmer, before setting up another in St Albans. She took a full and active role in this school, teaching in it herself, and often following her poorest pupils back to their homes, to see that they were being proper
ly cared for, and were observing the respect and obedience for God and their parents that she had been teaching the children earlier in the day.

  Her kindness and concern were not limited to children, though. Sarah Marlborough had endowed an institution in St Albans with funds to look after up to thirty-six elderly folk, people who had ‘known better days, but who were happy to find, in this asylum, a refuge from the vicissitudes of fortune, and to enjoy there that quiet and repose so essential to those who are far advanced in life’, as a contemporary admiringly wrote. Georgiana oversaw the institution personally, often spending time with the aged occupants to alleviate their loneliness.

  Georgiana also became known around St Albans for her care of the sick of all ages, as well as for her willingness to visit prisons — the latter considered by many of her own social background a quite extraordinary thing to choose to do. Tales of her feeding the hungry and clothing the poor abounded. Mrs Trimmer, wife of the Sunday school teacher in Brentford, and helper to Georgiana in her work in St Albans, was a great admirer of the charitable countess:

  … comforting the afflicted, consoling the dying, and pouring into all the balm of kindness and sympathy ... Though blessed with an excellent understanding, and adorned with every advantage that exalted rank, splendid connections, riches and great personal accomplishments could bestow, all sunk beneath the virtues of the meek and pious Christian.

  As well as having them to stay, Georgiana also frequently visited her growing family — particularly enjoying spending time at Althorp, and also calling on her daughter, Georgiana Devonshire, at Chatsworth, or Devonshire House. As she wrote to her third surviving child, Harriet Duncannon, in 1792: ‘The happiness of my children I think I do not deceive myself by saying, is that on which mine entirely depends.’

  She unostentatiously assumed the role of matriarch, trying hard to impart some of her Christian values to her two increasingly wayward daughters. Her son, George John, was altogether less of a disappointment to her. In fact, the only rebuke I have ever found from mother to son is an oblique one, dated September 1786:

  Many thanks for the invitation to Althorp, indeed I have great pleasure in the thoughts of going to see you there and elsewhere sometime or other, but I always resolved not to visit that place till your father’s monument should be put up — as I hate to have (what has so often happened) those sort of things talked of and not done.

  Georgiana then cleverly insinuated her own specifications for such a monument — again without any outward appearance of bossiness:

  By the by, I have been very careless in not consulting you about an inscription; I do not like much, but something I think should be said to mark his being a worthy character and so far to explain the design of the monument as to point out that among many virtues Liberality claimed the right to preserve his memory.

  Because of her longevity, Georgiana Spencer lived to see several of her grandchildren reach adulthood, and she found the time to go to see them, as she had her children, in the various mansions that were their homes. Aged seventy-three, in 1810 she went to visit her granddaughter, Harriet, who was by then Countess Granville. Harriet wrote,

  My grandmother arrived here yesterday morning. She has been quite delightful and it is to me to see her so much pleased and at her ease with Granville ... I should imagine that she had passed half her life here, and her perfectly good and ‘sans son assiette’ manner in whatever society she falls into always excites my surprise and admiration. Very early hours, very good books and most unwearied chess-playing are just what suit her. She is all kindness to me and I think, pleased with our having wished to have her here so intimately.

  But wherever Georgiana went, her own customs and conditions accompanied her, as Lady Granville’s valedictory sentence in the letter explained: ‘I must leave you for we breakfast an hour earlier than usual for my grandmother.’

  The one relation she experienced difficulty with was her daughter-in-law, Lavinia, married to George John, and herself the daughter of the Earl of Lucan. At first, Georgiana had been impressed by Lavinia, telling Georgiana Devonshire, in a letter of December 1782:

  Lavinia has made some very good alterations in the hanging of the pictures and has turned a bit of a dirty littered orchard near the Kitchen Garden and Nursery into a sort of pleasure ground with, I think, a good deal of taste — in short she has a great many pretty ideas and seems really fond of Althorp, which delights me as I know it gives your Father pleasure.

  However, after the First Earl’s death the following year, the relationship between the two very strong, but totally different, women quickly unravelled. When he came to write his memoirs, John Charles, Lavinia’s son, alluded directly to the froideur between the two Ladies Spencer: ‘I knew my grandmother [Georgiana] ... very well, and I think I can form the estimate of her character; but I am aware that, from the circumstance of my mother never having liked her, my estimate will probably be more unfavourable than it ought.’ That was the case, for this grandson’s assessment of Georgiana is perhaps the least generous that can be found to survive from a first-hand source.

  The tension between the two ladies was obvious to all. At the end of 1811 Harriet Granville wrote: ‘Lady Spencer [Lavinia] is certainly better without my grandmother [Georgiana], for they irritate and fidget each other from morning till night. My grandmother cannot tolerate Lady Spencer’s intolerance and they have no taste or pursuit in common.’

  Poor George John was caught in the middle of all this, both the key women in his life looking to him for support against the other. On 17 October 1801, he received the following from his mother, about the gardens at his Wimbledon home, and the landscape designer, Lapidge, of Hampton Court:

  The flat surface from the mulberry tree on the east is the only bad point as it is more seen than it used to be. I would give my ears that Lapidge had the management of it but I think neither of you like him, so I have promised Lavinia I will say no more about him though I do think him invaluable both in point of taste and expense, for he is perfectly honest and from long habit knows how to do things in the most reasonable way.

  Lavinia’s letter to George John, two days later, gives a contrary view of the same set of circumstances:

  Your mother left me on Friday ... She put me very near into a passion once or twice about different things she observed about Wimbledon and teased me so about having Lapwich or Lappage, whatever is his name, that you see I am not yet quite cool. She told me that you would always have continued employing him if I had not prevented you — I am sure this is the most unfounded charge of hers, for I don’t remember ever saying anything against the man to you ...

  But, fourteen years earlier, after he had been asked to quote for alterations to the grounds at Althorp — including filling in the dry moat around the house itself — Lavinia had made sure that Lapidge was not employed by her husband — a fact she chose to forget with the same guile that made her pretend she could not remember the man’s name properly.

  George John constantly tried to reconcile his wife and his mother, but without success. In 1807, for her seventieth birthday, he gave Georgiana a white cornelian seal, magnificently set in gold, with an inscription from the Proverbs of Solomon: ‘Her children shall arise up and call her blessed.’ These words, in Roman letters, were surrounded by the names of the four families which she had contributed to as mother and grandmother: Spencers, Cavendishes, Ponsonbys and Howards. Georgiana loved the present, but she treated with complete disbelief her son’s claim that the design was as much Lavinia’s as his own.

  It is hard not to believe that Lavinia was more at fault in the relationship between the two ladies: she was a more brittle and domineering character than her affable and charming mother-in-law, and being made to feel somehow inferior to Georgiana was more than she could bear.

  Georgiana’s last years, however, were less concerned with her matriarchal role in the Spencer family, than with the life beyond. She openly prepared herself for death, frequently reass
uring those around her that she had no fear of what was to come, since God had spared her such anxieties, out of his great kindness.

  Her last few months were spent in great illness, before a recovery that proved to be as illusory as it was temporary. Georgiana spent her last evening deep in happy conversation with her beloved grandson, the young Duke of Devonshire. When she retired to bed, she seemed well and in good spirits, as she did when she got up on the morning of 18 March 1814. However, while dressing, she was seized by a violent stomach cramp. She had only time to tell her maid, who was assisting her with her clothes, not to be alarmed. She then fell, dead, to the floor.

  On her death her obituarist summed up the achievements of Georgiana’s long, two-paced life thus:

  It may be said of her with sober truth, that during the prosperity and splendour of her early life, and the retirement and regret of her widowhood, she fulfilled exemplarily and exactly the duties of each situation. Amidst the pleasures and occupations of the world she never had forgotten the offices of benevolence and piety, nor did sorrow and seclusion, and advancing years, tinge either her thoughts or her deportment with the slightest degree of harshness or austerity.