The reason for Georgiana’s sudden retirement was not only the disappointment of Hardwick but a crisis concerning Harriet. Less than two months after Lady Spencer had written of the Duncannons’ “comfortable hours” together Lord Duncannon shocked them all by shouting at Harriet in public. Questioned afterwards, Harriet confessed that she was frightened to be alone with him, since the slightest provocation made him lose his self-control. The Cavendishes regarded Duncannon’s abusiveness towards his wife as a disgrace to the entire family. Another incident at a ball in April moved his cousin, the Duke’s sister the Duchess of Portland, to write him a warning:
You say I did you great injury by exposing you publicly to all the room—You exposed yourself, and I am concerned to say I have too often seen you do the same before. . . . when you left the room, there was not any of the company present (your father in particular) who did not applaud my conduct, and censure yours in the strongest terms possible. . . . Indeed, the very first evening that you came to me after that conversation, the night of the Ridotto, I never felt more ashamed or hurt than I did for you, and I must tell you that your Behaviour did not escape the notice of the Company who heard it as well as myself with astonishment. The cards were going to your mind, nothing had happened to put you out of humour, but upon Lady Duncannon’s coming into the Room, as I thought very properly dressed, your temper was immediately ruffled because she had put on her diamonds (a consideration I should not have thought worthy of the mind of a man). Indeed such sort of behaviour in a man is so perfectly new that I do not know how to account for it or reason upon it. You are very young and have had very little experience. . . . The World in general was inclined to think well of you. Your friends and relations thought you were all their hearts could have wished, but do not flatter yourself that your conduct has escaped observation. It is becoming the subject of ridicule, and your best Friends begin to fear your want of understanding.10
Lord Duncannon apologized; his behaviour, he explained, was caused by worry over Harriet’s pregnancy: he feared that she would miscarry like Georgiana. The Duchess of Portland’s reply showed her contempt: “the frequent agitations that I have perceived your conduct to occasion her may have been the cause of this unhappy event. I trust in God she will recover [from] this, and that it will hereafter be uppermost in your mind to reward her affection for you with that confidence which she so well deserves.”11 Threats and warnings were the only weapons available to the Spencers or the Cavendishes. Eighteenth-century law granted a husband the freedom to treat his wife as he pleased, except in the case of imprisonment and physical torture. Even then, the shame of public scandal deterred upper-class women from seeking legal redress in all but the most extreme circumstances.*
Georgiana had ceased to entertain at Devonshire House immediately after the discovery and spent her time caring for Harriet. The Spencers were frightened to leave their daughter alone with Duncannon when she was so vulnerable. They kept her away from him as much as they could until she gave birth to a son, the Hon. John William Ponsonby, on August 31, 1781. Not long afterwards Lord Spencer became deaf and suffered a partial paralysis on one side of his body. The double anxiety over Harriet and Lord Spencer drove Georgiana to the gaming tables, and Lady Spencer with her. “I can never make myself easy about the bad example I have set you and which you have but too faithfully imitated,” Lady Spencer had written bitterly in November 1779.12 Now she found herself writing again: she had committed “twenty enormities which oblige me to conclude my letter with the usual charge that you must attend more to what I say than what I do.”13 Harriet followed her mother and sister, but with less than a tenth of their income, and without the resources to pay her creditors.
George Selwyn described incredible scenes at Devonshire House to Lord Carlisle. “The trade or amusement which engrosses everybody who lives in what is called the pleasurable world is [faro],” he wrote. Georgiana had arranged the drawing room to resemble a professional gaming house, complete with hired croupiers and a commercial faro bank. Lady Spencer was there most nights, throwing her rings on to the table when she had run out of money:
poor Mr Grady is worn out in being kept up at one Lady’s house or another till six in the morning. Among these, Lady Spencer and her daughter, the Duchess of D. and Lady Harcourt are the chief punters. Hare, Charles [Fox], and Richard [Fitzpatrick] held a bank the whole night and a good part of the next day . . . by turns, each of the triumvirate punting when he is himself a dealer. There is generally two or three thousands lying on the table in rouleaus till about noon, but who they belong to, or will belong to, the Lord knows.14
Faro was a complicated game, involving one banker and an unlimited number of players who staked their bets upon the dealer turning over particular combinations of cards. Although it was a game of chance, the odds in favour of the banker were second only to those in roulette. It was first played in resort towns such as Tunbridge Wells, but in fifty years it had become the most popular game in high society. Women were said to be particularly addicted to it, but it was also the favourite of Charles Fox. Georgiana set a new trend by illegally charging faro-dealers fifty guineas a night for the right to set up tables in her house.*15 But she relied on professionals of questionable honesty to run the faro table and bank, and Selwyn complained of underhand dealings “at Devonshire House. . . . Charles [Fox] says, he is not allowed to take money from the bank; he means for the payment of debts, but yet I hear some are paid, such as O’Kelly and other blacklegs.” The carelessness with which people threw their money about attracted shady characters to the house. One in particular, a man called Martindale, lured Georgiana into a ruinous agreement. According to Sheridan, “the Duchess and Martindale had agreed that whatever the two won from each other should be sometimes double, sometimes treble the sum which it was called. . . . the Duchess . . . was literally sobbing at her losses—she perhaps having lost £1500, when it was supposed to be £500.”16
Lady Mary Coke told her relations in Scotland that the Duchess of Devonshire was living a twenty-four-hour day of gambling and amusement. Last week, she wrote, Georgiana had attended a breakfast at Wimbledon (which continued all day), then an assembly at Lady Hertford’s, where she had proposed a visit to Vauxhall Gardens. She took all the Duchesses, sniffed Lady Mary, as well as the most popular men, including Lord Egremont and Thomas Grenville, “a professed admirer of the Duchess of Devonshire for two years past.” There they stayed until the small hours, keeping the musicians at their posts long after the gardens were officially closed. She did the same thing the next day and the day after that until, returning from another late party at Vauxhall with the Duchess of Rutland, Lady Melbourne, Lord Egremont, and Thomas Grenville, she fell asleep in the boat.17
The newspapers also reported on Georgiana’s activities to the wider world, but she was still their darling. The Morning Herald and Daily Advertiser increased its coverage of her to almost an item a week. On June 11 it proudly reported having seen “the Duchess of Devonshire, with a smart cocked hat, scarlet riding habit and a man’s domino, [who] looked divinely.”18 In July it informed readers that Georgiana was sitting for Gainsborough for a full-length portrait intended as a present to the Queen of France. It continued to follow her progress after the end of the season, when she and the Duke accompanied the Derbyshire militia to the military camp on the Roxborough Downs, near Plymouth.
On September 6, 1781, the French fleet once again appeared in the Channel, but for the press the event paled in comparison to Georgiana’s launch of HMS Anson: she christened the ship in front of a delirious crowd of several thousand who had streamed into the port for the day.19 When the Duke and Duchess of Rutland, contemporaries of the Devonshires, came for a visit the press invented a rift between the two women, calling them “the rival and beautiful Duchesses.” Georgiana had become so famous that her name was enough to make anything fashionable. The entrepreneur Josiah Wedgwood understood the principles of selling better than any manufacturer in the country: “Fe
w ladies, you know, dare venture at anything out of the common stile [sic] ’till authoris’d by their betters—by the Ladies of superior spirit who set the ton.”20 To entice the middle classes to buy his china sets he named them after royalty and famous aristocratic families. “They want a name—a name has a wonderful effect I assure you,” he told his partner. “Suppose you present the Duchess of Devonshire with a Set and beg leave to call them Devonshire flowerpots.”21
The Morning Herald’s love affair with Georgiana showed no signs of tiring. In December it stated that “her heart, notwithstanding her exalted situation, appears to be directed by the most liberal principles; and from the benevolence and gentleness which marks her conduct, the voice of compliment becomes the offering of gratitude.”22 These fawning notices revealed more than just a weakness for society hostesses. A recent upturn in the Whig party’s fortunes made the paper eager to be associated with the future regime. The war looked certain to end: General Cornwallis had surrendered at Yorktown to the combined forces of the French and the Americans, under the leadership of the Marquis de Lafayette and George Washington. When Lord North heard the news he threw back his arms and cried, “Oh God. It is all over.”23 He offered his resignation to the King without delay, but after five years of war George III could not accept the defeat. He ordered the Prime Minister to remain in office and to prepare a counter attack.
Driven by his implacable master, North limped on until March 20, when at last the King accepted that the ministry had lost the confidence of the House and could not continue. George Selwyn told Lord Carlisle that the report of North’s resignation had spread to all the coffee houses within hours.24
The Whigs felt certain that they would soon be in power. But George III refused to accept the Whigs en masse and insisted on their sharing power with his preferred minister the Marquess of Shelburne. The party accepted this bitter pill, hoping it might eventually be able to push Shelburne out. Having agreed to the terms, the Whigs went to Devonshire House to celebrate. “I was at Devonshire House till about 4,” wrote Selwyn to Lord Carlisle, “and then left most of the company there.”25 Georgiana threw a series of celebratory balls, each one lasting the whole night and part of the following day. The furniture downstairs was cleared out to make room for the crowds and the ceilings decorated with thick festoons of roses. Keeping the ten Van Dycks in the hall, Georgiana transformed all the other rooms into a fantasy with painted scenery and strategically hung mirrors. Public excitement about the balls grew, and on one night the managers of the Opera House shortened the last act to enable the Prince of Wales to leave on time. The next day the Morning Herald and Daily Advertiser, which had devoted several columns to the Devonshire “galas,” reported, “none was ever more admired than the minuets at the Devonshire Gala, the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Devonshire in particular.”26
Having so long avoided St. James’s Palace, the Whigs now trooped into court to pay their respects. The King was too disgusted to hold a proper Drawing Room and sat glumly next to Queen Charlotte, while Georgiana and her friends made polite conversation with the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Cumberland.27 Tradition demanded that the King recognize the new ministers with the awards of office, and he grudgingly offered the garter to senior Whigs. They accepted with a shameless delight which disgusted Nathaniel Wraxall. He watched with embarrassment as “The Duke of Devonshire . . . advanced up to the Sovereign, with his phlegmatic, cold, awkward air, like a clown. Lord Shelburne came forward, bowing on every side, smiling and fawning like a courtier.” Only the Duke of Richmond, in his opinion, “presented himself, easy, unembarrassed and with dignity as a gentleman.”28
Fox approached Georgiana during the celebrations and made her a proposal. He was now Foreign Secretary, and under parliamentary rules MPs selected for office had to re-offer themselves to their constituents. Having been impressed by the crowd’s reaction to Georgiana’s appearance on the hustings at Covent Garden in 1780, Fox asked her to repeat her performance, only this time with more fanfare. She accepted without hesitation. The Duke and other grandees agreed to the proposal and allowed her to participate in discussions on how to plan the event. They decided that Georgiana should lead a women’s delegation. Since the crowds had responded so enthusiastically to one woman on the platform, they reasoned that five or six would be even more popular.
On April 3 Georgiana performed her first official duty for the party by helping Fox in his re-election campaign. The diarist Silas Neville was enjoying a stroll when he stumbled on the proceedings: “[I] was present in the Garden at the re-election of the Arch-Patriot Secretary. The Crowd was immense of carriages and people of all ranks. The Duchess of Devonshire and another lady were on the hustings and waved their hats with the rest in compliment to Charles, who was soon after chaired under a canopy of oak leaves and mirtle amidst the acclamations of thousands.”29 The London Chronicle reported the event in some amazement. In an age of free beer and bloody noses at election time the Whigs’ polished handling of public events was disconcerting. Fox stood on a platform beneath three large banners that read, THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE, FREEDOM AND INDEPEN-DENCE, and INDEPENDENCE. Shouting above the roaring crowd, Fox thanked them for their confidence and promised he would unite the country in defence of liberty. “His friends wore orange and blue ribbons, with the word Fox on them,” reported the paper.30 Georgiana was there with several other women, all wearing the Whig colours of blue and buff, and they raised their hats each time the crowd huzzahed. Nothing like it had ever been witnessed before. Milliners’ shops began making fans bearing Georgiana’s portrait, which sold in their hundreds; Charles Fox and the Prince of Wales also became fashionable subjects: “The fans are quite new, and beautiful, designed and executed by the first masters of that art, and are striking likenesses of the exalted characters they represent; the prices are very moderate,” claimed Hartshorn and Dyde’s of Wigmore Street.31
A week later, on April 8, the Whigs made their first appearance in the Commons. At first MPs were disoriented: Lord North and his followers were no longer sitting on the treasury benches; in their place were the Whigs. Their uniform of blue and buff was gone and they wore the formal dress of government, all of them—even Fox—with hair powder, ruffles, lace around their necks, and swords by their sides.
Lady Spencer, trapped at home with the ailing Lord Spencer, felt excluded from her children’s lives. The drum beat which accompanied Georgiana’s activities barely sounded in Wimbledon. On May 22 she recalled a recent conversation with the Duchess of Annenberg, who had congratulated her on the family’s reputation for being one of the “happiest and closest” in Britain.32 But Georgiana paid no attention to her mother’s hints; for the first time since her wedding in 1774 she looked forward to the future. According to James Hare, she appeared “very handsome and seems easier and happier than she used to do.”33
Georgiana’s optimism was born out of a new-found sense of purpose. In September 1782 she recorded her thoughts about the year.
The secret springs of events are seldom known [she wrote]. But when they are, they become particularly instructive and entertaining. . . . the greatest actions have often proceeded from the intrigues of a handsome woman or a fashionable man, and of course whilst the memoires of those events are instructive by opening the secret workings of the human mind, they likewise attract by the interest and events of a novel. . . . If some people would write down the events they had been witness to . . . the meaning of an age would be transmitted to the next with clearness and dependence—to the idle reader it would present an interesting picture of the manners of his country. . . . I wish I had done this—I came into the world at 17 and I am now five and twenty—in these eight years I have been in the midst of action. . . . I have seen partys rise and fall—friends be united and disunited—the ties of love give way to caprice, to interest, and to vanity. . . .”
She hoped one day to be “a faithful historian of the secret history of the times.”34
CHAPTER 6 r />
THE NEWCOMER
1782–1783
The Duchess of Devonshire, it is said, means to introduce a head piece which is to be neither hat, cap, nor bonnet, and yet all three, a sort of trinity in unity, under the appellation the “Devonshire Whim.” Whenever the Duchess of Devonshire visits the capital, a Standard may be expected to be given to the Fashion. At present scarce any innovation is attempted even in the head-dress. This does not arise from the Town being destitute of Women of elegance; many ladies of the first rank being on the spot; but rather proceeds from the dread each feels that the Taste she may endeavour to take the lead in may be rejected.
Morning Herald and Daily Advertiser, October 21, 1782
As soon as Parliament adjourned for the summer Georgiana and the Duke retreated west to the popular spa town of Bath, where the fashionable young hoped to meet eligible partners and the fashionable old sought relief from their ailments. They did not return to Devonshire House until the autumn, when the new session was well under way. Accompanying them to London was Lady Elizabeth Foster, described by the papers as the “Duchess of Devonshire’s intimate friend.”