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They would return at mid-day, rest, and prepare for dinner at three. It was the most important meal of the day and could last up to four hours. Instead of one course following another, there were two ‘covers’, or servings, of fifteen or so sweet and savoury dishes, artfully arranged in geometric patterns and decorated with flowers. Georgiana self-consciously practised being the hostess in front of her parents and the Duke, giving orders to footmen and displaying a command which she did not necessarily feel. Eighteenth-century dinners were less formal than those in the century to follow, but their rules, though subtle, were strictly observed.
(#ulink_7b623a9f-e87d-5b90-b473-820f2a5bb360) Although diners could sit where they chose, the host and hostess always sat at the head and foot of the table with the principal guests on either side. It was considered ill-bred to ask for a dish or to reach too far across for one – the servants standing along the walls were supposed to ensure that the guests’ plates were never empty. Not only did Georgiana have to keep up a lively flow of conversation, she also had to watch the servants for neglect, the guests for boredom, and the Cavendishes for signs of displeasure.
In the evening she played cards with some of the guests or listened to music performed by Felix Giardini, the violinist and director of the London Opera and a friend of the Spencers. At her request he composed pieces for small orchestra which Georgiana and some of her musical guests would perform under his direction. The house was filling up as more of the Duke’s friends and relatives came to inspect his bride. Georgiana did her best to appear composed and friendly towards the sophisticated strangers who often arrived at short notice and expected to be entertained. That she succeeded in fulfilling her role was thanks to the presence of Lady Spencer by her side as much as to her careful upbringing. Georgiana had little acquaintance with her husband or with his world; training was all that she could rely upon to take her through the first few months.
By late September autumn colours were returning to the park and the sun was casting longer shadows. It was easy to stay outside for too long after dinner and catch a chill, as Lady Spencer did one afternoon. She seemed to have only a slight fever; but a few days later she suffered a miscarriage. When she recovered her only desire was to return to Althorp; she had lost two children, and Georgiana’s steps towards independence may have caused her to feel she was losing another. Georgiana came downstairs one morning to discover that her parents had left without saying goodbye. In a hastily scribbled note Lady Spencer apologized for running away, and blamed it on ‘my Spirits having been lower’d by my late illness … Do not think I shall ever be so nonsensical about quitting you again,’ she promised, ‘but the number of people that are here are so formidable and I felt so afraid of disgracing myself and distressing you, that I think it better to get out of the way.’
(#litres_trial_promo) Georgiana was distraught and full of guilt: ‘Oh my dearest Mama,’ she wrote immediately, ‘how can I tell [you], how can I express how much I love you and how much I felt at your going.’
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Lady Spencer was relieved to receive Georgiana’s letter; its tone reassured her that independence was still some way off. She replied with a description of the trust and obedience she expected of Georgiana in their future relationship:
Here commences our correspondence, my dear Georgiana, from which I propose myself more real pleasure than I can express, but the greatest part of it will quite vanish if I do not find you treat me with that entire Confidence that my heart expects. Seventeen years of painful anxiety and unwearied attention on my part, and the most affectionate and grateful return on yours is surely a sufficient [reason] to give me the very first place. I will not say your heart because that the D of D will have, but in your friendship.
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Georgiana was happy to comply as her days were lonely now. ‘As soon as I am up and have breakfasted I ride,’ she wrote. ‘I then come in and write and or do anything of employment, I then walk, dress for Dinner and after Dinner I take a short walk if it is fine and I have time ‘till the Gentlemen come out, and then spend the remainder of the evening in Playing at Whist, or writing if I have an opportunity and reading.’
(#litres_trial_promo) Not caring for his wife’s after-dinner concerts, the Duke usually took his friends off to drink and play billiards. Georgiana would not see him until much later, when, already in bed and fast asleep, she would be woken up by a noise at the door – he was impatient for her to become pregnant. She often rose full of dread at what lay ahead in the day. Sometimes she stayed in bed as long as possible, but this evasive measure brought its own problems.
Lord Charles and Lady D. Thompson and Miss Hatham arrived and I was obliged (for they were let in before I knew anything about it) to pretend that I was gone walking and at last went down Drest the greatest figure you can Imagine [she wrote sadly to her mother]. To compleat my Distress another Coachful arrived – of People I had never seen before. As I could not have much to say for myself, and some of the Company were talking about things I knew nothing of, I made the silliest figure you can conceive, and J [Lord John Cavendish] says I broke all the rules of Hospitality in forgetting to offer them some breakfast.
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She also had to preside over the Public Days which had resumed after Lady Spencer’s departure. Chatsworth still maintained the tradition of holding a Public Day every week. On these occasions the house was open to all the Duke’s tenants, as well as to any respectable stranger who wished to see the house and have dinner with its owners. Georgiana and the Duke stood in the hall wearing their finest clothes, as if attending a state occasion, and personally greeted each visitor. They had to remain gracious and sober while their guests helped themselves to the free food and drink. ‘Some of the men got extremely drunk,’ Georgiana recorded after one dinner, and her friends, ‘if they had not made a sudden retreat, would have been the victims of a drunken clergyman, who very nearly fell on them.’
(#litres_trial_promo) Her first appearance naturally caused great excitement in Derbyshire, but after a few weeks the Public Days became less crowded. She learned how to orchestrate a room full of strangers, how to pick out those whom she ought particularly to distinguish, and how to detach herself from those who would otherwise cling to her arm all day.
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Public Days were a feudal relic from the era of vassals and private armies. Because of the expense only the grandest of families continued the tradition. Such lavish entertainment was now a means of cultivating good relations with the tenantry and of safeguarding local political influence. In the eighteenth century the maintenance of an electoral borough was a family matter; it was part of the estate, as tangible and valuable as land. The Cavendish influence in parliament depended on the number of MPs who sat in the family’s ‘interest’. At its height, thirteen MPs owed allegiance to the Duke, the second largest grouping within the Whig party after the Marquess of Rockingham, who had eighteen.
(#litres_trial_promo) Since the Duke’s brother-in-law the Duke of Portland controlled ten, when the Cavendishes collaborated they presented a formidable faction.
That year the Public Days had a particular purpose; a general election was scheduled in October and the Cavendishes were defending their electoral interests in Derbyshire. Since peers were barred from personally campaigning in parliamentary elections, their wives and relatives had to look after their interests for them. On 8 October Georgiana went to her first election ball in Derby, dressed in fashionable London clothes for the benefit of the locals. The Duke’s brothers were already drunk by the time she arrived and Lord Frederick Cavendish, the Duke’s uncle, almost fell on her as she climbed the stairs to the assembly room. An open-door policy operated, and the heat and sweat of so many bodies crammed together made the room suffocating. The musicians – the usual country players – made an appalling noise, each following a different measure.
(#litres_trial_promo) Nevertheless Georgiana kept her poise and danced to the tunes from memory, smiling graciously at her partners and at any townspeople who caught her eye. The next ball she attended revealed the Derbyshire voters’ opinion of the new Duchess: ‘we were received there by a great huzza,’ she recorded. ‘The room was very much crowded but they were so good as to split in 2 to make room for us.’
(#litres_trial_promo) Although the Whigs did not do well as a party in the election, the Duke’s candidates were voted in without any trouble. His bill came to £554, which was low compared to the average £5,000 spent on a contested election.
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The Spencers had to pay considerably more. Lady Spencer went to the borough of Northampton Town because Lord Spencer’s nominee Mr Tollemache was facing a challenge from a newcomer, Sir James Langham. ‘I have dined each day during the Poll at the George with all the gentlemen and am extremely popular among them,’ she wrote contentedly to Georgiana.
(#litres_trial_promo) She not only courted the gentlemen voters but bravely went out to rally the whole town:
I set out on Thursday morning with Mrs Tollemache in my Cabriolet and four, in hopes of putting a little spirit into our people who were sadly discompos’d at having neither money or drink offer’d them [she informed her daughter on 9 October 1774]. I succeeded beyond my expectations, for I no sooner got to the George than a little mob surrounded us and insisted on taking off our horses and drawing us around the town … in a very few minutes we had a mob of several hundred people screaming Spencer for ever – Tollemache and Robinson – No Langham. In this manner did they drag us about thro’ every street in the town, and were so delighted with my talking to them and shewing no signs of fear at going wherever they chose, that it was with the utmost difficulty I could in the evening … prevent their drawing me quite home to Althorp. I went thro’ the same ceremony again on Friday, when very luckily my chaise was broke … it has ensur’d Mr Tollemache a great majority, by putting such numbers of people in spirits and good humour who before were cross and sulky and would not vote because there was nothing to enliven them.
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Despite the fact that people responded favourably to her youth and enthusiasm, Georgiana was constantly terrified of forgetting herself and committing some faux pas. This worry was exacerbated by the Cavendishes, who sternly demanded that she conform to their ways. A century of political leadership and proud public service had made them self-conscious and introverted in their dealings with the outside world. The Cavendish way of doing things stamped itself on all members of the family, from the relentless self-control they exerted on their emotions to the peculiar drawl which marred their speech – they pronounced her name ‘George-ayna’. In her eagerness to be accepted Georgiana adopted all their mannerisms, even vigorously applying the Cavendish drawl.
By now, three months into her marriage, Georgiana could not help but suspect the true nature of the Duke’s feelings towards her. He was kind in a distant sort of way, but he was naturally reticent and she soon realized that they had little in common. Her innocence bored him and Georgiana was too acute not to notice his lack of interest in her. She told her mother that she was secretly making an effort to be more attractive to him. Since he was so much more worldly than her, she read Lord Chesterfield’s Letters to His Son; and knowing of his interest in history and the classics she began several books on ancient Greece and on the reign of Louis XIV, ‘for as those two periods are so distant there will be no danger of their interfering so as to puzzle me’.
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At first Lady Spencer tried to reassure her that the Duke ‘was no less happy than herself’.
(#litres_trial_promo) She also supplied her daughter with advice on how to please him, suggesting that she should curb any thoughts of independence and show her submission by anticipating his desires:
But where a husband’s delicacy and indulgence is so great that he will not say what he likes, the task becomes more difficult, and a wife must use all possible delicacy and ingenuity in trying to find out his inclinations, and the utmost readiness in conforming to them. You have this difficult task to perform, my dearest Georgiana, for the Duke of D., from a mistaken tenderness, persists in not dictating to you the things he wishes you to do, and not contradicting you in anything however disagreeable to him. This should engage you by a thousand additional motives of duty and gratitude to try to know his sentiments upon even the most trifling subjects, and especially not to enter into any engagements or form any plans without consulting him …
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Unwilling to disappoint her mother, Georgiana made sincere efforts to appear cheerful, sending her carefully composed accounts of her life. Lady Spencer was particularly delighted when Georgiana wrote her letters in French and interspersed her news with little poems or religious reflections. Since she had been told that she ought to be content, Georgiana asserted that she was: ‘I have been so happy in marrying a Man I so sincerely lov’d, and experience Dayly so much of his goodness to me, that it is impossible I should not feel to the greatest degree that mutual happyness you speak of.’ But she could not help adding anxiously, ‘My only wish is to deserve it and my greatest pleasure the thought of being in any manner able to add to His Happyness.’
(#litres_trial_promo) She was quite sure that she did not add to his happiness in the slightest degree.
Georgiana had entered into marriage thinking that, like her mother, she would be a wife and companion. She soon discovered that her chief role was to produce children and carry out her social obligations. The Duke was used to his bachelor life: love he received from his mistress, companionship from his friends; from his wife he expected loyalty, support and commitment to the family’s interests. His was an old-fashioned view, greatly out of step with an age which celebrated romantic sentiment and openly shed tears over Clarissa. The Duke did not know how to be romantic; never having experienced tenderness himself he was incapable of showing it to Georgiana. He did not mean to hurt her, but there was a nine-year age difference between them and a gulf of misunderstanding and misplaced expectations.
They left Chatsworth in January, much to Georgiana’s relief. In London she would be surrounded by her own family and friends and no longer reliant on the monosyllabic Duke or his critical relations. The caravan of carriages and coaches, piled high with boxes of plate and linens, set off once more. Most of the servants joined the back of the train to take up their duties at Devonshire House, leaving behind a skeleton staff until the family’s return in the summer.
Devonshire House lay in London’s western end, known as the ‘polite’ end, encompassing Piccadilly, St James’s and Hyde Park. Before the eighteenth century the grand nobility lived in private palaces along the Strand, overlooking the river Thames, but after the Glorious Revolution the nature of political life changed. Parliament no longer met at the King’s command but according to a set calendar, while the court resided permanently at St James’s Palace when parliament was in session. The aristocracy had to be in London for much longer periods of time, and in a location convenient for both Westminster and St James’s. The concentration of so much wealth and power transformed the city. By the mid-eighteenth century one in ten Englishmen had lived in London at some point in his life. There was a frenzy of building as the capital spread out westwards. Speculators widened country lanes into streets, turned fields into smart squares, and built shops, arcades and churches on previously empty spaces. By the 1770s modern London was envied throughout Europe for its glass-fronted shops and spacious roads that easily accommodated two lanes of traffic.
The aristocratic ‘season’ came into existence not only to further the marriage market but to entertain the upper classes while they carried out their political duties. The season followed the rhythm of parliament: it began in late October with the opening of the new session, and ended in June with the summer recess. The two most popular nights of the week were Wednesday and Saturday, when parliament was not in session and the men’s attendance could be assured. A completely new form of public architecture appeared, the sole purpose of which was to facilitate social intercourse. Coffee houses – where men of all classes gathered during the day to read newspapers and discuss politics – sprang up. White’s, the first of the London clubs, opened in St James’s in 1697; Almack’s, Boodles and Brooks’s followed half a century later. For evening entertainment people went to Covent Garden or to the Italian Opera House in the Haymarket to hear Handel, or to Drury Lane to watch David Garrick. Afterwards they could pay 2s 6d to enter Ranelagh, or visit the riverside gardens at Vauxhall to dance at a masquerade, attend a concert, or watch the fireworks.
Baron Archenholtz came to London at this time and was amazed by the difference between the east and the west, the old and the new. East was the City, home of the country’s banking, insurance and commercial institutions. It retained a medieval feel with its tiny slipways and hidden courtyards. Further east were the manufacturing districts, where artisans laboured in run-down workshops without heat or ventilation to produce luxury goods to be sold in the West End – jewellery, clocks, saddles, furniture and cutlery. Further east still were the Spitalfields silk-weavers, the soap-making factories, tanneries and the slum-dwellings of the marginal poor. ‘The East end,’ Archenholtz wrote, ‘especially along the shores of the Thames, consists of old houses, the streets there are narrow, dark and ill-paved; inhabited by sailors and other workmen who are employed in the construction of ships and by a great part of the Jews.
‘The contrast between this and the West end,’ Archenholtz continued, ‘is astonishing: the houses here are mostly new and elegant; the squares superb, the streets straight and open … If all London were as well built, there would be nothing to compare it with.’
(#litres_trial_promo) Another visitor commented on how ‘pure air circulates in the new streets [compared to the fetid stench in the alleyways behind Westminster]; and the squares are carefully planned, and pleasing to the eye; the upper-class society who live there find these squares salubrious since within each of them is a magnificent garden; the surrounding houses are tall with plenty of big windows … admirable pavements very wide protect the passers-by from carriages and carts.’
(#litres_trial_promo) New lighting systems were being introduced and stucco was being applied to the front of buildings: they ‘lifted’ the city from under the thick fog of coal dust ‘which envelops London like a mantle; a cloud which the sun pervades rarely’.
Situated opposite what is now the Ritz Hotel, Devonshire House commanded magnificent views over Green Park. The original house had burnt down in 1733 and the third Duke of Devonshire commissioned William Kent to rebuild it. Aesthetically it was a failure. The house was stark and devoid of architectural detail; the bottom windows were too large, the top windows too small. The whole building was enclosed behind a brick wall which hid the ground floor from view and made the street unattractive to passers-by. The London topographer, James Ralph, wrote, ‘It is spacious, and so are the East India Company’s warehouses; and both are equally deserving of praise.’
(#litres_trial_promo) As well as attracting every graffiti writer within two miles, the brick wall ruined the architectural line of Piccadilly. One contemporary complained: ‘The Duke of Devonshire’s is one of those which present a horrid blank of wall, cheerless and unsociable by day, and terrible by night. Would it be credible that any man of taste, fashion, and figure would prefer the solitary grandeur of enclosing himself in a jail, to the enjoyment of the first view in Britain, which he might possess by throwing down this execrable brick screen?’
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The chief attraction of Devonshire House was the public rooms, which were larger and more ornate than almost anything to be seen in London. A crowd of 1,200 could easily sweep through the house during a ball, a remarkable contrast to some great houses where the crush could lift a person off his feet and carry him from room to room. Guests entered the house by an outer staircase which took them directly to the first floor. Inside was a hall two storeys high – flanked on either side by two drawing rooms of identical size. Beyond the hall was another, even larger drawing room, several anterooms and the dining room. Some of the finest paintings in England adorned the walls, including Rembrandt’s Old Man in Turkish Dress, and Poussin’s Et in Arcadia Ego.
Georgiana and the Duke were naturally placed to become the leaders of society’s most select group, known as the ton or ‘the World’ – the ultra-fashionable people who decided whether a play was a success, an artist a genius, or what colour would be ‘in’ that season. Henry Fielding was only half-joking when he said that ‘Nobody’ was ‘all the people in Great Britain, except about 1200’.
(#litres_trial_promo) The ton certainly believed this to be the case. The writer and reluctant courtier Fanny Burney made fun of its self-absorption in Cecilia: ‘Why, he’s the very head of the ton,’ Miss Larolles says of Mr Matthews. ‘There’s nothing in the world so fashionable as taking no notice of things, and never seeing people, and saying nothing at all, and never hearing a word, and not knowing one’s own acquaintance, and always finding fault; all the ton do so.’
The social tyrants who made up the ton also considered it deeply unfashionable for a wife and husband to be seen too much in each other’s company. The Duke escorted Georgiana to the opera once and then resumed his habit of visiting Brooks’s, where he always ordered the same supper – a broiled blade-bone of mutton – and played cards until five or six in the morning.
(#litres_trial_promo) Occasionally they went to a party together but Georgiana was expected to make her own social arrangements. There was no shortage of invitations and she accepted everything – routs, assemblies, card parties, promenades in the park – in an effort to avoid sitting alone in Devonshire House.
With her instinctive ability to make an impression, Georgiana immediately caused a sensation. She always appeared natural, even when she was called upon to open a ball in front of 800 people. She could engage in friendly chatter with several people simultaneously, leaving each with the impression that it had been a memorable event. She was ‘so handsome, so agreeable, so obliging in her manner, that I am quite in love with her,’ Mrs Delany burbled to a friend. ‘I can’t tell you all the civil things she said, and really they deserve a better name, which is kindness embellished by politeness. I hope she will illumine and reform her contemporaries!’
(#litres_trial_promo) Even cynics like Horace Walpole found their resistance worn down by Georgiana’s unforced charm and directness. Observing her transformation into a society figure, Walpole marvelled that this ‘lovely girl, natural, and full of grace’ could retain these qualities and yet be so much on show. ‘The Duchess of Devonshire effaces all,’ he wrote a few weeks after her arrival in London. She achieved it ‘without being a beauty; but her youth, figure, flowing good nature, sense and lively modesty, and modest familiarity, make her a phenomenon’.
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The few voices raised in criticism of Georgiana were not heeded, except by Lady Spencer. ‘I think there is too much of her,’ was one woman’s opinion. ‘She gives me the idea of being larger than life.’
(#litres_trial_promo) Lady Mary Coke thought Georgiana was making herself ridiculous and that her behaviour occasionally verged on hysteria. The Duchess went to visit Lady Harriet Foley, she wrote, just as her house and contents were being seized by the bailiffs, and ‘as her Grace’s misfortune is a very unnatural one, that of being too happy and of being delighted with everything she hears and sees, so the situation in which she found Lady Harriet was, in her Grace’s opinion, Charming; Lady Harriet told her she had no clothes, this was charming above measure.’
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Occasionally Georgiana drank too much, especially when she was nervous, and showed off as a result: ‘nothing is talked of but the Duchess of Devonshire: and I am sorry to say not much in her favour,’ wrote a society lady after Georgiana upset a dignified matron by pulling out her hair feathers.
(#litres_trial_promo) Lady Mary Coke went to Ranelagh and was disgusted to see Georgiana and her new friends amusing themselves by puffing out their cheeks and popping them.
(#litres_trial_promo) She could be persuaded to do anything: once she even appeared on stage at Hampton Court and danced in an opera organized by the fashionable wit and playwright Anthony Storer. Lady Spencer was worried when she saw how easily her daughter could be influenced: ‘when others draw you out of your own character, and make you assume one that is quite a stranger to you, it is difficult to distinguish you under the disguise,’ she warned.
(#litres_trial_promo) Mrs Delany feared that rather than reforming her contemporaries Georgiana was more likely to be corrupted by them: ‘This bitter reflection arises from what I hear every body says of a great and handsome relation of ours just beginning her part; but I do hope she will be like the young actors and actresses, who begin with over acting when they first come upon the stage … but I tremble for her.’
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Lady Spencer could see that Georgiana was falling in with the fast set. The gambling in particular worried her: ‘let me entreat you to beware of it, and if [gambling] is mention’d to you any more, to decline the taking any part in it,’ she begged.
(#litres_trial_promo) Gaming was to the aristocracy what gin was to the working classes: it caused the ruin of families and corrupted people’s lives. ‘A thousand meadows and cornfields are staked at every throw, and as many villages lost as in the earthquake that overwhelmed Herculaneum and Pompeii,’ wrote Horace Walpole, who had seen men lose an entire estate in a single night. ‘Play at whist, commerce, backgammon, trictrac or chess,’ Lady Spencer urged, ‘but never at quinze, lou, brag, faro, hazard or any games of chance, and if you are pressed to play always make the fashionable excuse of being tied up not to play at such and such a game. In short I must beg you, my dearest girl, if you value my happiness to send me in writing a serious answer to this.’
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Lady Clermont, who had known the Spencer family for many years, counselled Lady Spencer against being too critical: ‘I hope you don’t talk to her too often about trifles, when she does any little thing that is not right … If we can but keep her out of the fire for a year or two, or rather from being burn’d, for in the fire she is, it will all be well.’
(#litres_trial_promo) But Lady Spencer was too worried to listen; instead she tried to frighten Georgiana into adopting a more mature exterior. ‘You must learn to respect yourself,’ she wrote in April 1775, ‘and the world will soon follow your example; but while you herd only with the vicious and the profligate you will be like them, pert, familiar, noisy and indelicate, not to say indecent in their contempt for the censures of the grave, and their total disregard of the opinion of the world in general, you will be lost indeed past recovery.’
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Georgiana – as dependent on parental approval as ever – felt guilty and went to even greater lengths to distract herself with frivolity. Her recklessness entranced society even as it caused disapproval. Whatever she wore became instantly fashionable. Women’s hair was already arranged high above the head, but Georgiana took the fashion a step further by creating the three-foot hair tower. She stuck pads of horse hair to her own hair using scented pomade and decorated the top with miniature ornaments. Sometimes she carried a ship in full sail, or an exotic arrangement of stuffed birds and waxed fruit, or even a pastoral tableau with little wooden trees and sheep. Even though the towers required the help of at least two hairdressers and took several hours to arrange, Georgiana’s designs inspired others to imitate her. ‘The Duchess of Devonshire is the most envied woman of the day in the Ton,’ the newspapers reported.
(#litres_trial_promo) It was true; women competed with each other to construct the tallest head, ignoring the fact that it made quick movements impossible and the only way to ride in a carriage was to sit on the floor.
Another of Georgiana’s innovations was the drooping ostrich feather, which she attached in a wide arch across the front of her hair. In April Lord Stormont, the British ambassador in Paris, presented her with one that was four feet long.
(#litres_trial_promo) Overnight it became the most important accessory in a lady’s wardrobe, even though the tall nodding plumes were difficult to find and extremely expensive.
(#litres_trial_promo) The ton wore them with a smug arrogance which infuriated the less fortunate. The fashion generated resentment: it was too excessive and too exclusive. The Queen banned ostrich feathers from court, and according to Lady Louisa Stuart, ‘the unfortunate feathers were insulted, mobbed, hissed, almost pelted wherever they appeared, abused in the newspapers, nay even preached at in the pulpits and pointed out as marks of reprobation’.
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In less than a year Georgiana had become a celebrity. Newspaper editors noticed that any report on the Duchess of Devonshire increased their sales. She brought glamour and style to a paper. A three-ring circus soon developed between newspapers who saw commercial value in her fame, ordinary readers who were fascinated by her, and Georgiana herself who enjoyed the attention. The more editors printed stories about her, the more she obliged by playing up to them. Her arrival coincided with the flowering of the English press. A growing population, increased wealth, better roads, and an end to official censorship had resulted in a wider readership and more news to report. By the end of the 1770s there were nine daily newspapers, all based in London, and hundreds of biand tri-weekly provincial papers which reprinted the London news. For the first time national figures emerged, Georgiana among them, which the whole country read about and discussed, and with whom they could feel some sort of connection.
The Morning Post reported Georgiana’s progress to a nation whose appetite for news about her was constantly growing:
The Duchess of D—e has a fashionable coat of mail; impregnable to the arrows of wit or ridicule; many other females of distinction have been made to moult, and rather than be laughed at any longer, left themselves featherless; while her Grace, with all the dignity of a young Duchess is determined to keep the field, for her feathers increase in enormity in proportion to the public intimations she receives of the absurdity. Her head was a wonderful exhibition on Saturday night at the Opera. The Duke is quoted as saying she is welcome to do as she likes as long as she doesn’t think it ‘necessary that I should wear any ornaments on my head in compliment to her notions of taste and dress’.
The London Chronicle reported with outrage that a crowd had almost attacked Georgiana when she visited the pleasure gardens at Ranelagh
dressed in a stile so whimsically singular as quickly collected the company round her, they behaved with great rudeness, in so much that she was necessitated to take shelter in one of the boxes, and there remained prisoner for some time, until the motley crew had retired, and left only those behind who scorned to offer insult to a fine woman for indulging her fancy in the most innocent and inoffensive manner, and who were capable of discovering, amidst her levity, an understanding that would distinguish her in any court in Europe.
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On the whole, society took Georgiana’s fashion excesses in good part, and even when people teased her it was done with gentle humour. One night at the opera she entered her box just as the celebrated Signor Lovattini came on stage to sing. He was wearing an enormous headdress of red and white flowers in imitation of the one Georgiana had worn on her last visit. The audience burst out laughing and Georgiana, rather than taking offence, turned to Lovattini and made him a low bow which earned her cheers of approval.
(#litres_trial_promo) People were enraptured by a duchess who was happy to exchange banter with the crowd. On another occasion the Morning Post reported that the audience in the Haymarket Theatre had lapsed into giggles when a couple appeared in the stalls dressed up in a parody of the Devonshires. The woman wore ostrich feathers in her hair and enormous breeches which extended up to her armpits while her male companion was wearing an oversized petticoat with a ducal coronet and jewels on his head.
(#litres_trial_promo) It was not an attack on Georgiana so much as a comment on the Duke’s inadequacies. In less than a year she had eclipsed her husband and become a popular figure in her own right.
During that year Georgiana had also brought herself to a state of nervous and physical exhaustion. She had suffered at least one miscarriage, which convinced Lady Spencer that her daughter should leave England, if only to remain quiet for a while. In July the Spencers and the Devonshires set off for a holiday in Spa. After a few weeks in the open air Georgiana’s health returned and her unnatural pallor disappeared. On their return they stopped at Versailles to pay their respects to Louis XVI. Georgiana already had more than a passing acquaintance with Marie Antoinette, having met her during previous trips to France. On this visit a close friendship developed which lasted until the Queen’s execution in 1793. They discovered they had much in common, not only in having married a position rather than a lover, but also in their relations with their mothers. Empress Marie Thérèse combined an intense, almost suffocating love for her children with a manipulative and dominating manner. While Georgiana was in Paris Marie Antoinette received the following scolding from her mother which sounded uncannily like many of Lady Spencer’s letters:
What frivolity! Where is the kind and generous heart of the Archduchess Antoinette? All I see is intrigue, low hatred, a persecuting spirit, and cheap wit … Your too early success and your entourage of flatterers have always made me fear for you, ever since that winter when you wallowed in pleasures and ridiculous fashions. Those excursions from pleasure to pleasure without the King and in the knowledge that he doesn’t enjoy them and that he either accompanies you or leaves you free out of sheer good nature … Where is the respect and gratitude you owe him for all his kindness?
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Three weeks later Georgiana received a similar inquiry from Lady Spencer, who complained, among other things, about her inattentiveness towards the Duke. ‘You do not say anything of [him] – how does he employ and amuse himself?’ she asked.
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Similar words have often been used to describe both Georgiana and Marie Antoinette. Horace Walpole thought Marie Antoinette grace itself, and called her a ‘statue of beauty’. She had immense charm, which at first endeared her to the court and the people, but she shared Georgiana’s tendency to take everything to excess. On a typical evening she would go to the opera, leave early for an intimate supper, rush to several balls, and finish off the night gambling with Mme de Guémène, whom everyone suspected of cheating. Her addiction to trivial amusements has been attributed to her frustration with her marriage. A naturally romantic woman, she had little in common with her reserved and awkward husband. ‘The great obstacle to this perfect union is the incompatibility of the tastes and characters of the two spouses,’ wrote an observer. ‘The King is calm, rather passive, loving the solitude of his library … His wife is … extremely vivacious, loving a quick succession of pleasures and their diversity.’
(#litres_trial_promo) Marie Antoinette loved extravagant coiffures and clothes and, like Georgiana, enjoyed being at the forefront of fashion. But she chose her friends unwisely, from among the most dissipated in French society. They led the tractable Queen into one scrape after another.
It was on this visit, too, that Georgiana formed life-long friendships with members of Marie Antoinette’s set, particularly with the ambitious Polignacs. The Austrian ambassador to France complained to the Empress Marie Thérèse that Marie Antoinette was infatuated with the Duchesse de Polignac. The ‘Little Po’, as she was nicknamed, was a sweet-natured, elegant brunette, very much under her husband’s thumb, who nevertheless exerted a powerful attraction on both Marie Antoinette and Georgiana. Throughout Georgiana’s stay the three women went everywhere together, wore each other’s favours on their bosoms, and exchanged locks of hair as keepsakes. They met in a highly charged feminine atmosphere where feelings ruled and kisses and embraces were part of the ordinary language of communication. Georgiana’s passionate nature, thwarted in her marriage to the Duke, found fulfilment in such an atmosphere.
On her return to England Georgiana made a renewed effort to please her husband. Initially he responded with unaccustomed sensitivity. ‘The Duke is in very good spirits,’ she wrote in September 1775. ‘I sincerely hope he is contented with me, tho’ if he is not he hides it very well, for it is impossible to say how good and attentive he is to me, and how much he seems to make it his business to see me happy and pleas’d – with so much reason as he has had to be discontented at such a number of things, I have very little right to expect [it].’
(#litres_trial_promo) Lady Spencer’s friend Miss Lloyd thought that Georgiana was telling the truth and that they appeared to be getting on well together: ‘I think they are grown quite in love with each other,’ she wrote.
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But they had so little in common that their efforts to establish a deeper intimacy had petered out by Christmas. It was not a question of dislike; neither understood the other. The Duke was used to being flattered and cossetted by his mistress Charlotte Spencer and resented the emotional demands that Georgiana made upon him. Georgiana, on the other hand, treated him as if he were part of her audience and then wondered why her reserved and shy husband failed to respond. A family tale reveals the misunderstanding between them. The Duke was drinking a dish of tea with Lady Spencer and Harriet when Georgiana walked into the room and sat on his lap with her arms around his neck. Without saying a word he pushed her off and left the company.
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Rejected by the Duke, Georgiana once more sought consolation in the fashionable world as soon as the season began. Newspapers speculated on how long she could keep up the frantic pace of her life before her health collapsed.
(#litres_trial_promo) They only had to wait a couple of months. In April 1776 Georgiana went into premature labour. No one was surprised by her miscarriage. ‘The Duchess of Devonshire lies dangerously ill,’ reported the Morning Post, ‘and we hear the physicians have ascribed her indisposition to the reigning fashionable irregularities of the age.’
(#litres_trial_promo) The next day it claimed with gloomy pleasure that the physicians had given up and her death was imminent.
