I am cross, miserable and unhappy. I hate myself,” Georgiana wrote in June 1784, two months after the election victory.1 She was in debt again. According to estimates in the Morning Post, the Westminster election personally cost the Devonshires over £30,000. Georgiana knew that she had spent more than that, although she could only guess at the true figure. Her little French writing desk was almost hidden beneath the pile of credit notes waiting to be paid, but she was terrified of asking the Duke for help. He had hardly spoken to her since her previous confession and their relationship had deteriorated further during the election. He had been mortified by the caricatures portraying him as a cuckold, but, more than that, he resented Georgiana’s independence and was angry she wasn’t more like Bess, who made him feel important. He showed his displeasure by allowing her bills to go unpaid. “I find my debts are much talked of, and I know not how to hurry the Duke,” Georgiana complained. She tried to be philosophical about her own treatment by the press but “I think it has lowered me,” she wrote, “and thrown me out of the quiet and domestic life I long for.”2
The Duke’s silence frightened her. “As much as I long to see you it is not for me I write,” she wrote to Bess. “I am certain poor Canis’s health and spirits depend upon your soothing friendship.”3 They were expecting her return and Georgiana had begged her friend to be in England by June at the latest. She promised Bess she could return to Italy in the winter if she wished, but at least they would have the summer together. Perhaps the four of them, little Georgiana included, would go together to the Continent. Bess had not seen England for almost a year and a half and she was beginning to tire of her nomadic life. Since she knew her place at Devonshire House was absolutely assured, there were no more obstacles to her return.
Bess informed the Devonshires that they should expect her in August, news which dismayed Lady Spencer and Lady Clermont. “I have no reason for these fears but knowing her powers, makes me wish her gone,” Lady Clermont admitted.4 Disappointed that Bess was not coming sooner, Georgiana found solace in holding suppers for the party and, as usual, in gambling. “The Duchess of Devonshire has parties almost every night for gambling purposes and factious ends,” wrote Lady Mary Coke disapprovingly. Nor was she the only person to comment: emboldened by the election, pro-government newspapers printed sarcastic asides about Georgiana’s inability to pay her debts. “It is a heavy punishment upon myself,” cried Lady Spencer when she read about another of Georgiana’s scrapes. “Could I recall past times and begin your education again my first care should be to teach you and your sister . . . to shun the abuse of money, for in not doing that I cannot but see myself [as] the cause of all the distress and anxiety you undergo.” She no longer believed Georgiana’s contrite promises to reform.
In July the Prince of Wales involved her in a far worse scandal than mere trouble with creditors. During a ball in May, Prinny, as he became known, had affronted his female guests by his habit of dancing only with Georgiana. “The whole company assembled at 10,” complained Mrs. Boscawen to Lady Chatham. “The Duchess of Devonshire did not come till 12 and he waited for her to begin, tho’ the Dss of Marlboro’ and her daughters, as well as Lady Charlotte Berthe were there.”5 But it was not love, or at least not towards Georgiana, which prompted his actions. The Prince’s latest passion was for Maria Fitzherbert, a respectable and wealthy Catholic widow.6 Although gratified by his affections she refused to become his mistress, which made the Prince, who was unaccustomed to such rebuffs, love her all the more. He increased his offer from carte blanche to marriage, and alarmed his friends by throwing himself on the floor and pulling at his hair, sobbing and screaming that she had to be his wife or he would die. It was an impossible wish. Not only would it be unthinkable for him to marry a commoner, twice married, and several years older than himself; two parliamentary acts forbade it. The Act of Settlement stipulated that the monarch had to marry within the Protestant faith, and the 1774 Royal Marriages Act awarded the King sole discretion in choosing the spouses of the royal family. Such a marriage could only end in the Prince’s exile. He swore he would go mad if Maria could not be his wife, and he begged Georgiana, as his best friend, to help him.
Despite her distaste for the whole affair Georgiana could not resist his pathetic entreaties. There was an unspoken but nevertheless keenly felt antipathy between the two women which made her reluctant to accept the role of go-between, even without the complication of the constitutional issue. Each sensed a rival in the other. Mrs. Fitzherbert had thick, gold-coloured hair and pleasant features, but she was no match for Georgiana in terms of beauty or wit. Everything about her was heavy: her figure, her walk, even her conversation. She could bring a flagging discussion down with a bump, an attribute which did her no harm at court but made her unwelcome in the Devonshire House Circle. She also had an acute sense of self-regard and, as Georgiana would later learn, a boundless memory for slights. Few females are predisposed to like the woman whom their lover employs as his emissary: Georgiana compounded her crime in the eyes of Mrs. Fitzherbert, who suspected her motives anyway, by taking every opportunity to warn her against such a marriage. Nevertheless, she agreed during one of Georgiana’s difficult visits to her house that a trip abroad would be necessary if the Prince persisted in his plan to marry her.
On July 8 Georgiana was drinking on the balcony of Devonshire House with some friends when she was called inside. A footman whispered that two men were waiting to see her. She made her excuses to her guests, who had pretended not to see the urgent conversation in the corner, and went down the steps to the courtyard. There she found two of the Prince’s cronies, Mr. Bouverie and Mr. Onslow, who gabbled some story about Prinny having run himself through with a sword. His dying wish, they said, was to see Mrs. Fitzherbert, but she would not go unless Georgiana accompanied her, and even now was waiting in her carriage just outside the gates. The Duke was away, and Georgiana was too frightened to consult anyone upstairs and so she agreed, leaving Harriet in charge of the party.
It was dark when they reached Carlton House. Onslow and Bouverie took them into an overheated room, where they found the Prince dramatically sprawled across a crimson sofa with bloody bandages wrapped around his hairless chest. The sight of Prinny wheezing and crying in what seemed to be his final moments moved Mrs. Fitzherbert to agree to become his wife. Prinny wanted a ring to seal the pact and so, reluctantly, Georgiana pulled off one of hers, which he falteringly slipped on Mrs. Fitzherbert’s fourth finger. With that accomplished he fell back against the pillows and seemed to rest easy. There was nothing for the women to do except return home. Not all the Prince’s attendants shared his satisfaction; Lord Southampton was in a panic and ready to go to the King at once, but they managed to calm him down with the assurance that the ceremony was meaningless. Before the two women parted that night they both signed a deposition stating that promises obtained in such a manner are entirely void.7 The following morning Mrs. Fitzherbert hurriedly packed her bags and departed for France, leaving to Georgiana the task of explaining her absence to the disappointed Prince.*
Two weeks later Bess returned from Italy. “The greatest lady in Ireland [the Duchess of Rutland] came to pay me a visit the day before yesterday,” wrote Lady Clermont to Lady Spencer in August. “There were a great many people in the room, one of the company said, ‘I saw Lady E. in London, she is come from Italy to pay a visit to the Duchess.’ The great lady, (who is a great fool by the by) said, ‘the Duke you mean, he is very much in love with her.’ Many other disagreeable things [were] said which I try’d to laugh off.”8 When Georgiana reported that they were disappointed to find Bess looking thin and pale, her mother could not refrain from replying: “Indeed she should not stay in such a climate as this, every hour may be of consequence to her.”9
Lady Spencer noticed a change in Georgiana’s letters soon after Bess joined the Devonshires at Chatsworth. They were far shorter than normal and mostly about generalities—local politics and the races—but there wa
s anxiety beneath their flippant tone.10 She joked that Bess was like Susannah tempted by the Elders; she had succeeded in making all the men of the house party fall in love with her. “Cl Crawfurd [sic] is, you know, very gallant and had been saying all manner of fine things to Ly Eliz,” wrote Georgiana in September, “so the Duke threw her whip down the steepest part of the hill that he might fetch it, but his gallantry did not reach so far for he would not go.”11 Lady Spencer was worried by what she read, but she alienated Georgiana by sending her unsolicited advice and demanding that she keep up a daily letter journal. Her daughter replied evasively: “I shall quarrel with you for your letter being too much taken up with me and not enough with accounts of yourself. Do you continue to ride—do you eat pretty well—how do you sleep—remember that you cannot do more good than by telling me what you do car le meilleur sermon est préchant d’exemple.”*12
Lavinia and George came to stay in the middle of September, and this at last provided Lady Spencer with reliable witnesses. But despite his cautious spying, George could discover nothing concrete about Bess or her relationship with either the Duke or Georgiana: “The circumstances that you wished me to take notice of when I was here, I have not yet had an opportunity of observing. I do not think it is so much to be observed as is thought in general, and I really believe much more is made of it than need be. I never saw Lady E. before, at least never for any time. She is certainly very pretty and sometimes very engaging in her manners.”13 However, George was not a man to be beguiled with pretty comments and judicious flattery. He found Bess’s affectations ludicrous and “quite sufficient, I think, for anyone to be disgusted” if they weren’t already in love with her. Another guest, the obliging Miss Lloyd, also supplied Lady Spencer with information, but her powers of observation were far less acute than George’s. “I hope you are quite at ease about the fondness of the Husband and wife for her,” she wrote. “You certainly may, for though to be sure nothing can be greater than it is, of all sides, yet I will pawn my life on it, it is perfectly innocent.” While she was sanguine about the threesome, she had a word or two to say about Charlotte: “I don’t like this Charlotte much, I fear there is something bad in her, I am glad she is going abroad again.”14
Georgiana also watched Bess closely, although she felt wretched for even suspecting her friend of duplicity. No one noticed that she was anxious, although she told Lady Spencer at the end of September that her spirits were low. They had had another “brilliant” party which she could not enjoy because “I was not well and felt more nervous and unhappy and uncomfortable than I ever did almost in all my life.” Yet she was unable or unwilling to explain the reason and described her depression as a “causeless woe.”15 The Duke increasingly found fault with Georgiana, and when he had nothing particular to point to he criticized her for failing to provide him with a son. Bess, on the other hand, never felt happier or more secure. “I wish I had a Plympton piece of news [where Georgiana first became pregnant] to communicate to you my dear Madam,” she wrote to Lady Spencer, who was unpleasantly surprised to receive a postscript from her at the end of Georgiana’s letter. “But tho’ I never saw my beloved friend look better than she does now, I fear another season at Bath will be necessary for our wishes to succeed: I wish I could attend her there, for far beyond any circumstances in this world much as I have to wish for, do I most anxiously wish she had a son . . . I own I am irresistibly attached to you with all a daughter’s respect and affection.”16
Bess’s flattery only prompted Lady Spencer to urge her once again to go abroad as soon as possible. Coincidentally, there was now a good reason for her departure: even by eighteenth-century standards, which encouraged women to look slight and delicate, Bess was painfully thin.17 As soon as they returned to London the worried Devonshires called in their doctors who examined her and once again prescribed a warmer climate. She reluctantly agreed to return to France, this time without Charlotte, but with all her expenses met by the Devonshires. Georgiana forgot her doubts about Bess’s loyalty and only thought of her imminent loss. Lavinia was contemptuous of her sister-in-law. “The Duchess left town the same instant that Lady Eliz did,” she told George. “I did not see her for she was too much overcome with the separation to see anyone.”18
The Devonshires supplied Bess with money and letters of introduction to all their friends in Paris to ensure that there would be no repeat of the previous year’s reception. Then, the Duchesse de Polignac, jealous of Bess’s relationship with Georgiana, had used her influence with Marie Antoinette to exclude her from Versailles society. Since Bess had officially been travelling as a governess to little Charlotte, Georgiana had been unalbe to do more than hint to her French friends that they should welcome her. “Let spite and jealousy and envy take its fill,” Bess had written defiantly to Georgiana. Nevertheless, she had agreed—for Georgiana’s sake, naturally—to follow her advice: “I will do all that is for your ease and comfort, let Madame P. be suffer’d, soothed, as you please. I shall give Madame P no cause for jealousy, I will try to gain her friendship.”19 Bess implied that the other reason for her ostracism was a rumour: le tout Paris talked of a lesbian affair between her and Georgiana. What angered her, Bess claimed, was not so much the accusation as the impertinence of having their relationship defined in so mundane a fashion. She was eloquent in her indignation, although she implied that only Georgiana was under suspicion:
Who has any right to know how long or how tenderly we love one another! Why are excuses to be made for its sharpness and its fervency? Why am I to pay court to anybody but your mother? Why is our union to be profaned by having a lie told about it? Can I ever forget the note that contained—“the first instant I saw you, my heart flew to your service.” . . . Does the warm impulse of two hearts want an excuse to be accounted for, and must your partiality to me be ushered in by another connection?20
The question of “another connection”—Georgiana’s suspected lesbian feelings for Bess—can never be properly answered while the censored letters at Chatsworth remain indecipherable. The claim that women in the eighteenth century only experienced loving same-sex friendships but never love affairs does not stand up to scrutiny. There were both kinds, and eighteenth-century men and women were perfectly capable of telling them apart. It is entirely possible that Bess and Georgiana’s relationship encompassed erotic love, at least for a while, given the louche, sexually-charged, and self-consciously rebellious nature of the Devonshire House Circle. But since both women remained ferociously heterosexual, it is also clear that their emotional attachment to each other was far more important, more complicated, and longer lasting than whatever initial bonds of physical attraction.
Georgiana’s effusive letters guaranteed Bess a rapturous welcome on this occasion. The Duke of Dorset, who had been Ambassador-Extraordinary since 1783, was also in residence; his greeting left no doubt of his interest in renewing their former acquaintance. Bess’s letters home contained little else except detailed descriptions of her evenings with the Polignacs, the brilliant parties at Versailles, and suppers at the embassy. No doubt she sought to make her friends just a little jealous of the wonderful time she was having without them; and she succeeded. Georgiana sent her a bitter letter in February 1785, sarcastically congratulating her on “your new acquaintances in Paris.” Its vehemence frightened Bess and she wrote a humble, and honest, apology. The last half of the letter has been cut away but it reads in part: “I wished for you—Oh G may I hope you will believe this. . . . can you do yourself and me the injustice to doubt that knowing you and loving you as I have done my heart can ever alter towards you! no, never, never, never. . . . I cannot read your letter without a trembling heart that Paris or anything, or anybody . . .”21 This was one of the few occasions when Bess allowed her mask of affectation to slip—and even then the truth was implicit rather than explicit. She was silently pleading for Georgiana’s forgiveness for a far greater betrayal than the co-opting of her friends: she was three months pregnant with the Duk
e of Devonshire’s child.
Her letter crossed with one of Georgiana’s, bringing the news that she too was three months pregnant. When Bess counted the weeks she realized angrily that their babies could have been conceived within days or even hours of each other. To console herself she took up with the Duke of Dorset and remained in Paris as his mistress until her pregnancy began to show. Faced by the danger of discovery she fled to Italy to be with her brother, Lord Hervey, and from there confessed to Georgiana about her short-lived affair with Dorset, hastily adding that it in no way affected her love for her. “I must thank you over and over and over again for the Dr Secret letter,” Georgiana replied tenderly in June, “I have not a fear about the Pride [the Duke of Dorset].” In return she assured Bess there was no need to worry about the “Eyebrow” [Fox], who had failed in his attempts to persuade her to leave the Duke: “I am not parted and Canis is triumphant, tho’ the Eyebrow makes me, by his reproaches etc., feel very much sometimes.”22 This is one of few surviving references to Georgiana’s suspected affair with Fox. Whatever happened between them, his “reproaches” did not impair their working relationship. There were other men courting Georgiana, including a new, unnamed suitor “whom I admire but am not in love with,” though they did not mean anything to her: “Oh my Dearest Bess, how I do love you—I cannot live without you—you and Canis and G are the only comforts I have.”23
Georgiana agreed to give up dancing while she was pregnant but she could not stop gambling. She herself could not explain the compulsion, nor did she know why it had grown worse since Bess’s departure. In April the Duke at last began to take an interest in her financial plight and wrote out a note of credit for £1,300 to settle her debts. But instead of paying it in to her bankers, she took the note with her to Mrs. Sturt’s and gambled it away on top of a further £500. At the end of May, when Georgiana was six months pregnant, Lady Mary Coke heard that she had lost over £1,000 at Mrs. Hobart’s and stayed until 6 a.m. trying to win it back.24 In July, with only a few weeks left before she came to term, Georgiana was still in the grip of her mania: “She sits up almost every night at faro,” wrote a friend. “The Duke has paid five thousand pound for her and She owes three more.”*25
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