Lady Spencer could find no peace while Georgiana continued upon her self-destructive course. It was not only the gambling which frightened her so much as the drugs and all-night binges.
For God’s sake try to compose yourself [she begged]. I am terrified lest the perpetual hurry of your spirits, and the medicines you take, to obtain a false tranquillity, should injure you. I hoped the Duke knew the whole of what you had lost and that it was all settled. . . . Why will you not say fairly: I have led a wild and scrambling life that disagrees with me. I have lost more money than I can afford. I will turn over a new leaf and lead a quiet sober life from this moment, as I am sure if I do not I shall hurt myself or my child.26
Her letters had no effect. They still had the power to hurt, but since meeting Bess Georgiana had ceased to be so emotionally dependent on her mother. The replies she sent to Lady Spencer no longer had a ring of sincerity: “Your letter quite overcame me, my Dst Dst M.,” she wrote on June 7. “Indeed one cannot feel more forcibly than I do the errors of every year of my life and of this year above all others, but indeed I hope that they will be so far beneficial errors as to secure beyond doubt, years such as you wish them.”27 As long as she remained on good terms with the Duke, Georgiana felt reasonably sure of her position, and he had convinced himself that the baby would be a boy. After eleven years of marriage the Duke was frantic for a son. Georgiana, on the other hand, regarded it as her only salvation: under the terms of the Cavendish estate, the birth of an heir would enable the Duke to borrow against a mortgage, making it possible for her to confess her debts without ruining him.
On September 1 the papers announced that the Devonshires had had a son, prompting a rush of congratulatory messages. But on September 2 they announced a correction: the baby was a girl. Georgiana had given birth to a second daughter—Harriet. Well-wishers dropped by at Devonshire House to find Georgiana happily nursing her new baby, cosseted in almost Eastern opulence. Her lying-in room had been entirely redecorated with white satin. In the centre was a vast bed decked with enormous paper flowers and silver ribbons, and crowned at the top by a gold canopy, embellished by ducal ornaments inside and out. Lady Spencer gently padded around so as not to disturb the patient, having left off wearing silk to avoid making a rustle. Lady Mary Coke heard from visitors that Georgiana had composed a hymn during the labour; it would have been better, she suggested, if she had made a vow never to gamble again.28 Two months later Harriet also gave birth to a girl: Caroline.* Lady Spencer decamped to the Duncannon household, throwing Lord Duncannon out of his wife’s bedroom and setting up a truckle bed in the corner. She spent a month there with her servants and prayer books while Harriet nursed her baby. People wondered why her sons-in-law put up with such interference.29
The birth of the Duke’s other child took place in secret and in squalor; its mother was alone and frightened. The pregnancy had made her head and back ache, but mercifully her stomach still barely showed when she left Paris. In Italy her brother and sister-in-law were quarrelling bitterly and hardly noticed her. It was only in July, when the party reached the little island of Ischia, near Naples, that Bess had the courage to confess the truth to her brother. He was upset but not angry—he was a Hervey himself—and accepted his sister’s indiscretion with magnanimity, but he insisted that she should go as far away from people as possible. “I must go near 100 miles at sea and in an open boat—I must go amongst strangers, perhaps leave my Infant with them. Patience, patience; my punishment is just,” she cried.30
The need for secrecy forced Bess to choose the meanest inns along the route. A vivid account of her appalling journey survives in her diary.* It was a bitter irony for her to reflect that she had written long, indulgent letters of despair to the Devonshires when she had no reason. Now she was in great need of comfort and forced to write false letters describing nonexistent events 150 miles away from her real location. She wrote to Georgiana from Ischia of “my heart full of sorrows and head of anxiety” but without stating the cause.31 She wrote separately to the Duke when possible, with more specific complaints which he could only indirectly allude to by way of reply; he dared not write in tones greater than friendship. On the rare occasions that he could trust the courier he wrote awkwardly, unsure how to comfort her:
I am terribly in want of you here, Mrs Bess, and am every minute reminded of the misfortune of your not being here by things that I see, such as the couch you us’d to sit on in the drawing room, amidst all your sighing lovers. . . . I have some thoughts, if I have time, of going to Bolton to shoot upon the moors, and to prepare the place for you against next summer, for I intend to take you there whether you like it nor, let the consequences be what it will; I have not time to write any more but will write again very soon. So goodnight.32
On August 29, 1785, the Duke wrote with news of Georgiana’s baby girl and added, “I am very much surpriz’d and impatient at not having heard from you upon a subject I expected to have heard something about by this time.”33 Bess was in a little town called Vietri on the Gulf of Salerno, having given birth on August 16 in a hostel which also doubled as a brothel—a place well known to her feckless brother. She had arrived two weeks before with Louis, a trusted family servant. He had agreed to pretend that Bess was his pregnant wife, and the mistress of his master Lord Hervey.
Imagine [she wrote in her diary] a little staircase, dark and dirty, leading to the apartments of these people. The family consisted of the Archi-Pretre des Amoureux; his woman-servant, a coarse, ugly, and filthy creature; the doctor (his brother) and his wife—the doctor an honest man, the wife everything that one can imagine of wicked, vulgar and horrible . . . I heard everything but pretended to understand nothing . . . My faithful servant wept for me. . . . How many things increased my unhappiness! I had to dine with him, and to endure the odious company of these people; I had to live in a house which was little better than a house of ill fame.34
When the labour pains came Bess claims she thought only of the baby, the Duke, and Georgiana. It was a girl, whom she named Caroline Rosalie. She hurriedly rejoined her brother in Naples, and was relieved to see by her sister-in-law’s manner that her secret was still safe. The baby was lodged with a poor family not far away, but Bess could do little more than visit it once a day, and she cried at having to leave Caroline with strangers. The separation affected her in other ways: she was in agony over her unused milk, which stained her bodice; she had to cover her breasts with fresh flannels, risking discovery by the servants in doing so. When Caroline was a few weeks old Louis offered to take her to his own family. There she could be cared for properly and Bess would be able to see her more easily. With Caroline safe, Bess consoled herself with a flirtation with the Russian ambassador: “Misfortune,” she wrote regretfully in her diary, “cannot cure me of my vanity.”35
Bess remained in Italy for nearly a year, even though the Duke and Georgiana repeatedly urged her to come home. It was not only reluctance to leave Caroline which delayed her return—she knew in her heart that there would have to be changes to the ménage à trois, but she did not know how to present Georgiana with the truth. In his usual way, the Duke tried to make light of her fears: “The Rat does not know the chief cause of your uneasiness, and I, of course, shall never mention it to her, unless you dessire me, but I am certain that if she did, she would not think you had been to blame about it, particularly after I had explain’d to her how the thing happen’d.”36 This was the question Bess often asked herself: how had this all happened?
Georgiana summed up her life during 1786 in a short poem:
My mind can no comfort or happyness fix
On seventeen hundred and eighty six
For Sorry and Folly delighted to mix
With seventeen hundred and eighty six
Abounding alone in unpromising tricks
Was seventeen hundred and eighty six
And none was e’er worse I can swear by the Styx
Than seventeen hundred and eighty six.37
/> People outside her family would have been astonished by its sadness. In the two years since the Westminster election she had silenced her critics by becoming more popular than ever. Her place within the Whig hierarchy was established and during parliamentary sessions she was usually busy behind the scenes: watching the numbers, relaying messages, and nipping signs of discontent in the bud. Fox’s position as leader of the Whigs was not in doubt, but since the loss of the eighty-nine members he preferred to remain at his house in St. Anne’s Hill, leaving administrative matters to the Duke of Portland, who unfortunately was incapable of organizing a systematic opposition to Pitt. In consequence, nothing much happened in the first year after the election. Edmund Burke was disgusted with the party’s quiescence and complained in October 1784: “As to any plan of Conduct in our Leaders, there are not the faintest Traces of it—nor does it seem to occur to them that any such thing is necessary. Accordingly everything is left to accidents.”38 The Whigs did not begin to recover their sense of purpose until the middle of 1785.
Georgiana had grasped the essentials of a successful publicity campaign during her experiments with military uniforms in 1778. This was now the only kind of public political activity open to her, but she used what she had learned to remarkable effect. For her first venture, in December 1784, she sponsored a balloon send-off on behalf of the party.
The invention of the hot-air balloon was the most talked about wonder of the 1780s. In 1783 the Montgolfier brothers astounded the court at Versailles by floating a sixty-foot sky-blue balloon 6,000 feet into the air. Their ingenious experiment immediately inspired a number of imitators, two of whom—the Neapolitan Vincenzo Lunardi and the Frenchman Jean-Pierre Blanchard—arrived in England in 1784 to compete for the affections of the British public. On September 15 Lunardi launched his balloon from the Artillery Ground in London in front of thousands of spectators. Despite the cold, which almost killed his cat, and the loss of one of his wooden oars, he managed to stay up for twenty-four miles. The following month Blanchard succeeded in travelling further into the countryside.
Georgiana gave separate dinners at Devonshire House in honour of the two men. Lunardi repaid the compliment by wearing a silk coat to court in a colour of Georgiana’s own invention, called “Devonshire brown.” But the Frenchman Blanchard was particularly gratified when Georgiana asked him to carry letters to the royal family in his balloon. In return he allowed her to transform his last British aerial ascent into a Whig political occasion. On December 1 the London newspapers reported an extraordinary exhibition in Grosvenor Square. The Prince of Wales and a hundred Whigs and their ladies braved the chill air to join the crowd who had bought tickets to watch Georgiana release the ropes of Blanchard’s balloon. They all wore blue and buff uniforms, and Georgiana had seen to it that even the stay-ropes were decorated with dual-coloured ribbons. “Blanchard’s balloon is to be called the ‘Devonshire Aerial Yacht’ in the future,” trumpeted the Morning Herald and Daily Advertiser.39 All the surrounding streets were blocked with spectators, some standing on their carriages, while the fifty-foot advertisement floated over London.
After her triumph with Blanchard’s balloon Georgiana regularly organized popular events, such as benefit nights for retiring performers and show-cases for young talent, to reinforce political and social solidarity among party members. Since arranging Perdita’s first appearance on the stage as Juliet in 1776 Georgiana had helped to establish a number of the theatre’s most celebrated stars, including Mrs. Siddons, who later wrote “My good reception in London I cannot but partly attribute to the enthusiastic accounts of me which the amiable Duchess of Devonshire had brought thither, and spread before my arrival. I had the honour of her acquaintance during her visit to Bath, and her unqualified approbation at my performances.”*40 Georgiana genuinely wanted to help performing artists but she was also conscious of the value of positive publicity for the Whigs. Her patronage of the arts increasingly associated Whiggery with taste, fashion, and wit.41 Glittering first nights in support of her latest discovery, and grand balls with inventive themes where the entire company arrived in prescribed dress, made life in opposition bearable and even enjoyable. “She really is a very good Politician,” a Pittite complained. “As soon as ever any young man comes from abroad he is immediately invited to Devonshire House and to Chatsworth—and by that means he is to be of the Opposition.”42
“Why does she reign supreme?” Lady Mary Coke wondered after a tedious visit from her friends Mrs. Pitt and Miss Hope, who, although strangers to Devonshire House, talked of nothing but Georgiana’s health.43 One answer lay in her vitality: Lady Louisa Stuart went to a ball and was amused to observe the birth of a new fashion as Georgiana and Harriet paraded about the room in a variant of the Turkish look. “I don’t think I ever saw new fashions set in with such vengeance, except in the year when feathers and high heads first began,” she wrote. “Some of us are glorious figures, such wings and tails to our caps. Such shelves of plaited gauze under our chin. . . . the Duchess of Devonshire and Lady Duncan-non . . . were dressed in redingotes, robes turkes, that is to say with three caps and capells. . . .”44
Georgiana also introduced the muslin gown to English fashion. Known as la chemise à la reine, it was exceedingly simple, almost like a shift with a drawstring neck and a plain ribbon to tie round the middle. Although it was originally worn in France by Creole women from the West Indies, Marie Antoinette liked the style so much that she posed for a portrait wearing her own version of the dress for Madame Vigée-Lebrun in 1783. The portrait shocked society; many thought it an indecent depiction of the Queen in a state of semi-nudity, and it was removed from the Salon. However, the gown caught on in England after Marie Antoinette sent Georgiana a present of one of “the muslin chemises with fine lace.”45 Taking advantage of the warm weather, Georgiana made one of her most successful entrances when she arrived at the Prince of Wales’s ball wearing white muslin decorated with silver sprigs. Soon the Lady’s Magazine was claiming that “all the Sex now, from 15 to 50 and upwards . . . appear in their white muslin frocks with broad sashes.”46
“British Balloon, and D——Aerial Yacht,” December 13, 1784. A double entendre: the Prince is saying, “It rises majestically,” while Georgiana replies, “Yes, I can feel it.” Watching below from left to right are: Lord John Cavendish, the Duke of Devonshire, a Frenchman, Elizabeth Farren, and Lord Derby. Dent. BM Cat. 6668.
The Morning Post had tried to topple Georgiana from “the chair of fashion,” but its snide remarks on her “vulgar inventions” carried little weight with the public. Sharp of Fleet Street, purveyor of perfumes and toiletries to the gentry, made considerable profits having cornered the market in Georgiana’s favourite make of French hair powder. In 1785 he advertised to the world the arrival of his latest consignment, “just imported, a quantity of curious, beautiful and sweet Powder à la Duchesse, or Devonshire Powder.”47 Likewise, Mr. Austin, Drawing Master at the Print Rooms, St. James’s Street, enjoyed a brisk trade in life-size busts and “curious casts in wax of His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, her Grace the Duchess of Devonshire . . . the Right Honourable Charles James Fox . . . intended as ornaments to mansions, public libraries, etc.” His special offer for April was “proof prints and pictures ready to be engraved of the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Devonshire.”48 In 1786 there was a minor scandal when one of Georgiana’s seamstresses was bribed to reveal her latest design. Several ladies paid for the drawings, each thinking she was the only one. They were all exposed several weeks later when they arrived at a ball wearing the same dress.49
Georgiana’s popularity meant that she was subjected to scrutiny and with it the propagation of half-truths and second-guesses which caused her untold trouble. The persistent rumour linking her with the Prince exasperated her; the obnoxious cartoons which depicted them as lovers were unhappy reminders of the Westminster election. Nor was the gossip Georgiana’s fault: it was the Prince’s eccentric behaviour which invited conject
ure. During her confinement with baby Harriet he visited her so often—sometimes several times a day—that people wondered if the child was his. However, it was not the baby he came to discuss but Mrs. Fitzherbert. Georgiana did not dare refuse him entry although his visits were an ordeal. She was trapped on her couch while, seized by emotion, he threw himself about the room, flinging himself on his knees, clasping her hands, and banging his head against a chair. Georgiana repeated, until her head ached, that he ought to talk to Fox.
Mrs. Fitzherbert returned home in November 1785, tired of waiting for the Prince to fall out of love with her. She had been bored and lonely during her eighteen-month exile and was ready to be persuaded to become his wife. As soon as Fox heard of her return he wrote to the Prince, imploring him not to take the “desperate step” of marriage. An alliance with Mrs. Fitzherbert, a Catholic widow—especially without his father’s permission—would make it impossible for him to inherit the throne. His brother the Duke of York would become heir presumptive. The consequences for the Whigs would be disastrous: the party’s reputation would be fatally damaged by its connection with the Prince. However, he ignored Fox’s pleas and secretly attempted to find a clergyman willing to go through with an illegal ceremony. But he could not resist revealing his plans to Georgiana and even invited her to be one of the witnesses. She was too frightened to say anything then or for a few days afterwards, but later sent him the following note:
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