She took some comfort from Duncannon’s reaction. He could be magnanimous where Georgiana was concerned and reassured Harriet that he would assist them in whatever plan they chose. In the meantime he went to London to make arrangements for the children. The women endured several more angry visits from the Duke and from Lady Spencer. Bess felt she blamed her almost as much as she did Georgiana, and Lady Melbourne’s advice to ignore her insults did not help. “I shall observe all you say,” she wrote, “but Lady S has begun as bad as possible about me—even to say I should not travel with them—but on your life say not a word of it to anybody—if the Dss goes I will.”40 The lapse of a few days had done nothing to diminish the Duke’s rage either; Bess did not dare try to intercede, especially as she had recently managed to bring Clifford over from France: he was living with a family named Marshall in Clewer in Somerset. Every few hours the Duke announced he had changed his mind: first they were to go to Cornwall, then abroad, then not, then abroad but without Lady Spencer or Bess. “If the Duke had purposely intended to perplex and torment us, he could not have done it better,” cried Harriet. “His only excuse is his being himself excessively unhappy, which indeed poor fellow I am afraid he is.”41
When the Cavendishes heard the news they were unanimous in urging an immediate separation. This was her repayment, they said, after the Duke had stood up for her against his own relatives and accepted her debts against the advice of his agents. Only the Duke knew to what extent jealousy played a part in his anguish, but Harriet had a shrewd idea; she believed it had prompted him to insist upon secrecy, and told Lady Melbourne, “it is of the greatest consequence [to him] it should not be suspected he is in distress or that our going is at all upon her account.”42 Finally the Duke recovered himself sufficiently to make a firm decision: unalbe to trust himself with Georgiana or Bess he sought out Harriet and even then he struggled with his words for a long time. Harriet waited for what seemed several minutes and was completely taken by surprise when he burst out, “If you wish to save your sister and me from the most unpleasant disclosure, break off your going to Penzance and go abroad directly.” That was it, she told Lady Melbourne: after he walked out she realized, “it is determined as far as the Duke can determine anything. . . . His soliciting an open publick separation or not depends upon my entire acquiescence in everything he wishes.”43
“We are all in distress and confusion and shall be so till Warren comes,” wrote Georgiana, still lying about the true cause. “My mother is very much agitated tho’ extremely kind; and of course my Sister is nervous and I am mad. I shall make any possible use of you about Black’s letters sent you when I am gone—if I go for all is obscure—my mother goes I believe,” she continued somewhat incoherently, “and the D sees less necessity for my going but if she [Harriet] continues as anxious apart I am sure we shall—you must see my children very often.”44 By the time Dr. Warren arrived the strain on Harriet had brought about a relapse and he had no difficulty in requesting her departure. The Duke ordered Selina and Lady Spencer to take the children to London; the exiles should go immediately to Southampton. The party was to consist of Lady Spencer, the Duncannons and their youngest child, Caroline, Georgiana, Bess, and her daughter, Caroline St. Jules. However, the news that Lady Spencer was definitely going made Bess reconsider her offer to accompany Georgiana. “Bess and I had a long conversation and a half quarrel last night,” Harriet told Lady Melbourne afterwards. “But I think I have [fixed] it. . . . I really believe it is nothing but the fear she has of my mother and the mistrust she feels when with her that makes her hesitate.”45
Once again Lady Spencer’s prejudices had blinded her to the exigencies of Georgiana’s situation. If Bess stayed behind, her reputation might be ruined but the Duke would have little incentive to recall Georgiana from her exile. In any case, there were far more serious problems to be overcome which made her preoccupation with Bess look ridiculous. None of the party had any money. The Duncannons were massively in debt as usual and Georgiana had only the contents of her baggage. The private incomes of Bess and Lady Spencer were hardly enough to support themselves abroad, let alone seven people. Lady Melbourne gave them what money she could quickly gather without attracting notice, and George paid for Harriet’s doctor to travel with them. He had little cash to spare, although he compensated for this by sending his agent, Townsend, to accompany the party and conduct all their business transactions for them. In many ways Townsend was better than a line of credit because he was practical and level-headed. However, it was impossible to imagine how they would survive if the Duke remained angry for any length of time. He had forbidden Georgiana to borrow any money, and yet, Harriet complained to Lady Melbourne, he was throwing “temptation in her face” by leaving her destitute. She could already see the day when they would be forced to sell their jewels.
The person at the centre of this drama thought about little except the choice the Duke had forced her to make. He had ordered Georgiana to renounce Grey and have the baby adopted as soon as it was born. If she refused he would divorce her and she would never see her three children again. She did not hesitate even though she had no guarantee that the Duke would not change his mind and divorce her anyway. But Grey could not forgive her choice, and when she tried to make him understand his replies were savage. He was being “very cruel,” Georgiana wrote sadly to Lady Melbourne, who was secretly forwarding their letters. She did not blame him nor did she deny that he was “deserving of pity too, and I have in leaving him for ever, left my heart and soul; but it is over now. . . . he has one consolation that I have given him up to my children only.”46
CHAPTER 16
EXILE
1791–1793
The Duchess of Devonshire, the Dowager Lady Spencer, and Lord and Lady Duncannon pass the summer in Switzerland, and next winter in Nice. The Duke is going to visit them soon. This fully contradicts the vague reports that have been circulated of these noble personages.
Bon Ton Magazine, June 1792
Georgiana lay in an airless, shuttered room in a house near Montpellier, waiting to give birth. Although only thirty-four she feared that her life had run its course. A new will, dated January 27, 1792, lay hidden amongst her possessions next to a life insurance policy for £1,000. Bess and the six-year-old Caroline St. Jules were the only people with her; the others had pressed on to Nice on account of Harriet’s health. The baby was due in a few days, and in the time she had left Georgiana composed letters of farewell to each of her children, in case of her death. She tried to find words that would provide them with comfort and advice long after she was gone. “As soon as you are old enough to understand this letter it will be given to you,” she wrote hopefully to her two-year-old son. “It contains the only present I can make you—my blessing, written in my blood. . . . Alas, I am gone before you could know me, but I lov’d you, I nurs’d you nine months at my breast. I love you dearly.”1
As well as giving each of them her blessing, Georgiana begged the children to learn from the mistakes which had ruined her life: “One of my greatest pains in dying,” began her farewell to Little Georgiana, “is not to see you again. But I hope that this letter will influence your whole life; I die, my dearest child, with the most unfeigned repentance for many errors. Learn to be exact about expence—I beg you as the best Legacy I can leave you—never to run into debt for the most triffling sum; I have suffered enough from a contrary conduct.”2 Her final injunction was that they should always be dutiful to their father, loving to their grandmother, and “affectionate to my Dear friend Bess—love and befriend Caroline St. Jules.”
The children knew that their mother had been sent away to give birth to an illegitimate child; the proof is in the blacked-out paragraphs which disfigure Georgiana’s letters to them during these months. Their Victorian descendants attempted to wipe out every trace of her transgression: in the Chatsworth archives there is a gap where her letters about the birth would have been. Every letter which ever mentioned the child’s
name, bar one or two, has been either destroyed or mutilated. But we know from other sources that on February 20, 1791, Georgiana gave birth to a girl. She called her Eliza (a favourite name of Bess’s) Courtney (a surname which belonged to the Poyntz family and therefore, unusually, gave no hint of her patrimony). Someone took Eliza from Georgiana’s arms almost immediately. The baby was nursed by a foster mother and then, when she was old enough to travel, sent over to England to live with Charles Grey’s parents in Falloden in Northumberland.
Somehow, a poem which Georgiana wrote just after Eliza’s birth made its way into her daughter’s hands and a copy lies among her descendants’ papers:
Unhappy child of indiscretion,
poor slumberer on a breast forlorn
pledge of reproof of past transgression
Dear tho’ unfortunate to be born
For thee a suppliant wish addressing
To Heaven thy mother fain would dare
But conscious blushes stain the blessing
And sighs suppress my broken prayer
But spite of these my mind unshaken
In present duty turns to thee
Tho’ long repented ne’er forgotten
Thy days shall lov’d and guarded be
And should th’ungenerous world upbraid thee
for mine and for thy father’s ill
A nameless mother oft shall assist thee
A hand unseen protect thee still
And tho’ to rank and wealth a stranger
Thy life a humble course must run
Soon shalt thou learn to fly the danger
Which I too late have learnt to shun
Meanwhile in these sequestered vallies
Here may’st thou live in safe content
For innocence may smile at malice
And thou—Oh! Thou art innocent3
Georgiana was never allowed to acknowledge Eliza, although her existence eventually became an open secret. In 1796 Lord Glenbervie, the social magpie of the late eighteenth century, recorded in his diary: “I heard yesterday a stray anecdote of a foundling left about four years ago at Sir Charles Grey’s under very mysterious circumstances. The Duchess of Devonshire was at that time abroad. Since her return about three years ago she has often visited the child, and been with it for hours at a time.”4 Mrs. Fitzherbert, whose resentment of Georgiana increased rather than diminished with each passing year, may have learned the truth from him, or from the Duchess of Leeds, another famous gossip. However she found out, she made sure that the rest of society learned of Eliza’s existence. Mrs. Creevey, the wife of the Whig politician, was speechless when Mrs. Fitzherbert brought up the subject over tea and biscuits one afternoon in 1805: “She said quite naturally. . . . it is only two years since the Prince knew of that Child who lives with Lady Grey—he would not believe it at first and vowed he would ask the Duchess but I made him promise not to do so, tho’ now he can have no doubts.”5
The arrangement ultimately agreed between the Devonshires and the Greys granted Georgiana limited access to the child as her unofficial godmother, and she became the “unseen hand” which tried to protect her. She was not allowed to send her private letters or visit her at Falloden, nor does it seem that Eliza ever set foot inside Devonshire House. But Georgiana was granted permission to see her occasionally when the Greys brought her to London. These visits were painful: Georgiana could sense that Eliza lacked the sort of loving attention which her other children enjoyed, so she sent her little presents—poetry, tiny watercolour drawings, and any other scrap of nursery paraphernalia which could be tied up in a ribbon and easily conveyed. But no matter how carefully she composed her letters, she couldn’t hide her thwarted maternal feelings.
One letter to Eliza when she was twelve years old begins innocently enough—“A thousand thanks for your delightful letter. I hope to hear from you again when you have received the books and that you continue well”—but ends with a poignant passage describing a children’s ball, where the sight of the little girls concentrating on their steps brought tears to Georgiana’s eyes.6 In another letter, written the following year, 1804, Georgiana told a story—which sounds suspiciously like a parable—about Fortuna, an orphaned child whom she had been sponsoring for the past six years. It turned out that the girl was not an orphan; her parents had gone abroad and left her in the charge of a nurse who wickedly gave her away while keeping her allowance. Fortuna’s real name was Louise Dupont and she had an English mother living in France; for the past two years Louise’s family had been searching for her and, having found her, would now restore her birthright to her.7
In relating the miraculous end to Fortuna’s troubles, Georgiana may have half wanted to awaken Eliza’s suspicions about her own birthright. There were clues in all her letters, as if she hoped that one day Eliza would be able to piece the truth together for herself. For example, she made an oblique reference to her long exile and Eliza’s birth in France by giving her “some memorandums I made abroad, four French lines which I send you as I thought them very pretty . . .”
Form but few projects, cultivate few friends,
Content with little space, do good to
all and if alas, this happy system ends
the recollection, with no pain recall.8
Sometimes Georgiana came perilously close to betraying herself: “God bless you dear Eliza,” she ended one of her letters. “I will send you from time to time anything interesting I find in my papers which I am arranging. How I should like to have you here to help me.”9 But she kept her oath and also forbade Little Georgiana and Harryo, who were taken to see Eliza occasionally, ever to reveal their knowledge of the connection: “understand she could [be] the daughter of any other person,” she warned.10
Eliza therefore grew up in complete ignorance about her parentage, thinking that Georgiana was a kind friend and Charles Grey her much older brother. Her treatment in her grandparents’ household was marked by indifference and she was made to feel inferior to the rest of the family. “We saw a great deal of old Mrs. Grey and little Eliza,” Little Georgiana told Selina in 1799, “who was very much pleased with a toy we brought her.”11 Such presents were the only ones Eliza received. Harriet visited the Greys in 1808 and was miserable at what she saw: “Eliza is a fine girl, and will, I think, be handsome; but tho’ they are kind to her, it goes to my heart to see her—she is so evidently thrown into the background, and has such a look of mortification about her that it is not pleasant, yet he [Charles Grey] seems very fond of her. Lord B. [Harriet’s husband] has this moment ask’d me whether she is not the Governess.”12
Georgiana did not live to see Eliza reach adulthood, but she would have been happy with the result. Lord Broughton met Eliza in 1814, just before she married Colonel, later General, Robert Ellice. He recorded in his diary that “the daughter of the late Duchess of Devonshire by Charles Grey” was a “fine girl, sensible and talkative, and easy mannered.”13 Eliza was the most beautiful of all Georgiana’s children, which, combined with her sensitive and attractive nature, won her many friends. She married a tolerant and loving husband whose elder brother, Edward, had already married Eliza’s half sister, Hannah Alethea Grey. Robert met Eliza at Edward’s house, fell in love with her, and rescued her from her life of petty drudgery. In 1828 Eliza visited Southill, the home of the Whitbreads, friends of the Greys. While there she recorded the only surviving impressions of her childhood: “I have not been here since I married—all puts me too much in mind of dearest mama of my younger days,” meaning that by now Eliza had learned that Mrs. Grey was not her real mother. “I feel depressed to a degree. . . . I sleep in the room poor mama used to sleep in—and when I used to study with her—I was not happy then, some oppressed me, but she was always most kind. How grateful I ought to feel for my present happy lot.”14
Georgiana and Bess remained apart from the group for several more weeks after Eliza’s birth, giving great offence to Lady Spencer and causing Harriet to wonder whether Georgian
a reciprocated her love to the same degree. She need not have worried: Caroline St. Jules was the reason for their delay. Bess feared that her decision to accompany Georgiana had cost her the Duke’s protection. She had initially delayed her departure, knowing that either way she stood to lose much.
She was excessively [upset] [Harriet told Lady Melbourne] when she first came. Poor little soul, I felt for her from my heart, for I am certain the effort was as much as she could bear; but she is better now; she is our only security. I do not think she will go back without us now she is come, though I had very great doubts whether she would have [the] resolution to tear herself away. But that once over, I think the natural generosity of her character, and her friendship for my sister will have the leisure to act.15
Georgiana expressed her gratitude by accompanying Bess to Aix-en-Provence to help her to persuade the dying Comte St. Jules to adopt Caroline formally, thereby giving her some kind of legitimacy. To add to Bess’s worry the Duke had, out of pique, stopped her allowance and she had no guarantee that Caroline’s future would be provided for. Georgiana shared her anxiety, telling Lady Melbourne, “This poor old man continues very ill, and in the trouble of this country it really is very necessary that something should be done about securing Caroline’s little income—and getting it into safe hands.”16 Nothing survives that would explain Bess’s influence with the old man or why he would consider offering his protection to her child. Nevertheless, they succeeded in making him sign a paper just before he died but at considerable cost: the only way Harriet was able to prevent Lady Spencer from fetching them herself was by admitting the truth about Caroline. “My mother having been told everything was indeed unfortunate,” she wrote.17
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