The Duchess

by Amanda Foreman

  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 in 1688, when William and Mary, the Protestant rulers of Holland, sailed to England at the Whig party’s request and helped to depose the Catholic King James II, 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 the Houses of Parliament at Westminster and the Palace of St. James’s nearby. 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 amuse themselves at the commercial gardens of Ranelagh, or visit its riverside competitor, 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.”23 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.”24 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.”25 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?”26

  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 ultrafashionable 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.”27 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.28 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—promenades in the park, card parties in the afternoon, routs in the evening where she exchanged fashionable gossip with her friends, assemblies and balls at night—anything—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!”29 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.”30

  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.”31 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.”32

  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.33 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.34 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.35 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.”36

  Lady Spencer could see that her daughter was adopting the ways of the fast set. Gossip that some of them were encouraging Georgiana to gamble at high stakes 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.37 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.”38

  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.”39 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.”40

  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.41 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.42 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.43 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.”44

  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 bi-and 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 ornament
s 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.45

  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.46 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.47 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.