The Duchess

by Amanda Foreman

  The matter was decided by the Duke, who for similar reasons disliked the idea of moving to Ireland. They were to stay. Georgiana tried to persuade her brother to go in their place. It was partly family pride which motivated her and partly a wish to remain vicariously connected to the office. She told him that everyone was “anxious to see you in a situation that would do justice to your abilities and to the rectitude of your heart and mind, and that besides it would be essential service to your country and strengthen the administration you support.”8 George, however, demurred. He felt too inexperienced to cope with the volatile situation in Ireland. The country was on the verge of revolution, and the Irish parliament in almost open revolt against Dublin Castle. Why, he asked, if the service was essential, was the Duke not prepared to do his patriotic duty? Georgiana replied truthfully that she had tried to change the Duke’s mind,

  tho’ I was averse to it, especially in my present situation. When I did everything to persuade him I was certain as they were that his name, his family, and his extraordinary good judgement and ability would enable him to succeed. But I own I trembled at the thought of what his hitherto great inaptitude to business would cost him when obliged to force himself to it. For he has that kind of turn that being forced to anything gives him a disgust to it—this is not the case with you.

  She argued against each of her brother’s objections and even engaged the Duke of Portland to try to persuade him: “I think in all events you should speak again to the Duke of Portland and I write this to tell you he will expect you tomorrow any time before or after twelve.”9 But George remained firm and, in the end, the Whigs allowed Lord Temple, Shelburne’s man, to remain in his post.

  Although she was five months pregnant, Georgiana continued to host political dinners several times a week. When the Duc de Chartres—a cousin of Louis XVI—and several other members of the French court came to London they treated Georgiana as if she were their official hostess. Lady Mary Coke recorded jealously that they “did not go anywhere but by [her] direction.”10 The new French ambassador, the Comte d’Ad-hémar, was already a regular visitor at Devonshire House, having arrived in London two months earlier with a letter of introduction from the Duchesse de Polignac. He was not a professional diplomat and owed his position to his friendship with the Polignac clan. The Little Po, sweet and pliant as she was, allowed herself to be ruled by her violent lover, the Comte de Vaudreuil, and her greedy sister-in-law Comtesse Diane. Unblemished by ambition or greed, she was an easy cipher, enabling Vaudreuil to obtain gifts and favours for his friends. The Baron de Bésenval and d’Adhémar were his two great cronies. According to the Comte de la Marck, d’Adhémar “was, of all the Polignac set, the one with most wit, but not less ability than the Baron de Bésenval to attain his ends. . . . he sang well, was an excellent comedian, wrote delightful verses. That was more than was needed for success in society.”11 Such was the man who represented France’s interests in the continuing peace negotiations between the two countries. Georgiana did not particularly like his silky manner, but she accepted his company because of his connections. For d’Adhémar’s part, the weekly invitation to the elegant dinners at Devonshire House gave him access to all the social and political gossip he needed for his secret reports to Paris.

  On May 8, 1783, Georgiana told her mother that the Duc de Chartres was sporting oversized buttons with pornographic pictures on his waistcoat, “which my sister very nearly died of.”12 The entertainments she was providing for the French visitors were so original and lavish that even the London Chronicle, which normally eschewed reporting such frivolities, printed full descriptions:

  On Sunday morning, the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire gave a most elegant breakfast to a select number of the nobility at Burlington House, Chiswick. The natural beauties of this delightful spot were enlivened on this occasion by the most pleasing decorations that an elegant fancy, controlled by a just judgement, could possibly supply. The trees and shrubberies were hung with festoons of flowers, desposed in easy and unaffected variations. All the figures were ornamented with sashes of roses, intermingled with oranges and myrtles. The company began to assemble about 1 o’clock, among which the most distinguishable were the Prince of Wales, the Duc de Chartres, attended by the Duc de Fitzjames, and most of the foreign nobility, besides whom were Lords Carlisle, Althorp, Jersey, Melbourne, Duncannon, Herbert, Colonels Fitzpatrick, St. Leger, Ladies Melbourne, Duncannon, with many more select friends of the Duchess’s. The company were entertained with tea, coffee, chocolate, fruits of all sorts, ices, etc., til four o’clock when they returned to town.13

  Georgiana’s popularity with the foreigners inspired envy among the ton: not only did she enjoy first place in society; her party was also now in power—it was all too much. Lady Mary Coke raged,

  As her Grace seems to fancy by the Duke of Portland being First Minister and the Prince of Wales always at her house, she is to carry any point she has a mind to, for these reasons, I am not sorry she has met with a repulse. Her Grace asked the Prince of Wales to desire the Queen to let the French ladies see Her Majesty’s house . . . [which the King refused] So the French ladies will return to Paris with the certainty that the Duchess of Devonshire and the bon ton does not absolutely govern the nation.14

  It hurt Bess to hear about Georgiana’s success while she was plodding through France with the ungainly Charlotte. Reading of the gulf between their lives was cruel, but the days when no letters arrived were worse. “Dearest ever ever dearest Love,” she wrote in June, “why have I no letters from you? I cannot express nor describe the anxiety I feel from it, nor how my peace depends on everything that concerns you . . . how necessary you are to my heart.”15 She wanted to know all Georgiana’s movements even though what she learned only made her more unhappy. Georgiana obliged, little imagining how the news affected her friend.

  However, the government was not running as smoothly as outsiders imagined. The King was determined to remove the Whigs as soon as he found the appropriate means and the Prince of Wales seemed to provide the opportunity. “The whole world is in an uproar,” wrote Georgiana on June 17, referring to a row over the Prince’s desire to have a proper allowance and his own household. Now that he was twenty-one he wanted a separate establishment of his own, but he had already run up so many debts that he needed an extra one-off payment of £100,000 to clear himself. The King refused even to consider handing over such a large amount to his delinquent son, and the Prince found that few MPs sympathized with his position. The Whigs tried to make him see the damage he would cause his political friends if he insisted on trying to force the measure through Parliament: half the cabinet had threatened to resign if Fox gave in to the Prince’s demand, and yet he could not, having promised the Prince that he would obtain the money for him, go back on his word.

  Fox was in despair over his promise to the Prince. He asked the Duke to have a private talk with the Prince. “He [the Prince] is now in the next room with C. Fox, and has been with Canis before,” Georgiana scribbled in a hasty letter to Bess on June 20. “You would have lov’d him for the manner he [Fox] talked of Canis when he went out. He said ‘there is the man whose generous and feeling heart and right head and understanding may be reposed in without fear, and that’s the man, who, if his indolence did not get the better of him, ought to govern the country.’ ”16 Notwithstanding Fox’s confidence in him, the Duke failed to move the Prince.

  That night Fox predicted the end of the coalition government in a matter of days. He informed Lord Northington that the tensions between himself and his colleagues meant “it will not outlive tomorrow.”17 But while Fox sat at Brooks’s, cursing his promise to the Prince, Georgiana took it upon herself to persuade the Prince to drop his demand. Knowing her voice carried its own authority, she wrote the Prince a frank letter, explaining why he would be making a terrible mistake if he caused the Whigs to resign:

  . . . attempting to carry this thro by force would be impossible—as neither Lord North or Lord J
ohn [Cavendish] would support it or go out on it—& in the case that it was attempted to be carryd thro’ in these circumstances it must put an end to the Administration in 3 days. The thing therefore to be considered is whether it is not in the power of the present Administration to serve you more by staying in than going out. . . . Mr Fox looks upon himself as bound in honour to carry it thro for you & will go out rather than give up, unless you release him; but great delicacy must be used in releasing him—& and you must do it, if you think it right, as if it was of your own accord.18

  Georgiana’s letter made the Prince realize that the situation was hopeless. He capitulated and accepted the lower sum of £30,000. Thanks to her intervention the coalition was safe for the moment. Georgiana’s action proved her own thesis—that great consequences often develop from “causes little imagined.” No one in England knew that the fate of the government rested on a woman’s influence with a spoilt youth. In five years Georgiana had matured from a girl parading in military uniform into an astute political negotiator.

  CHAPTER 8

  A BIRTH AND A DEATH

  1783–1784

  The decorative appendage of female dress and the newest taste, and highest ton, is the golden collar, epigrammatically bemottoed. Her Grace of Devonshire is said to be the fair inventress of this fashion, whose enviable collar bears this sportive inscription: “Strayed from Devonshire House!”

  Morning Herald and Daily Advertiser, August 12, 1783

  The conduct of the young, beauteous and virtuous Duchess of Devonshire is a pattern worthy of imitation;

  finding lately that deep play and hazard was become frequent at all fashionable routs in the beginning of this winter, at her first grand rout for the season, had written in large characters in every chamber “no higher play than crown whist permitted here, other games in proportion and no dice.”

  Morning Post, February 11, 1784

  The peace negotiations with the French and American delegates, overseen by Charles Fox, had not yet been concluded when Georgiana retreated from public life for the last weeks of her pregnancy. Her confinement was a great inconvenience for the negotiators, who had relied on her suppers at Devonshire House for informal meetings. The Comte d’Adhémar had grown accustomed to dropping by every day; Georgiana’s absence made him realize the extent to which he had needed her help. “Mr Fox is careful to avoid every possible opportunity to talk politics with me,” he reported to his superiors in France. “The house of the Duchess of Devonshire, where I usually meet him informally, has been closed to us all for three weeks, owing to the lady’s confinement. The painful consequences of this event will doubtless make her invisible for even longer, until she is obliged to leave for the country and I shall be deprived entirely of this daily means of seeing Mr Fox.”1

  Georgiana whiled away the time with Harriet, who was also eight months pregnant. Duncannon had taken to spending most nights away, and Harriet generally spent her days at Devonshire House. She knew little of his activities except that he was gambling heavily at Brooks’s; this much he let her know because his losses made him irritable. In the sanctuary of Devonshire House the two women amused themselves by experimenting with new hats and drawing patterns for dresses. The fashion for false hips and bottoms made of cork to round out the figure, and padded breasts to fill out the bodice had been in vogue since the 1770s. Georgiana added a new element: the false front to disguise pregnancy. She showed her designs to her friends; they were so well received that the false fronts were soon worn even by women who were not pregnant. Georgiana was also responsible for the unprecedented sales of the “picture hat”: wide-sbrimmed hats, worn with a large sash and adorned with drooping feathers. She had posed in one of her own design, perching it stylishly on the side of her head, for her portrait by Gainsborough. After he exhibited the painting, women up and down the country ordered their milliners to make them a copy of the “Duchess of Devonshire’s picture hat.”2

  Although Georgiana was no longer receiving visitors, enquiries about her health arrived every day and the newspapers monitored her condition with keen interest. The only person who was not excited by Georgiana’s pregnancy was the Duke. He was convinced that the baby would be a girl. Lady Mary Coke bumped into him and said she would congratulate him properly when his son was born. He looked at her and “laughed on one side of his mouth and told me not to bother.”3

  On July 6 Harriet gave birth to Frederick, her second boy. A week later, on the twelfth, Georgiana went into labour herself. She described the event to Bess:

  I was laid on a couch in the middle of the room. My Mother and Dennis supported me. Canis was at the door, and the Duchess of Portland sometimes bending over me and screaming with me, and sometimes running to the end of the room and to him. I thought the pain I suffered was so great from being unusual to me, but I find since I had a very hard time. Towards the end, some symptoms made me think the child was dead. I said so, and Dr Denman only said there was no reason to think so but we must submit to providence. I had then no doubt and watching my mother’s fine eyes . . . ssI saw she thought it dead, which they all did except Denman who dared not say too much. When it came into the world I said, “only let it be alive.” The little child seemed to move as it lay by me but I was not sure when all at once it cried. Oh, God, I cried and was quite hysterical. The Duchess and my mother were overcome and cried and all kissed me.4

  The baby was a girl as the Duke had feared. However, Georgiana insisted to Bess that he was as pleased with the child as she was. At least it proved that she was capable of bearing a son.* They decided to call the baby Georgiana Dorothy—Dorothy after her aunt and godmother, the Duchess of Portland. The Prince of Wales and Lord John Cavendish also agreed to be godparents. In accordance with custom, Georgiana lay with Little G, as she called her, for a month. But she refused to adhere to the rules which demanded her seclusion in a tightly sealed room. Visitors found the windows wide open to let in the summer breeze, and Georgiana nursing her baby, propped up by thick, white lace pillows. “[Little G] is very much admired,” she wrote to Bess. “Her cradle, robes, baskets, etc., are, I am afraid, foolishly magnificent. . . . She has a present coming from the Queen of France, but I don’t know what it is yet.”5

  Georgiana decided to breastfeed Little G herself, still an unusual step among the aristocracy. The Morning Post applauded her, remarking how sad it was “that females in high life should generally be such strangers to the duty of a mother, as to render one instance to the contrary so singular.”6 Her refusal to employ a wet nurse was a brave act of defiance.7 The Cavendishes were annoyed and tried to bully her into changing her mind. As far as they were concerned, there was no good reason why she should not employ a healthy country girl while she got on with the business of producing an heir. On August 6 a harassed Georgiana wrote to her mother, “what makes [them] abuse suckling is their impatience for my having a boy, and they fancying I shan’t soon if I suckled. I should not have minded this but the Dss of Portland said she wanted me to drink porter to fatten the little girl, and Lady Sefton and the Dss of Rutland said that Ly Lincoln’s child was fatter.”8

  It was difficult to find trustworthy, sober maternity nurses in the eighteenth century and Georgiana’s brief experience with one was disastrous. “She was only rather dirty till last night,” she wrote to Lady Spencer, “when she was quite drunk.” This was too much:

  My Dr little girl sleeps in bed with me after her first suckling as it is cold to move her, and the Rocker was to turn her dry and lay her down to sleep. I perceiv’d she had made the bed stink of wine and strong drink whenever she came near it, and that Mrs Smith was always wakeful and telling her to leave the child. This rather alarmed me, but this morning I learnt that she had been so drunk as to fall down and vomit. . . . I have therefore sent her 10 guineas and told her I would pay her journey up to town, and that I parted with her because I wanted her no longer.9

  After the incident Georgiana let no one but the nurse, Mrs. Smith, help her w
ith Little G. On August 12, a month after her birth, Little G was christened. Georgiana put on proper clothes for the first time in six weeks and travelled at the head of a cavalcade of Cavendishes and Spencers to Wimbledon church, where she had married the Duke nine years before. Harriet and Duncannon came with Frederick, and the two cousins were christened together.