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Fox’s ardour moved Georgiana. He talked to her as no one else did, treating her as his equal, discussing his ideas and encouraging her participation. She had once visited the House of Commons out of curiosity with Lady Jersey (women were banned from the gallery in 1778), but had not repeated the experiment. Fox awakened in her a sense of loyalty and commitment to the Whig party. By the time he left Chatsworth she was his devoted follower. Twenty years later she was still his most loyal supporter. ‘Charles always had faults,’ was all she would concede, ‘that may injure him and have as a Statesman – but never as the greatest of men.’
(#litres_trial_promo) Like his contemporaries at Eton and later at Brooks’s she had fallen under Fox’s spell. His following in parliament depended as much on his personality as on his views. To be a Foxite meant that one belonged to a gang whose single bond was an uncritical admiration of Fox.
Fox and Mary’s belief in Georgiana persuaded her that she could make something more of herself. In April 1778 she wrote of her desire to begin afresh. ‘I have the strongest sense of having many things to repent of and my heart is fully determined to mend,’ she told Lady Spencer; she planned to take Holy Communion (a rite less commonly performed in the eighteenth century) after her trip to Derby. But the same letter also hints at entanglements – gambling debts – which she regretted and feared. ‘By going there I break off many unpleasant embarrassments I am in with regard to others and the quiet life I shall lead there will give me time to think …’
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The result was a thinly disguised autobiographical novel called The Sylph. Notwithstanding its exaggerations, the book can be read as a roman à clef. Written as a series of letters, the story follows the misadventures of Julia Stanley, a naive country girl married to the dissipated Sir William Stanley, a rake whose only interests are fashion and gambling. When Julia first comes to London she does not understand the ways of the ton, but slowly it seduces her and she becomes trapped. She learns how to live à la mode, how to spend hours dressing for a ball, how to talk, sing, dance and think like a fashionable person. She realizes that her soul is being corrupted by the cynicism and heartlessness which pervades the ton, but sees no hope of escape. Sir William is cruel, even brutal towards her. His only concern is that she should be a credit to him in public. He flaunts his mistress in front of her, punishes her when she suffers a miscarriage, and is not above assaulting her when angered. As his creditors close in, Sir William forces Julia to sign over all her personal property. (Nor is she the only woman in the book to suffer from male abuse. An aristocratic lady who loses a fortune at the gaming table is blackmailed by a friend into sleeping with him in return for his silence.)
(#ulink_a4371cc8-b5d3-5e07-9879-792299a58565) Julia’s friend Lady Besford, who is obviously modelled on Lady Melbourne, urges her to accept her life and find happiness where she can. Julia is facing moral ruin when an anonymous protector, calling himself ‘the Sylph’, begins sending her letters of advice. Finally Sir William becomes so desperate for money that he sells the rights to Julia’s body to his chief creditor. She runs away, and he shoots himself in a shabby room above an inn.
(#ulink_17a0c70b-52e8-5871-9e66-8426a7cff862) The Sylph then reveals himself to be Julia’s childhood sweetheart. They marry and live happily ever after.
Georgiana wrote The Sylph in secret and published it anonymously as ‘a young lady’.
(#litres_trial_promo) The novel was a creditable success, quickly going through four editions; it was not long before people guessed the identity of the author. When challenged in public Georgiana refused to comment, but it became common knowledge that she had admitted the truth in private. There were plenty of clues pointing in her direction, not only in her choice of names, which are all variations on those of her friends, but in the sly references to herself: Julia’s hairdresser protests that ‘he had run the risk of disobliging the Duchess of D—, by giving me the preference of the finest bunch of radishes that had yet come over from Paris’. Like Georgiana, Julia has a younger sister whom she adores and a worldly, older female companion to whom she turns for advice. The similarities in style and phrasing between the novel and Georgiana’s letters allayed any lingering doubts. Georgiana often wrote of her longing for a moral guide: ‘Few can boast like me of having such a friend and finding her in a mother,’ she once wrote to Lady Spencer, adding how much she depended on her for moral and spiritual advice. ‘I should be very happy if I could borrow some friendly Sylph (if any are so kind as to hover about Hardwick) and a pair of wings that I might Pay you now and then a visit.’
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Part of The Sylph’s success was due to its notoriety. Readers were shocked by the sexual licence and violence it depicted. The Gentleman’s Magazine was appalled: the anonymous female author, it thought, showed ‘too great a knowledge of the ton, and of the worst, though perhaps highest part of the world’. Mrs Thrale, doyenne of the Blue Stocking Circle, denounced the book as ‘an obscene Novel’.
(#litres_trial_promo) She objected to passages such as the following, where Lady Besford expresses a breathtakingly cynical view of marriage:
you do not suppose my happiness proceeds from my being married, any further than that I enjoy title, rank and liberty, by bearing Lord Besford’s name. We do not disagree because we seldom meet. He pursues his pleasure one way, I seek mine another, and our dispositions being opposite, they are sure never to interfere with each other … My Lord kept a mistress from the moment of his marriage. What law excludes a woman from doing the same? Marriage now is a necessary kind of barter, and an alliance of families; – the heart is not consulted …
The Sylph touches on many subjects, not least the loneliness of a bad marriage and the vulnerability of women in a society where they are deprived of equal rights. Georgiana obviously wrote the novel in a hurry and it does not compare well with Fanny Burney’s Evelina, for example. The significance of The Sylph lies in the rare insider’s glimpse it provides of the ton. Georgiana describes a competitive, unfriendly world peopled predominantly by opportunists, liars and bullies; a world which encourages hypocrisy and values pretence. The irony did not escape her that even as she hated it she was also its creature. However, in publishing The Sylph she was also claiming her independence.
* (#ulink_e21eb1c9-11d2-5555-86d8-bf96298503f6)Georgiana was not herself a snob. When Monsieur Tessier, the celebrated French actor, visited England the Duchess of Manchester refused to speak to him because he earned his living. Her behaviour disgusted Georgiana, and to make the point she danced with him at Almack’s.
* (#ulink_72951b1a-564b-5a8f-9287-f1386917da87) Sheridan’s friend and biographer Thomas Moore remembered his hatred of perceived rivals: ‘It was Burke chiefly that S. hated and envied (they indeed hated each other) – Being both Irishmen – both adventurers – they had every possible incentive to envy.’ Wilfrid S. Dowden, ed., The Journal of Thomas Moore (London 1983), I, p. 161.
* (#ulink_5ead8dfc-028d-5f74-b57b-e12b00d2254d) Hare’s seat in parliament – courtesy of the Duke – was the only barrier between him and debtors’ prison. He was fortunate enough to be the grandson of a bishop, but also unfortunate in being the son of an apothecary. He had gambled away his small inheritance and thereafter survived as a permanent house guest in Whig society. He was stick thin, with a face so white he appeared more dead than alive.
* (#ulink_05e28e8f-c930-5066-b87a-0d7a67abccb7) Apparently the Queen’s brother-in-law surprised them one day while they were making up after an argument, hugging each other tightly and kissing each other’s tear-stained cheeks. He burst out laughing and left, saying, ‘Pray don’t let me disturb you!’ and told everybody how he had interrupted the two friends.
* (#ulink_e2fcc0b7-94fe-54af-af28-cdff0d168fbc) Fox even brought a few of his friends to near bankruptcy by persuading them to provide security for him in the form of annuities to money-lenders. At one point the Earl of Carlisle was paying one sixth of his income towards the interest on Fox’s debts. Leslie Mitchell, Charles James Fox (Oxford 1991), p. 102.
† (#ulink_e2fcc0b7-94fe-54af-af28-cdff0d168fbc) Contemporary descriptions show how peculiar this uniform was: ‘The gamesters began by pulling off their embroidered clothes, and putting on frieze greatcoats, or turned their coats inside outwards for good luck. They put on pieces of leather (such as are worn by footmen when they clean knives) to save their laced ruffles; to shield their eyes from the light and hold up curls, etc., they wore high-crowned straw hats with broad brims, adorned with flowers and ribbons: [and] masks to conceal their emotions when they played at quinze.’ J. Timbs, Clubs and Club Life in London (London 1872), p. 72.
* (#ulink_ef6f6cda-9e61-501a-a073-32bc11a0e7a3) When he wrote his memoirs in 1801 Colonel George Hanger, a former lover of Lady Melbourne’s, claimed that several ladies in the Devonshire House Circle had fallen into the same trap.
† (#ulink_ef6f6cda-9e61-501a-a073-32bc11a0e7a3)In circumstances very similar to the suicide of Mrs Damer’s husband in 1775.
4A Popular Patriot1778–1781 (#ulink_dc944d7e-4458-5940-8243-245ca046ad91)
Saturday Morning the Derbyshire Militia passed through the city on their road to Cox Heath. The Duke of Devonshire marched at their head. The whole regiment made a very noble appearance, equal to any regulars whatever. If the militia of the other counties prove but as good, there is no doubt but that they are a match for any force that can be brought against them. The Duchess of Devonshire followed the regiment, dressed en militaire, and was escorted by several attendants.
London Chronicle, 20–23 June 1778
One day last week, her Grace the Duchess of Devonshire appeared on the hustings at Covent Garden. She immediately saluted her favourite Candidate, the Hon. Charles Fox.
Morning Post, 25 September 1780
GEORGIANA’S POLITICAL AWAKENING coincided with a disastrous year for the Whigs. The Declaration of Independence of 4 July 1776 proclaimed the American colonies ‘Free and Independent States … absolved from all allegiance to the British crown’. The Whigs supported the colonists against the government but their rousing talk of safeguarding the liberty of the people had signally failed to impress the country. The public rejected their contention that the government was at fault for having tried to force an unjust system of taxation on the colonists, and the press accused the party of conniving with Britain’s enemies to break up the empire. It was an unfair accusation although it touched on a dilemma for the Whigs: they viewed the American conflict through the prism of Westminster politics and regarded it as part of the struggle between the people and the crown. For this reason they privately hoped that the Americans would win.
In February 1778 France entered the war on the side of the Americans, transforming what had hitherto been a set of military skirmishes in New England into a trans-continental war. Britain now had to fight on several fronts. Shaken by this new threat, the Prime Minister Lord North hoped to strengthen the cabinet by poaching Charles Fox and one or two others, but his overtures were rejected. The debates in parliament became bitter as Whig and government MPs accused each other of betraying the country’s interests. The sense of crisis was heightened in April by the dramatic death of William Pitt the Elder during a debate in the House of Lords. The former Prime Minister, now the Earl of Chatham, had risen from his sick bed to make his final speech. He arrived draped in black velvet, and dragged himself to his old seat with the help of crutches. Speaking in the government’s defence, he argued that a surrender to the Americans would signal the end of the empire – the empire he had won for Britain almost thirty years earlier. Only the Duke of Richmond, Fox’s uncle and a committed Whig, dared to answer the respected statesman. He argued that it was impossible to fight a war on two fronts against the Americans and the French. Chatham slowly pulled himself to his feet to reply, but no words came out. He shuddered, clutched his heart and collapsed to the floor. To many MPs Chatham’s death in the throes of a patriotic speech seemed to symbolize Britain’s approaching demise.
Having enjoyed two years of a distant war, the country now began to mobilize its defences against the threat of a French invasion. As Lord Lieutenant of Derbyshire the Duke of Devonshire returned to the country to organize a voluntary militia. Most able-bodied men were either already in the army or in stable employment; those available to join the home defence force made unpromising material. This did not deter the aristocracy, who threw themselves into the task of training their corps with almost childish enthusiasm. Many of them proudly wore their regimental uniforms to the King’s birthday celebrations at St James’s.
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Since the French were likely to target London first, the government set up two campsites for its protection: Coxheath in Kent and Warley in Essex. So many sightseers flocked to the camps that a London – Coxheath coach service started. The London Chronicle reported that Coxheath camp would be three miles long, holding 15,000 men and representing the ‘flower of the nobility’. Workers were building a stone pavilion in anticipation of a royal visit. Meanwhile ‘the Tradespeople of the neighbouring places are deserting their town residents, and are likewise encamping round us in the various temporary streets. The whole will form one of the most striking military spectacles ever exhibited in the country.’
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Georgiana accompanied the Duke to Coxheath, where they were joined by many of their friends. She was enthralled by the spectacle of thousands of men mobilizing for war. She walked behind the Duke as he inspected his regiment, imagining herself bravely leading a battalion of men in a bloody engagement against the invaders. Although women were not usually tolerated on the field, the officers indulged her desire to take part in the preparations. ‘There is a vacant company which the soldiers call mine,’ she confided to her brother. ‘I intend to make it a very good one.’
(#litres_trial_promo) The Duke rented a large house for her nearby, but she persuaded him to allow her to live in the camp with him. Their ‘tent’ was made up of several marquees, arranged into a compound of sleeping quarters, entertaining rooms, kitchens and a servants’ hall. Refusing to equate a state of readiness with austerity, Georgiana decorated it with travelling tables, oriental rugs and silver candlesticks from Chatsworth. Nevertheless conditions in the camp were primitive and sanitary arrangements non-existent.
Her letters during these weeks are full of military matters – manoeuvres and parades. In May she wrote to Lady Spencer:
I got up very early and went to the field. The soldiers fir’d very well and I stood by the Duke and Cl Gladwin, who were near enough to have their faces smart with gun-powder, but I was not fortunate enough to have this honour. After the firing was over, Major Revel, whose gout prevents him from walking, sat a horseback to be saluted as General. The Duke of Devonshire took his post at the head of his company, and after marching about they came by Major Revel and saluted him. The D. really does it vastly well …
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By mid-June, however, Georgiana was feeling less welcome on the field: the Duke had grown tired of her presence and the soldiers no longer regarded her as a novelty. She stopped loitering around the guns and reluctantly joined her friends in their card parties, carriage rides and jolly picnics on the hills overlooking the camp. Over veal cake and tea with Lady Melbourne and Mrs Crewe she discovered that they too were bored and wished to do more than simply observe the soldiers. Their complaints gave her courage. It occurred to her that even though women were barred from taking part in military action, there was nothing to stop her from organizing a female auxiliary corps. She had soon designed a smart uniform that combined elegance with masculinity, using a tailored version of a man’s riding coat over a close-fitting dress. In July the Morning Post informed its readers: ‘Her Grace the Duchess of Devonshire appears every day at the head of the beauteous Amazons on Coxheath, who are all dressed en militaire; in the regimentals that distinguish the several regiments in which their Lords, etc., serve, and charms every beholder with their beauty and affability.’
(#litres_trial_promo) She continued to parade throughout the summer, inspiring women in other camps to follow suit. The Marchioness of Granby bought a half share in a sixteen-gun ship and had it renamed after her.
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Although Georgiana and her friends did little more than dress up in uniforms and provide good cheer for the men, she had broken with tradition. For the first time aristocratic women organized themselves as a voluntary group, taking up duties to help their men in time of war. Following the publicity they generated Georgiana was particularly gratified by the congratulations she received from the Whig grandees. Her idea of dressing up in patriotic uniforms was a propaganda coup for the Whigs, who had suffered for their opposition to the war. They had been labelled by the press as ‘Patriots’ in reference to Dr Johnson’s apothegm about patriotism being the last refuge of the scoundrel. Georgiana’s display of military fervour helped to mitigate public hostility towards them and restore the party’s popularity.
Georgiana’s pleasure at her success was short-lived: one day she discovered that the Duke and Lady Jersey had been taking advantage of her parades through the camp to visit each other’s tents. Possibly jealous of the attention Georgiana was receiving and feeling neglected, the Duke made no effort to keep the affair a secret. Lady Jersey went further and flaunted her conquest in front of Georgiana, who was too frightened and inexperienced to assert herself.
(#litres_trial_promo) Lady Jersey regarded all married men – except her husband, who was twice her age – as an irresistible challenge. (When a ribald article appeared about her in the Morning Post in 1777 it shocked only Lord Jersey. They happened to be staying at Chatsworth at the time and he embarrassed everyone by announcing that he loved his wife and would ‘shew the world he did not believe them’.)
(#litres_trial_promo) Lady Jersey always tormented the wives of her conquests, and fond though she was of Georgiana she couldn’t resist the urge to humiliate her friend. According to Lady Clermont, she ‘asked the Duchess if she could give her a bed [at Coxheath]. She said she was afraid not, the other said, “then I will have a bed in your room.” So that in the house she is to be. Pray, write to the Duchess,’ she asked Lady Spencer, ‘that you hope, in short, I don’t know what …’
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Georgiana’s timidity puzzled her mother – although hurt and mortified it seems that she said nothing to either party. For once Lady Spencer showed a certain sensitivity and, instead of remonstrating with her daughter, made an unaccustomed effort to praise her and boost her confidence. ‘Your behaviour is in every respect just what it ought to be,’ she wrote in July, referring to Georgiana’s visit to nearby Tunbridge Wells. A local newspaper had reported that the townspeople felt snubbed by the grandees at Coxheath, so Georgiana attended the Assembly Rooms with Lady Clermont and Mrs Crewe, where the master of ceremonies welcomed them to much applause. ‘I believe it with great reason,’ Lady Spencer continued, ‘that if you continue as you have begun you will gain the love and admiration of all who see you.’
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It was not long, however, before the chiding resumed: ‘I suspect’, she complained in August, ‘you put on … a great deal more familiarity and ease than is necessary or proper to the men about you.’
(#litres_trial_promo) As usual, Lady Spencer’s criticisms were not without cause. ‘I believe the Dss of D one of the most amiable beings in the world,’ Mrs Montagu wrote after meeting her at Tunbridge Wells. ‘She has a form and face extremely angelick, her temper is perfectly sweet, she has fine parts, the greatest purity of heart and innocence possible.’ But, Mrs Montagu added, ‘as goodness thinks no ill where no ill seems, she does not keep so far aloof from the giddy and imprudent part of the World as one could wish.’
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The liaison between Lady Jersey and the Duke was shortlived. Fortunately for Georgiana, Lady Spencer ordered an end to the affair. Angered by Georgiana’s unwillingness to interfere, she had called on Lady Jersey and outlined the consequences she would face if it continued.
(#litres_trial_promo) The Spencers also gave the Duke to understand that they were disgusted with him.
By the time the King and Queen made their long-awaited official visit to Coxheath on 4 November 1778, Lady Jersey had acquired a new lover. The rain poured down on the day – ‘cats and dogs,’ Georgiana complained – and while the Duke marched his soldiers past the King, Georgiana led the delegation of ladies standing in slippery mud up to their ankles waiting on the Queen. Georgiana’s discomfort was greatly increased by the onset of what she termed ‘the Prince’, a common euphemism for menstruation. Although the rain prevented many of the planned manoeuvres from taking place, the newspapers considered the visit a success. According to Georgiana, the Duke of Devonshire was ‘reckon’d to have saluted the best of anybody’.
(#litres_trial_promo) However, the Devonshires’ patriotism did not extend to spending the winter in a mud pit; immediately after the royal visit they returned to Devonshire House.
Georgiana’s sense of isolation had increased as a result of the Duke’s adultery. Her ebullience became a screen which she employed to distance herself from people. She did not mind public occasions, but quiet tête-à-têtes made her uncomfortable and she tried to avoid them, though not always with success. Her reluctance to give offence made her incapable of declining an invitation. ‘I am to dine with Lady Jersey,’ Georgiana wrote to Lady Spencer a few months later. ‘To tell you the truth tho’ I love her tenderly, I have learnt to feel a kind of uneasiness in being with her, that makes our society very general – I am discontented in being with her and can’t tell her so, et ma bonhomie en souffre.’
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(#ulink_452e66c0-48b1-5055-bc08-38cab05c7642) Despite her unease, she continued to behave towards Lady Jersey as if nothing had happened.
Other inhabitants of the camp were less fortunate than Lady Jersey – not all escaped the consequences of their actions so lightly. Lady Melbourne became pregnant with Lord Egremont’s child while Lady Clermont’s affair with the local apothecary resulted in a secret abortion. But it was Lady Derby and the Duke of Dorset who, in social terms, paid the highest price.
(#litres_trial_promo) Lady Mary Coke saw them together in June and rued Lady Derby’s recklessness. She wrote in her diary: ‘Lady Derby, like the Duchess of Devonshire, has bad connexions which lead her into many things that she had better not do, and for which I am sorry …’
(#litres_trial_promo) Her intuition proved correct. In December 1778 Lady Derby fled from her husband’s house, leaving behind her children and all her belongings. It was a widely broadcast secret that she was hiding with the Duke of Dorset. Her desertion broke one of eighteenth-century society’s strongest taboos regarding the sanctity of the family and a wife’s obedience to her husband. According to Lady Mary Coke, she had ‘offended against the laws of man and God’.
(#litres_trial_promo) She heard that Lady Derby’s brother the Duke of Hamilton was trying to force the Duke of Dorset to sign a legal document agreeing to marry her as soon as the divorce came through. There were other rumours: Lady Derby was pregnant; the Duke of Dorset had made another mistress pregnant; he was now in love with someone else. In February, two months after the initial excitement, Lady Sarah Lennox had this to say to her sister:
It is imagined the Duke of Dorset will marry Lady Derby, who is now in the country keeping quiet and out of the way. There is a sort of party in town of who is to visit her and who is not, which makes great squabbles, as if the curse or blessing of the poor woman depended on a few tickets more or less … I am told she has been and still is more thoroughly attached to the Duke of Dorset, and if so I suppose she will be very happy if the lessening of her visiting list is the only misfortune, and what with giving up her children, sorrow for a fault, and dread of not preserving his affections, I think she is much to be pittied.
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The ‘party’ who went to visit her consisted mostly of the younger generation of Whigs – Lady Carlisle and Lady Jersey in particular. Georgiana was caught between her friends, who sought the additional weight of her celebrity, and her parents, who forbade her to have anything more to do with the unfortunate woman. Everyone was waiting to see what Georgiana would do, said Lady Mary Coke, ‘lest such bad company should influence her’.
(#litres_trial_promo) Georgiana argued that it would be hypocritical of her to cut Lady Derby. Fearing her father’s temper, she begged Lady Spencer not to tell him of her request to accompany her friends:
I have the greatest horror of her crime, I can not nor do not try to excuse her. But her conduct has been long imprudent, and yet, I have sup’d at her house, and I have enter’d with her into any scheme of amusement, etc., and now it does seem shocking to me, that at the time this poor creature is in distress, that at the time all her grandeur is crush’d around her, I should entirely abandon her, as if I said, I know you was imprudent formerly, but then you had a gay house and great suppers and so I came to you but now that you have nothing of all this, I will avoid you.
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The Spencers disagreed. They gave Georgiana a choice: either she dropped Lady Derby or they would never allow her sister Harriet to visit Devonshire House or Chatsworth. ‘If you sacrifice so much for a person who was never on a footing of friendship,’ wrote Lady Spencer, ‘what are you to do if Lady J or Lady M should proceed (and they are already far on their way) to the same lengths?’
(#litres_trial_promo) Georgiana surrendered, a little relieved to be excused from the unpleasant bickering which surrounded the affair. Lady Carlisle had issued an invitation to a party which included Lady Derby as a test of her friends’ loyalty. For four months society thought about nothing else. Then, in April, Lord Derby announced that he would not be divorcing her. It was a terrible revenge; by his refusal – it was almost impossible for a wife to divorce her husband except on the grounds of non-consummation – he consigned his wife to social limbo, disgraced, separated and unprotected. Only marriage to the Duke of Dorset would have brought about her social rehabilitation. Their relationship did not survive the strain of her ostracism, confirming Lady Sarah Lennox’s prediction. Two years later Lady Mary Coke recorded a rumour that Lady Derby had left for Italy with a certain Lord Jocelyn which, she wrote spitefully, merely confirmed her opinion of her.
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The reputation of the Duke of Dorset did not suffer. He had seduced another man’s wife, but while many people looked askance at his behaviour there was no question of excluding him from society. He even remained friends with Lord Derby and continued to be invited to his house. The Derby affair illustrates the point made by Georgiana in The Sylph: eighteenth-century society tolerated anything so long as there was no scandal. Publicly immoral behaviour earned public censure; private transgressions remained whispered gossip. In Lady Spencer’s words, Lady Derby ‘insulted the World with her Vice’.
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In July 1779, when the season was over, Georgiana went with her parents to Spa. The Duke did not accompany them, pleading military duty, and spent the summer marching his soldiers at the camp. The English and French aristocrats on holiday at Spa behaved as if the two countries were not at war. Good breeding and fine manners counted for more than martial spirits. Madame de Polignac had been waiting for Georgiana to arrive and they passed the holiday together, walking arm in arm through the wooded fields surrounding the village. They were such conspicuous companions that their friendship reached the notice of the English press. The Morning Herald and Daily Advertiser reported: ‘The reigning female favourite of the Queen of France is Madame Polignac, a great encomiast of the English, and a particular admirer of her Grace the Duchess of Devonshire …’
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On her return in September Georgiana experienced her first battle. They were travelling in a convoy of two packet boats, escorted by a naval sloop, The Fly, for protection. At dawn on 14 September French privateers attacked her boat. The Fly moved in to engage the French ships, enabling the packet boats to escape. Although he possessed only fourteen guns, Captain Garner fought for over two hours until both sides were too exhausted to continue. The half-sinking ship then managed to rejoin its frightened escorts and sail for England. Captain Garner immediately became a hero and the adventure was seized upon by the press as welcome propaganda.
(#litres_trial_promo) Spain had also declared war against Britain. The country was now fighting against a triple alliance.
When Georgiana rejoined the Duke at the camp in October 1779 she was appalled by the soldiers’ low morale as well as the lethargy of their leaders. The combined French and Spanish fleets had been sighted in the Channel; the government expected an invasion force to arrive at any day.
Lord Cholmondeley and Cl Dalrymple arriv’d here from Plymouth at 7 – they give a terrible account of the defenceless state of the place and the danger of the troops encamp’d on the Mount Edgcumb side [she wrote]. In case of the enemy’s landing they must all either perish by the invaders or be drown’d in making their escape. They say the troops are all out of spirits and looking on themselves as a forlorn hope, and the Duke of Rutland says he should think himself lucky to escape with the loss of an arm or a leg.
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She was determined to stay and watch the fight, telling her mother: ‘I rather think there will be an invasion and that I shall see something of it to complete the extraordinary sights I have been present at this year.’
(#litres_trial_promo) But the camp waited in readiness for an invasion which never came. The strain of anticipation was reflected in the drinking and debauchery that went on after dark; during one all-night party the stables burned down and six horses were killed.
Georgiana was soon fed up with camp life. She was more sensitive now to the sycophancy she perceived in some of her friends. Mrs Crewe, she complained, was caressing her without ceasing. Lady Frances Masham, she noticed, ‘always talks to me as if she thought I had not my five senses like other people’.
(#litres_trial_promo) She returned to Devonshire House without the Duke. Her departure annoyed the Cavendishes, who thought she had no right to go anywhere on her own when she had not yet given them an heir. ‘I found the Dss in town,’ wrote Lord Frederick Cavendish to Lady Spencer on 11 November 1779. ‘I never saw her Grace look better, [but] she laments that she has grown fat. To say the truth she does look bigger, I would fain have dropt the last syllable.’
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Fearing that she would never have a child, Georgiana noted every variation in her menstrual cycle with obsessive diligence. ‘The Prince is not yet come,’ she wrote to her mother in October, ‘but my pains are frequent and I continue the Spa water.’
(#litres_trial_promo) After five and a half years of marriage she was so desperate to conceive that she went to the notorious quack Dr James Graham. Lady Spencer was dismayed. ‘Let me entreat you not to listen to Dr Graham with regard to internal medicines,’ she urged, ‘but consult Warren.’
(#litres_trial_promo) Graham’s use of electricity, milk baths and friction techniques to encourage fertility in women and cure impotency in men left her unimpressed. Society, however, had taken him up and Graham was earning sufficient money to practise out of the Adelphi, where his Temple of Health and Hymen attracted long queues of desperate women. ‘Lady Carlisle went to see Dr Graham’s Electrical Machinery in the Adelphi,’ wrote Miss Lloyd to Lady Stafford, ‘[it is] a most curious sight, and he is a most wonderful man. She and I agree that he might be of use to you.’
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(#litres_trial_promo) Georgiana saw him for a couple of months, and then abruptly stopped. Her wish for a child had been answered, only the child was not hers: the Duke had asked her to accept his daughter Charlotte by his late mistress.
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Charlotte Spencer had remained his mistress until at least 1778, but what had happened to her then remains a mystery; it is known only that she died shortly afterwards. Georgiana’s thoughts on the situation have not survived – she almost certainly knew of the relationship: articles about it had appeared in the Bon Ton Magazine and the Town and Country Magazine. The latter had declared, ‘it was the greatest paradox’ that the Duke must be the only man in England not in love with the Duchess of Devonshire. After Charlotte’s death the Duke sent for their daughter and her nurse, Mrs Gardner. It was not uncommon among aristocratic families for a husband’s illegitimate children to be brought up by his wife. Georgiana’s cousin Lady Pembroke was generous towards Lord Pembroke’s bastard children until he proposed giving them the Herbert name. Georgiana was in raptures at the prospect of adopting the girl. She met her for the first time on 8 May 1780 and told her mother:
she is a very healthy good humour’d looking child, I think, not very tall; she is amazingly like the Duke, I am sure you would have known her anywhere. She is the best humour’d little thing you ever saw, vastly active and vastly lively, she seems very affectionate and seems to like Mrs Gardner very much. She has not good teeth and has often the toothache, but I suppose that does not signify as she has not changed them yet, and she is the most nervous little thing in the world, the agitation of coming made her hands shake so, that they are scarcely recover’d today.
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The Duke, Georgiana wrote, was also ‘vastly pleased’ with the little girl. Lady Spencer was baffled by her daughter’s excitement. ‘I hope you have not talk’d of her to people,’ she warned, ‘as that is taking it out of the Duke’s and your power to act as you shall hereafter choose about her.’ Georgiana was sending the wrong message to the Duke, she thought; she would do better to appear neutral about the child.
(#litres_trial_promo) Georgiana ignored her advice; little Charlotte was all she had of her own to love, and she didn’t care where the girl came from. However, her gambling sharply increased just before Charlotte’s arrival and continued afterwards at the same level. ‘You say you play’d on Sunday night till two,’ wrote Lady Spencer in distress. ‘What did you do? I hope you are not meant by the beautiful Duchess who has taken to the gaming table and lost £2000. Pray, my dearest G. take care about play … and deserve to be what I doubt you are, whether you deserve it or not, the idol of my heart.’
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Charlotte had no surname but Georgiana resisted any move which might alert the child to her irregular background. ‘We have not been able to fix on a name,’ she wrote to Lady Spencer, ‘but I think it will be William without the S if it will not look too peculiar.’
