The Spencer Family

by Charles Spencer

  Never was a man more calculated than he to get on, as it is said, in the world. He was brave and enterprising, and skilled in all that might make him distinguished in his profession; at the same time he was most eager in the pursuit of field sports and manly amusements; and in society was one of the most agreeable and popular men of his day.

  Their sister, Sarah, wrote to a friend, Mrs Pole Carew:

  We have indeed suffered a painful trial! An affliction which, though unmixed with any of the feeling of shame and horror which aggravated the ‘report’ ten years ago, has been, and will be a heavy one — a great blow to my Father and Mother — and a sad change in our family state, and our future prospects — so dependent on him we have lost, for comfort and brightness! And just now you know we were expecting him.

  As a little girl, the same Sarah Spencer had written to her father on a far happier theme:

  Dear Papa,

  We have just received the good news of the arrival of the new brother, and I and writing to wish you joy of it with all my heart. We are all very glad of it, for we have expected it the whole morning. I pray God that Mama may continue well; pray will you let us know how she is to-morrow, and give her our loves, as well as to the little boy.

  I am, dear Papa,

  Your affectionate and dutiful,

  Sarah Spencer.

  The date was April 1798, and the ‘little boy’ was Frederick, to be known by his family as ‘Fritz’. The birth took place in the Admiralty and, although when he was a boy there was a plan for Fritz to become an army officer — Sarah reporting ‘Fritz already fancies himself an epauletted, red-coated cavalry officer ... for he is a very fine, spirited fellow, and does all he can to prove his courage in facing danger, and his toughness and fortitude in bearing pain and hardship ...’ — it was to be the Navy that was to benefit from his martial qualities.

  A godson of Frederick, Duke of York, young Fritz was sent to Eton for his education at the age of ten. Four years later, he went away to sea as a young midshipman. We know more about Fritz’s personal views during his early naval career than about those of his elder brother, Bob, because of the survival of his diary from 1819 to 1824. It reveals a serious-minded young man, certainly intelligent, but verging on the priggish. Passages which deal with his feelings are sadly understated. All of Lavinia’s children, particularly her sons, seem to have been emotionally constipated. Thus we learn of his distress at being sent on Sir Thomas Hardy’s expedition to South America in 1819, with the almost apologetic admission:

  Whether it was the great distance to which I was going or that my family were in an unsettled state being just about to leave England I know not, but it was the most dreadful parting I ever had. I had hoped to have been in command of myself when bidding farewell to my mother but her tears set me off and when I came to the end of the corridor meeting dear Sarah it WAS too much for me. I never felt such anguish ...

  Similarly, the entry for 23 April 1823 seems to cry out for a need for more openness with his feelings: ‘“The Fly” arrived from England and brought me the melancholy news of the death of my poor sister Georgiana,’ he wrote. It seems an unhealthily inadequate response to the death of a sister in childbirth.

  The most enjoyable entries relate to items we take for granted today, which were total novelties for the grave junior officer, and which he treated either with suspicion or with unwise acceptance. On arriving at Madeira in mid-September 1819, he recorded,

  We got some wine and fruit, the last of which was very indifferent such as pears, peaches and a few bananas. I tasted one of them [a banana] for the first time in my life and was as near sick as possible, for the richness of it is too much for fruit and the smell is stronger than the ripest melon, it is a good antiscorbutic and promotes digestion very much and I am told that it is an acquired taste entirely.

  Two years later in Lima — which he described as an ‘odious place’, because the locals delighted in imprisoning Englishmen without charge — he found that everyone around him was falling seriously ill. However, Frederick was convinced he had found the secret to good health, even in this primitive city:

  As to myself I never was better although so much more exposed by living in Luna, and with almost all my acquaintances among the merchants ailing more or less at times. I think that the precaution I took of never going out of doors without a cigar in my mouth had a good deal to do with it, by which the damp air that occasions the Tertian had not the means of getting to my lungs.

  The Royal Navy at the time had many rituals, from which not even the younger sons of former First Lords of the Admiralty were excused. The ceremony that accompanied the crossing of the Equator seems to have severely tested young Fritz’s sense of humour, for he records, with unconvincing reassurances that he took everything in good spirits:

  I liked the fun very well as far as it went with me but I had rather been excused the shaving part of the business; for nothing can be more beastly. They were not allowed to put any dirt more than tar and slush for the lather but they made it up in the pills which were the dung they found in the sheep pen and when a fellow was not quiet they pushed one or two of these into his mouth which made him splutter and open his mouth upon which the tar brush was rammed in and he was shaved with an iron hoop made up into the shape of a razor, and then tumbled back into the waist where a sail was spread full of water and he got a most complete ducking, one man in falling into the sail broke his collar bone and another was in such a fright he fainted.

  A striking figure, tall with reddish hair, Frederick became a successful naval officer. In 1822, he was promoted to the rank of post-captain, and, in 1827, he took part in the last ever sea battle fought entirely under sail, when he served against the Turks under Admiral Sir Edward Codrington at Navarino. Frederick distinguished himself that day through his bravery and leadership. He was made a Companion of the Order of the Bath by his own monarch, and received the cross of St Louis from France, as well as becoming a Knight of St Anne of Russia. Although he never put to sea again in a naval capacity after 1828, he had reached the rank of vice-admiral by the time of his death.

  At Althorp, in the portico of the Stables overlooking the deer park, lie four of the cannon from his ship at Navarino, reminders of the time when he was truly happiest — at sea, rather than on land.

  *

  Frederick married twice. The first marriage took place in 1830, after only three weeks’ engagement. The bride was Elizabeth Poyntz, from the same family as Georgiana, wife of John, First Earl Spencer.

  The Poyntzes had an interesting history in their own right. Although the Spencers’ Norman origins remain open to some question, those of the Poyntzes are beyond any doubt. Their forebear was Drago Fitz Pons, who accompanied William the Conqueror on his 1066 invasion.

  In the Middle Ages, the Poyntzes settled at Iron Acton, in Gloucestershire. The first Poyntz of the modern age to attract attention was William, who married as his third wife Jane Monteagle. She was a close cousin of Major-General Richard Deane, a distinguished naval and military commander, who had been particularly outstanding at the Battle of Newbury, where Henry Sunderland was slain.

  In 1685 William and Jane’s second son was born: Stephen, later referred to as ‘the great light and ornament of his family’. In 1724, Stephen became ambassador to Sweden. Six years later he was made steward to the household of, and governor and tutor to, William, Duke of Cumberland, the nine-year-old third son of George II, and, incidentally, Sarah Marlborough’s favourite out of all the young royal children she encountered in her latter years. This was the same Duke of Cumberland who attracted such notoriety after the bloodbath of Culloden in 1746, when his army routed that of Bonnie Prince Charlie, slaughtering thousands of Jacobites during and after the battle.

  Stephen was the father of five children by his wife Anna Maria Mordaunt, a maid of honour to Queen Caroline, and a beauty whose charms were written about by Samuel Croxall, in his poem ‘Fair Circassian’. Stephen and Anna Maria’s favour
ite child was the youngest, Georgiana, who was to become the secret bride of John, later first Earl, Spencer in 1755.

  Scandal touched the Poyntz name in 1786, when Georgiana Ann — a niece of Georgiana Spencer and granddaughter of Stephen and Anna Maria — was found by her husband, William Falkner, the Postmaster General, to be having an affair with Lord John Townshend. Falkner challenged Townshend to a duel with pistols. He duly fired at Townshend, but the bullet missed him, striking only his hat. Townshend then showed pity for the cuckolded husband, and discharged his own weapon in the air. Falkner divorced Georgiana Ann soon afterwards, Townshend marrying her before the year was out.

  Georgiana Spencer’s eldest brother was William Stephen Poyntz. One of the three best portraits at Althorp is of this man, tall and handsome, leaning against a tree, his spaniel Amber at his feet. The portrait is by Gainsborough — reputedly one of his best — and Amber was included after saving his master’s life, having found a murderous thief waiting under William’s bed, dagger drawn.

  In 1794 William married the Hon. Elizabeth Mary Browne, daughter of the Seventh Viscount Montagu, whose family home was Cowdray, in Sussex. Through his marriage, William was to gain control of that estate and other lands at Battle Abbey and around Midhurst. However, the supposed workings of an ancient family curse would overshadow William’s life, bringing tragedy in their wake.

  The root of the events that overtook the Poyntzes and the Brownes lay, according to the superstitious, in the provenance of their landed estates. For, like many aspiring people of new fortunes — the Washingtons, as we have seen, were the same — they had acquired church property after Henry VIII ‘s dissolution of the monasteries. According to Sir Henry Spelman in his writings about sacrilege, there was ‘a fearful curse which was pronounced generally upon those who were guilty of that crime’.

  In 1538, Sir Anthony Browne, son of Henry VII ‘s standard bearer, received ‘a grant of the house and site of the late Monastery of Battle in Sussex, to him and his heirs for ever’. During a celebratory banquet in the Abbots’ Hall to mark the appropriation of the monastic property, a monk came in and quietly but purposefully walked up to the dais where Sir Anthony was seated with his family and his friends. The monk then issued a curse on the descendants of the Browne family, in posterity, ending with a phrase that was to ring down the succeeding centuries: ‘By fire and water thy line shall come to an end, and it shall perish out of the land.’

  Two and a half centuries were to go by, during which generations of Brownes were told of this hex hanging over them. It was not until 1793 that it was seen to strike home; but, when it did, it did so with double the anticipated strength.

  It was in that year that the Eighth Lord Montagu, 24-year-old head of the Browne family, was completing the Grand Tour with a friend, Charles Burdett. Both men were accompanied by an old retainer from Cowdray. Half-way between Basle and Schaffhausen, at Laufenberg, they came across some waterfalls, and the two younger men announced their desire to shoot the rapids there. Their servant tried to dissuade them from being so foolhardy, reminding them of the curse. Seeing that his pleas were being ignored, the old man arranged for guards to be placed along the river to stop the madcap adventure from taking place.

  However, Montagu and Burdett were determined, and they arranged for a boat secretly to be built for them. Even when the servant tried physically to stop them from getting into the boat, they pushed him aside, and careered down the river. Burdett’s body was never found. Montagu’s eventually appeared, killed by water, in accordance with the curse.

  The old retainer headed back to Cowdray to inform the rest of the family of the tragedy that had overtaken the young master. At Calais, before sailing for England, he recognized another one of the staff from Cowdray disembarking from a ship, and asked him what he was doing there. The second servant replied that he had come to look for Lord Montagu, to tell him that the mansion at Cowdray had been completely destroyed by fire.

  In his will, Lord Montagu had left everything to his sister, Elizabeth Mary Browne, soon to marry William Poyntz. However, the art treasures of Cowdray had nearly all been destroyed, and, it is believed, the celebrated Roll of Battle Abbey was also consumed by the flames that fateful night in September 1793.

  The curse next struck in July 1815, weeks after the Battle of Waterloo, when Elizabeth and William took their two sons and three daughters on holiday to Bognor Regis, where they stayed at the Pavilion House.

  On 7 July, a warm day with a calm sea, William suggested taking the two boys out sailing, with a couple of friends who had come to visit them. Ever conscious of the hex, Elizabeth pleaded with her husband not to go ahead with this plan, but he insisted, and the boat headed off, leaving Elizabeth and her daughters watching anxiously from a window.

  From nowhere, tragedy struck. The Gentleman’s Magazine recorded the rest of the story:

  In the afternoon, about four o’clock, Colonel Poyntz [William], his two sons and their tutor, Miss Parry and Miss Emily Parry, daughters of the late Admiral Parry, of Fareham, a fisherman and his son, were returning to Bognor in a pleasure boat, when the whole party, excepting Colonel Poyntz and the boatman were drowned; the latter saved the Colonel by swimming with him on his back, Mrs Poyntz looking from the drawing-room the moment the accident happened.

  It transpired that, when the boat capsized, William Poyntz had grabbed on to its side, his two sons in turn clinging to his coat. However, William could not support them for long and, whether through exhaustion or cramp, both the boys let loose their grip and drowned.

  My grandfather wrote down in a notebook that the boys’ mother, Elizabeth, ‘never recovered from the shock, and it is said she never smiled again’. Contemporaries of hers suggested that the double tragedy unhinged her, and that daily ‘she wept the terrors of the fearful wave’.

  Elizabeth was delivered from her incessant turmoil when she died, in 1830. William Poyntz lived on, seeing his daughter Elizabeth marry Frederick Spencer in the year of his wife’s death. After that he lived in London, visiting his daughters — there were three, not two, contrary to the report of The Gentleman’s Magazine — in their respective stately homes.

  The trio were great heiresses, and had made ‘good’ marriages. However, they had been brought up in an eccentric way by their bereaved mother, with her sadness having an adverse effect on their personalities. My grandfather, again drawing on what he had heard from his own relatives, who had witnessed for themselves the results of the drowning tragedy, wrote that

  The three daughters ... were brought up to consider everything wrong and wicked, so much so that one of them (I do not recollect which) on her death bed extorted a promise from my Aunt Sarah that she would never go [to the theatre] during the rest of her life.

  One of Elizabeth Poyntz’s sisters, known to the Spencers as ‘Aunt Fan’, married Lord Clinton when very young, having nursed him at Cowdray after he had had a bad fall from a horse. After Clinton’s death, Jack, Third Earl Spencer, offered to marry her, but she chose instead Sir Horace Seymour — whose daughter, by coincidence, was to be Frederick Spencer’s second wife.

  ‘Aunt Fan’ was known for her looks and her lack of intelligence. Although she adored Sir Horace, he had married her only to pay off his debts. He never concealed that fact from her and, as soon as the wedding service was over, he retired to his gentleman’s club to resume his bachelor existence. Sir Horace’s sister, a Mrs Darner, was so appalled by this behaviour that she immediately went to a jeweller’s and bought an emerald and diamond half-hoop ring, which she gave to her new sister-in-law, claiming it was from Seymour. ‘Aunt Fan’ never knew otherwise.

  The other Poyntz sister, Isabella, was also a renowned beauty, and became Lady Exeter. She was known for the number of men who proposed to her, including the truly eccentric Fifth Duke of Portland, who ended up never getting married at all. Isabella became a pillar of the evangelical church, and, according to Grandfather, ‘had many children, some of whom were quite ho
peless!’

  The widowed William remained a popular figure, but he had the Poyntz addiction to gambling in its most rampant form. After his wealthy wife’s death, he used to go to his daughters in tears, and beg them to clear his debts.

  In 1836, while riding in Althorp Park, his horse stumbled in a rabbit hole, and he fell, landing on his head. For four years he survived, in constant pain. In April 1840, he sneezed violently, and died, apparently the jolt of the sneeze severing the last remaining piece of vertebra that had kept him alive for those last, agonized years. It was an end more ignominious than the monk of Battle Abbey could ever have prayed for.

  William left the estate at Cowdray to his three daughters as co-heirs and tenants in common. They were not allowed the opportunity of buying one another’s shares, so, in 1843, they sold the estate to the Sixth Earl of Egmont for £330,000. Various objects from Cowdray were left directly to Frederick and Elizabeth Spencer, the most important being the Reynolds double portrait of Georgiana, First Countess Spencer, and her daughter, later Georgiana Devonshire, which today dominates the South Drawing Room at Althorp, having once been a Poyntz heirloom.

  Frederick, Fourth Earl Spencer, who married into the Poyntz family, found everyday domestic life a taxing business. He was accused of running his children as if they were part of his crew, and occasionally he resorted to the sort of cruelty that might have been thought appropriate when disciplining press-ganged sailors but was unacceptable in his role as father. He would lock his children in a cramped and unlit room under the main staircase in the Saloon at Althorp, when they were naughty. I can recall reading a journal that Georgiana, the eldest of the three Spencer offspring, kept of her childhood. In it she complained at how well her brother was treated, in comparison to her and her sister, Sarah, to the extent that he ate different food from them, and received all manner of favours that were denied the two girls. All three children found this sort of regime deeply difficult to accept.