The Duchess

by Amanda Foreman

  ENQUIRIES AT DEVONSHIRE HOUSE

  Is she sick; or at Chiswick; in or gone out

  is she shamming a headache; or giving a rout

  She’s been ill—

  twas a stone—but she’s now in good trim

  a stone! you amaze me—more likely a whim,

  But what is its substance? a feather or lead!

  is it soft as her heart, or as light as her head,

  is it gall cries a foe—is it gold cries a Dun

  —alas the poor Duchess of either has none

  But smile on the errors she tries to disown

  and perhaps it will prove the philosopher’s stone.

  However, Georgiana tried not to dwell on her debts and returned to politics as soon as she had recovered. Her understanding, not to mention her enjoyment, of the intricacies of party politics made her indispensable. Fox asked her to work alongside him and she became one of his chief whips. The Whigs were weak in the Lords; Georgiana organized a recruitment drive just before the opening of Parliament urging supporters to register (no peer may vote in the Lords unless he declares his intention at the start of each year). It was precisely this sort of activity which distinguished factions from parties, and amateurs from professionals. Georgiana and Fox were determined to let nothing fall to chance.24 “Pray give everybody you see notion of an active commencement of the session,” he had ordered her in January.25 When it came to hunting down wayward votes Georgiana was tireless, ill or not, and was prepared, in the case of the slave trade debate in March, to pick up some of the lazier members and convey them to the House in her own carriage.26

  Although Pitt had managed to persuade Addington (who accepted a peerage as Viscount Sidmouth) and his followers to join the government, his support could not counterbalance the coalition. The government was tottering. On February 10, 1805, the Commission of Naval Enquiry had published its Tenth Report, which contained allegations of malfeasance against the current First Lord of the Admiralty Henry Dundas (recently ennobled to Viscount Melville). The report claimed that Melville had, as Treasurer to the Navy, knowingly allowed public funds to be misappropriated by a member of his staff. Melville was Pitt’s oldest and best friend, his chief support in the cabinet, the man who controlled all Scottish patronage and delivered the Scottish MPs at every election: he was the heart and lungs of Pitt’s ministry. The opposition scented victory. On April 9 MPs packed into a crowded Commons to debate whether or not to impeach Melville. Pitt gave one of the worst speeches in his life while MP after MP, led by Fox and Thomas Grenville, stood up to denounce the First Lord. The debate continued until 5 a.m., when the exhausted members agreed to divide. The result, however, defied expectation: the numbers were exactly even—216 to 216. It was now up to the Speaker, Charles Abbot, to decide. According to eye-witnesses he sat in his chair for ten minutes, staring straight ahead as the blood drained from his face. The House remained silent in anticipation. Then he roused himself and cast his vote in favour of impeachment. Members of the opposition leapt to their feet in jubilation as Pitt collapsed in tears and had to be helped from the chamber by his friends. Two months later Sidmouth resigned, bringing the government to its knees; experience had taught him to recognize a dying ministry.

  The opposition continued to harry the government. The Prince wrote confidently to Georgiana on May 1: “The most perfect good understanding and harmony, as well as firmness, exists between all our political friends.” A few weeks later Georgiana held a joint ball with Lavinia in honour of the coalition. Despite their long rivalry Lavinia behaved graciously for the first and only time in their acquaintance, and invited Georgiana to “do the honours.” After the remains of “the old famous champagne” were drunk Georgiana “took the Prince and his party, consisting of my Br., all our family, Ly Stafford, etc., 26 in all, down the private back stairs from the Musick room where we assembled and we got in without the rush. In short it was the most solidly magnificent ball I ever saw at least of late years.” It was also Georgiana’s final and most public triumph: 340 guests watched her usher the Prince to his place and then glide to her own at the head of the table. All those present understood the symbolism of her actions. Georgiana herself related to her mother: “I do not know I was ever more flattered than being told by everybody when I undertook the honours, that I looked as if I belong’d to the fate.”27

  There were many who had their reasons for wanting to see the link between Devonshire House and the Prince broken. Mrs. Fitzherbert was one of the most virulent enemies of the coalition, partly because of her hatred of Fox but mainly because of her jealousy of Georgiana. She had watched Georgiana’s influence increase while her own diminished as the Prince found greater attractions in the company of Lady Hertford. By November 1805 she was an embittered woman ready to air her grievances to anyone who would listen. Taking tea with Mrs. Creevey one day, she surprised and delighted her hostess by bursting into a tirade against Georgiana, declaring that the Prince now knew “everything” about her,

  above all, how money is made by promises, unauthorised by him, in the event of his having power; that he knows how his character is involved in various transactions of that house, and that he only goes into it from motives of compassion and old friendship, when persecuted to do so. In short he tells Mrs F all he sees and hears, shows her all the Duchess’s letters and notes, and she says she knows the Dss hates her. . . .28

  Only the last part was certainly true.

  Georgiana paid no attention to Mrs. Fitzherbert; she was surrounded by her family and friends and happily engaged in the light-hearted pursuit of amateur theatricals with Lady Melbourne and the Lambs. To her relief Harryo was no longer fretting over her cousin Duncannon, although this was because he had since dropped both her and Lady Elizabeth Villiers. Harryo was philosophical when she learned of his engagement to Lady Maria Fane, telling Little G: “One hears more of their furniture than of their love, of their home than of themselves and it is all so comfortable, proper and uninteresting that until you reminded me of them, they had nearly escaped my memory.”29 Georgiana was also pleased to notice a marked improvement in sixteen-year-old Hart’s behaviour towards her. He had started to respond to her overtures of friendship with small movements of his own. The change had come about following Caroline Ponsonby’s sudden engagement to William Lamb, the future Viscount Melbourne.* Hart was so distraught by the news that Georgiana summoned Dr. Farquhar to give him a sedative. It transpired that he secretly loved Caroline and had planned to marry her when he came of age. As she had done with Harryo, Georgiana managed to break through Hart’s reserve and comfort him. When he went away to stay with his tutor in the country they embarked upon a correspondence which later held some of his most precious memories of her. They chatted and gossiped, exchanged thoughts and news as if they had always been friends. Georgiana was finally able to share her political activities with him and began to instil in him that reverence for Whiggery which had already taken hold in Little G. As the new parliamentary session neared Georgiana wrote her letters in the style of a journal, detailing for Hart “the secret history of the times.” “Tho’ you do not yet care about politics, I must tell you what has pass’d. . . .” the first letter opened.30

  The combatants were in their places by mid-January. Pitt had been buoyed by the success of the Battle of Trafalgar on October 21 which, though it had resulted in the death of Nelson, had also destroyed Napoleon’s fleet and with it his ambition to launch an invasion of England. But Pitt’s elation had turned to despair six weeks later. Napoleon regained and increased his advantage by defeating the Austrian army at the Battle of Austerlitz on December 2. His victory destroyed the Third Coalition agreed between Russia, Prussia, Austria, Sweden, and Britain earlier that year. Pitt’s diplomacy was in ruins; the political future of the government looked bleak.

  Nevertheless, the Duchess of Gordon launched the home offensive by arranging her ministerial parties to coincide with Georgiana’s opposition parties. “The Duchess of Gordon
has a great supper to which she has not asked me,” Georgiana wrote to Hart; “it will make my supper very thin.”31 But a few days later the struggle abruptly halted. Pitt collapsed at his home. He had been ill for some time and people had commented on his shrunken body and grey face: the port, for so long a prop, was poisoning him. He died on January 23, 1806, at the age of forty-six, having sat in the Commons for twenty-five years to the day.32 According to reports, he cried just before lapsing into unconsciousness, “Oh my country! how I leave my country!”

  The Pittite hegemony was over. Fox expressed his disbelief at the news “as if there was something missing in the world—a chasm, a blank that cannot be supplied.”33 Georgiana echoed his sentiments to Hart. She had devoted over twenty years of her life to fighting one man who had “fill’d an immense space in the universe.”34 Scarcely a day had passed without Pitt’s name being mentioned. He had shaped their lives to such an extent that for a brief period the Whigs were at a loss. Georgiana summed up the orthodox Whig view of his career to Hart:

  Mr Pitt’s fault as an Englishman and statesman was that he came into place against the constitution and supported himself in place by exercising the power of the throne. As a statesman he was chiefly brilliant as a financier. In war he was a bad leader, not from his own want of powers but from his trusting too much to incapable individuals. But his eloquence was so great he could explain even ev’ry disaster into almost the contrary. His choice of words was perfect, his voice beautiful, and his way of putting aside the question when he chose, and fascinating the minds of men, extraordinary.35

  The King searched for alternatives to the Fox-Grenville Coalition but no one was willing to take the job. Bracing himself for the worst, he sent for Lord Grenville and invited him to form his own ministry. The government was quickly dubbed “The Ministry of all the Talents” since Fox and Grenville invited Addington (now Sidmouth) to join them. The new government was the broadest and most inclusive of the entire reign of George III. However, after the initial euphoria there was a vicious scramble for places. Georgiana was dismayed: “I am weary and tired to death,” she told Hart. “Mr Fox had no difficulty with the great offices of State, but now that he comes to the lesser it is inconceivable. I have plagued him amongst the others without knowing his situation, but never will again . . .”36 “I cannot bear it, I cannot,” Fox complained to Thomas Grenville; he felt that the Grenvilles were being greedy with the places.37 It was an unfortunate and unseemly beginning. However, it was eventually settled that Lord Grenville was to be Prime Minister, Fox Foreign Secretary, George Spencer Home Secretary, Charles Grey First Lord of the Admiralty, and Sheridan Treasurer to the Navy, a generous position considering his past antipathy to the coalition.

  Georgiana wisely remained in the background until the government was formed, but once the ministers had kissed hands she re-emerged to head the celebrations. “Last night we had a splendid assembly of the new ministry,” she informed Hart. “We met in my room and then crossed the hall and the middle room to sup in the dining room. The Prince sat up late with us till Mr Fox (who looks quite smart in powder) went to sleep by me or nearly so.”38 In the spirit of reconciliation and co-operation she held a supper for the outgoing ministers and their wives, telling Hart: “The Dss of Gordon came and was very gracious, it was very forgiving of me to ask her.” Nothing was more amusing than the sight of the Duchess “paying great court to Mr Fox. She asked him and Mrs Fox to a party tomorrow.” She even extended an invitation to Georgiana, but she was too busy with party matters to accept. Night after night London society passed through the doors of Devonshire House to pay their respects to the newly anointed leaders. Some were respectful, others sullen, and a few made such obvious attempts to curry favour (such as the Duchess of Gordon), that they made themselves ludicrous.* “The Dss of Gordon has made it up with me I perceive,” Georgiana joked to Hart, “for she has asked us to a ball on the 6th. I hear she calls me, ‘the head of the administration.’ ”39 Twenty years earlier Georgiana had been called the “head of the opposition public” by Fanny Burney; this new title filled her with far greater satisfaction: “we the administration,” she crowed. She joked with Little G, “We are all statesmen and stateswomen and grown very dull and important.”40

  On March 9, in the middle of all the dinners, balls, meetings, and attendances at court, Georgiana stole a few hours to write a long and serious letter to Hart. Perhaps she had some presentiment of what was about to happen, or perhaps, having reached the summit of her ambitions, she had stopped to assess her life.

  I feel and fear that I give too much latitude to my pleasure in writing to you, but indeed no mother ever lov’d a son as I do you. I live in you again. I adore your sisters, but I see in you still more perhaps than even in them what my youth was. God grant that you may have all its fervours and cheerfulness without partaking of many of the follies which mark’d the giddyness of my introduction into the world. . . . You will have great temptations in the same way, but you have judgement and sense to protect you. . . .

  I hope to live to see you not only happy but the cause of happyness to others, expending your princely fortune in doing good, and employing the talents and powers of pleasing, with which nature has gifted you, in exalting the name of Cavendish even beyond the honour it has yet ever attain’d. God bless you Dst Dst Hart. If it will not bore you I have sometimes the idea of sending you a history of your House, from the time of Elisabeth [Queen Elizabeth I] to the present day, to show you what you have belong’d to. But believe me, Dst Hart, when I tell you I do expect you to surpass them all, all except your Dr father. He has a mind of most uncommon endowments, a rectitude few others could boast. Mr Fox and the finest of men of the time look up to his judgment and sence. Dear Hart, banish but indolence, and add but a little activity to this character of your dr father, and you will bring him back with the only thing he wanted—power to conquer idle habits, and to make the virtues that endear’d him to his friends of use to his country.41

  A few days later Georgiana fell ill with what appeared to be jaundice. When Lady Spencer received a request from her for £100 she suspected that “her illness is owing to the old and hopeless story of money difficulties.” Her daughter was indeed being harassed by a new creditor, but the illness was real. At first the doctors thought it was another kidney stone and she seemed to rally for a few days. She was well enough to write to her mother that the jaundice was “going off.” But on March 22 she rapidly deteriorated. Harriet moved into Devonshire House and sat up all night with her while she suffered a prolonged shivering fit. On March 25 Bess wrote in her diary: “a better day—the attack of fever was slighter this morning though the interval was dreadful to see, but the rest of the day the Dss has been more collected.”42 She complained that “crowds come to enquire.” People sensed that Georgiana’s illness was serious this time. Fox visited Devonshire House and thought Georgiana’s four doctors far too sanguine, telling Leveson Gower, “The Physicians think there is now no danger, but those who love her cannot be easy till the fever has entirely quitted her.”43 Lady Spencer was torn between staying at St. Albans and coming into town. She decided that Georgiana had enough people nursing her, with Bess and Harriet, as well as her three children at hand (by chance Little G was in town with Morpeth since she was eight months pregnant), but Harriet’s letters persuaded her to come. On the twenty-sixth Georgiana suffered a fit which lasted eight and a half hours. The doctors shaved her head and put blister-plasters on her skin which did nothing to alleviate her illness and only increased the pain. The doctors did not know it but she had an abscess on her liver; there was nothing they could have done for her except make her comfortable, and in this they miserably failed.

  By the twenty-seventh everyone in Devonshire House knew that Georgiana was dying. The family, friends, and servants waited for the end to come. The crowd outside the gates grew in size. The Duke wrote to Selina on March 29: “If the worst should happen I hope you will be so good as to stay at Devons
hire House for the present, for I shall not be in a state of mind to attend to anybody, or to receive or give any comfort whatever.”44 Georgiana was struggling to talk and Harriet later wrote of the “agony of seeing eager efforts to speak, of listening with agonising attention to inarticulate sounds which it was impossible to understand and seeing the pain this gave.”45 Her seizures became worse throughout the day and the memory of her pain imprinted itself on all those who witnessed her final hours. “I saw it all,” wrote Harriet, “held her thro’ all her struggles, saw her expire, and since have again and again kiss’d her cold lips and press’d her lifeless body to my heart—and yet I am alive.”46

  Georgiana died at 3:30 a.m. on March 30, 1806. The Duke, Bess, Harriet, Lady Spencer, and Little G were with her until “nearly the end” and were reported to be “quite delirious.” “The Duke has been most deeply affected,” wrote a friend to Leveson Gower, who was on a diplomatic mission to St. Petersburg. “And has shown more feeling than anyone thought possible—indeed every individual in the family are in a dreadful state of affliction—Oh God what a loss they all have to lament—all who knew her lament her. . . .”47 Thousands of Londoners, many of whom remembered Georgiana’s street campaign for Fox in 1784, streamed into Piccadilly to pay their respects. Friends came to Devonshire House to share their grief with the family. Fox sat on a sofa, tears rolling down his cheeks. Harriet later told Leveson Gower that she could do nothing to comfort the Whig leader: “I was so stupefied I could not even speak to him.”48 The Prince was stunned: “the best natured and best bred woman in England is gone,” he said. Both Harriet and Bess wrote eloquently and at length of their grief, but nothing remains of Lady Spencer’s or the children’s thoughts. Nothing, except for a tiny scrap of paper. It contained a message from Little G: