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* The caricature was a drawing of a graveyard containing the tombstones of many of the “fallen” women of London. In the centre was the Prince of Wales’s tomb, flanked on either side with the graves of Lady Melbourne and Georgiana. There was no mistaking the implication.
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Chapter 9
* He says nothing can equal the despotism of Mr. Fox except the baseness of his friends.
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* Lady Spencer wrote to her son that Lady Salisbury had canvassed the town on the government‘s behalf: “we were told, with amazing success, and she threw a sort of Spirit upon their party that depressed ours. So last night I sent for your two sisters who set out an hour ago with Mrs Sloper and a very large body of friends to make a regular canvass. It is amazing what this has already done.” BL Althorp G276; LS to second Earl Spencer, circa March 25, 1784.
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Chapter 10
* Georgiana immediately related the episode to her mother and the Duke. Neither was surprised at the Prince’s behaviour, and she began to wonder whether it had been a hoax. She suggested to Mr. Onslow that the Prince should see an independent surgeon to estab-lish whether or not the suicide attempt had been genuine. When Prinny heard of this he sent her a long and indignant letter about “false friends.” Georgiana was too fed up to reply and left London a week later without seeing him. His letters, aggressive and pleading by turn, wore her down and she reluctantly agreed he could use her courier to write to Mrs. Fitzherbert in France. She later found out that in order to escape detection the Prince frequently wrote to Mrs. Fitzherbert using her name.
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* The best way to teach is by example.
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* The Duke was also losing a great deal of money at Brooks’s, and between them the two made inroads into their capital. “I hear the Devonshire Estate is put to nurse,” Mrs. Scott wrote sarcastically to Mrs. Montagu. “And that family reduced to the small pittance of £8000 a year—it will really be poverty to them who could not keep within their original immense income, and some of the hungry opposition must feel it very sensibly.” Reginald Blunt, Mrs Montagu (London 1923), II, p. 192; Mrs. Scott to Mrs. Montagu, July 23, 1785.
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* Lady Caroline Ponsonby became the infamous Lady Caroline Lamb. She married Lady Melbourne’s second son, William Lamb, who became the second Viscount Melbourne. Her talent as a novelist has been largely eclipsed today by her love affair with Lord Byron and subsequent madness.
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* It is one of the few passages which seems to have escaped the censor’s pen. In middle age Bess rewrote her entire collection of journals with a view to publication. Her son Augustus also edited extracts from his mother’s diaries. What survives is not necessarily what she originally wrote or thought. In the main, the opus is a self-justification for stealing her friend’s husband, and to that end her other lovers are either excised completely or their existence glossed over. Nevertheless, the terror and heartbreak she describes during her arduous experience were probably real.
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* Mrs. Nunns was another of Georgiana’s protégées: the Morning Herald and Daily Advertiser reported: “The Duchess of Devonshire, in her patronage of Mrs Nunns, had behaved with her accustomed liberality. Her Grace not only introduced her to London, and supported her very powerfully on the first two nights of her appearance, but corrected her dress in the Confederacy as directed and gave the dress in the Jealous Wife.” Morning herald and Daily Advertiser, July 4, 1785.
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* This was the one thing she was not allowed to do: Mrs. Fitzherbert was careful not to appear pushy in public, but privately she schemed to have her new status recognized. In March Lavinia wrote to George about an embarrassing incident: “The Duchess and 16 other ladies are to be in some frightful dress of Lady Beauchamp’s invention, and the Dss is very angry at the scrape she has got into because when their dresses were ordered and everything was fixed on Mrs Fitzherbert sent to desire to be of it, and she could not refuse. I am sure (so is she) that it is a plan of his R.H. and she is excessively angry at it and I think with some reason.” BL Althorp G290, Lavinia, Lady Spencer to George, Lord Spencer, March 1786.
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* The two lovers took advantage of the lax attitudes at Devonshire House to begin a clandestine affair, but by 1786 neither of them could bear the pretence any longer and they deliberately revealed their secret. Remembering how Georgiana had aided Lord George Cavendish and Lady Betty when his wife’s family had objected to the match, Mr. Fawkener accused Georgiana of having encouraged the adulterous couple. On this rare occasion the Duke angrily defended his wife: “I write this at the request of the Duchess and partly likewise for my own satisfaction,” he responded coldly to Fawkener. “I am thoroughly convinced from conversations I have had with her that she has done nothing intentionally to promote anything that could be disagreeable to you.” Chatsworth 747, Duke of Devonshire to William Fawkener, circa July 1786. But Lady Spencer was not so supportive. She accused Georgiana of bringing dishonour to the family and ordered both her daughters to regard their cousin as deceased. The Poyntzes imprisoned Jockey in a bedroom at their London house and alternately entreated and bullied her to give up Townshend. Lady Spencer joined her sister-in-law during these sessions and tried to break her niece’s will. But Jockey refused to return to Fawkener. He divorced her and she immediately married her lover. Georgiana was godmother to their first child. The marriage was not a success.
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* The equivalent of £6,000,000 today.
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Chapter 11
* Georgiana never succeeded in being completely rid of him. From time to time he would demand, and receive, “hush money” from her.
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* He was also in the process of securing another bankrupt for his books, Charles James Fox, who could hardly believe his good fortune when he read the following letter: “Perhaps you will laugh at my letter, but I feel an impulse to write it, & and to make you an offer, in case you have Annuities or Debts, to lend you money to pay Them provided you would like to be indebted to me—and that such a Sum as I can spare, would extricate you from hands that are less liberal than, I Hope, mine are. . . .” BL Add. MSS 51466, f. 17: Thomas Coutts to Charles Fox, July 30, 1787. Fox gladly accepted a £5,000 loan which Coutts noted in his book was “not to be press’d or any Interest ask’d for.” Leslie Mitchell, Charles James Fox (Oxford 1992), p. 103.
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* Judging by the influence Mrs. B. has over her husband.
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* All Dorset’s correspondence with Georgiana was censored in the last century; an unknown hand has scratched over his endearments to her. Most of the letters were destroyed, and the majority of those that survive are edited copies. “My ever dearest Duchess” is one of the few lines which can be faintly detected beneath the black markings of the censor’s pen. Chatsworth 833: Duke of Dorset to GD, Oct. 19, 1787.
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Chapter 12
* i.e., in America.
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Chapter 13
* Sheridan adopted the Devonshire House Circle’s patois whenever he wrote to Harriet: “I must bid ’oo good Night,” etc.
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* Comparing Fox’s and Pitt’s style, the diarist Joseph Farington recalled: “Mr Pitt always spoke with a regular flow of expression, never requiring to go backward to correct himself but proceeding with an uninterrupted stream of delivery. On the contrary, Mr Fox went forward and backward, not satisfied with his first expression. He would put it another way. The undertone of Mr Fox’s voice was agreeable, almost musical, but when to give force & energy to his delivery He raised his voice it became squeaking and disagreeable. . . . Mr Fox occasionally had flashes of genius beyond Mr
Pitt . . . [but] Mr Pitt had the ascendancy.” J. Greig, The Farington Diary (London 1922), June 25, 1806.
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Chapter 14
* Martindale had reappeared. Theoretically, Georgiana still owed him tens of thousands. Despite his agreement not to press for repayment he knew he could secure some “quiet” money from her. Writing from Paris, Georgiana could not explain to Coutts why her account was so overdrawn, and resorted to flattery instead. “You are my second father,” she told him. She managed to persuade him not to charge her interest. “I hope it will be no loss to you,” she wrote, playing up the part of the helpless, unworldly woman. Chatsworth 969; GD to Coutts, July 9, 1789.
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* By coincidence, Caroline Townsend was the daughter of the late Lord Spencer’s trusted steward. When she became pregnant as a result of the affair Georgiana and Harriet helped Sheridan to arrange for her to go abroad, and on her return they adopted the baby. They named her Fanny Mortimer and she grew up at Devonshire House as a sort of foundling, inhabiting a nether world between the servants’ quarters and the nursery. After Georgiana died Harriet sent Fanny to private school and eventually saw her marry quite well. Fanny always suspected that either Harriet or Georgiana was her mother and never quite recovered from learning that her true mother was a mere governess. Chichester RO Bessborough MSS 207: Mrs. Peterson to Lady Emily Ponsonby, November 1856. Mrs. Pe-terson was Harriet’s maid. She began working for her in the 1780s, when Georgiana’s black hairdresser, Gilbert, taught her how to dress hair.
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* All three had presumably lent her money.
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Chapter 15
* “Your silence was very hurtful, but your forgetting me would be painful beyond words.”
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† “Therefore I flatter myself that little by little you will rediscover your former feelings for me.”
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* Selina’s mother, Sarah Trimmer, was a famous educationalist whose books for children consisted of worthy stories around moral themes, such as being kind to animals. Lady Spencer thought it miraculous when the religious and sober-minded Selina agreed to become her grandchildren’s governess. Georgiana acquiesced to her mother’s request to take Selina on, not realizing that the governess considered it her sacred duty to reform the irregularities in the Devonshire household. She fervently shared her patroness’s opinion that someone had to protect the children from the immoral lifestyle of their parents. In a very short time Lady Spencer came to regard Selina as another daughter.
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* Roughly £3,720,000 today, or $6 million.
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Chapter 16
* Always love me a little.
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* In June Lafayette attempted to halt the revolution by ousting the Jacobins from power. He failed, and two months later, on August 16, defected to the Austrians, who promptly imprisoned him as a spy. The Princesse de Lamballe was less fortunate; a mob burst into La Petite Force during the September massacres, breaking down every door until they found her. They dragged her screaming from her cell into the yard, where she was raped, tortured, and finally hacked to death. Afterwards, they stuck her head and breasts on pikes and paraded them through Paris until they stopped beneath Marie Antoinette’s window and called out for her to see her friend.
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Chapter 17
* It didn’t help that Selina remained Lady Spencer’s spy. In April 1796 Selina reminded Lady Spencer not to reveal their correspondence to Georgiana “as we are now going on so well I would not wish her Grace to think I tell you everything that passes between us.” Chatsworth 1333, Selina Trimmer to LS, April 11, 1796.
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* The Prince had fallen out with the Devonshires politically and personally. Having abandoned the Whigs, he also renounced Mrs. Fitzherbert and agreed to marry his cousin Caroline of Brunswick. By this time he did not care whom he married since he was prepared to do anything so long as the King agreed to pay off his debts. But he had also fallen under the baleful influence of Lady Jersey. At forty-one she was still a beautiful and captivating woman, even after bearing nine children. The Prince had always looked on her with a keen eye, and she, seeing that a vacancy was about to open up, manoeuvred herself into position. She was insufferable, making it a point to be as vicious as possible to any woman who had once been connected with the Prince. She was vile to Mrs. Fitzherbert and sneering towards Georgiana and Lady Melbourne. There could be no real reconciliation between the Prince and Georgiana as long as Lady Jersey remained his mistress.
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* Georgiana was disappointed to learn that the garments were later sold for gin.
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† But she was a patron of Charlotte Smith, a semi-successful poet and playwright whose prevailing theme throughout her work was the misery caused to good wives by their feckless husbands.
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* Henry Cavendish (1731–1810), a second cousin of the Duke’s. He was an eminent natural scientist, discovered the constitution of water and atmospheric air, and in 1776 conducted ground-breaking experiments in electricity. A shy man like his cousin, he nevertheless loathed the Duke but developed a kindness for Georgiana.
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* Leveson Gower’s mother, Lady Stafford, was horrified by the thought of her son’s becoming Harriet’s lover. She warned him to be wary of “that Sort of Woman. . . . once she gets possession of a Young Man’s mind, he thinks what she feels and is what she wishes him to believe her to be. All the flattery which she administers with Art appears to him her genuine, undisguised Thoughts . . . on the Person, on whom she fixes her Claws . . .” Lady Granville, ed., Correspondence of Lord Granville Leveson Gower (London 1916), I, pp. 82–83, Lady Stafford to LGLG, February 16, 1794.
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* Two figures dressed as the Prince and Lady Jersey were paraded through the town on a donkey.
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Chapter 19
* Naval chiefs pulled themselves together after this, and the following year was full of notable victories. By Christmas 1797 the enemy fleets were locked in their ports in Cherbourg, Brest, Cÿdiz, and Toulon.
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* My own flesh and blood.
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* There were indeed unspeakable cruelties inflicted by both sides. The Protestant yeomanry, recruited by the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland Lord Camden to assist the overstretched British troops, used the opportunity to terrorize Catholic neighbours. Innocent people were arrested and tortured on the slightest suspicion. A school teacher, for example, was interrogated and flogged because he knew French. However, the rebels were not far behind in vindictiveness, and in one infamous incident massacred their Protestant captives after being repulsed from New Ross.
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* The ambitious Lady Holland wrote a startlingly opposite description of Georgiana. She resented her, and the power of Devonshire House, as the chief obstacles to the establishment of Holland House as the primary residence of the Whig party. Her view of Georgiana perhaps ought to be understood in the spirit in which it was uttered. “Her figure is corpulent,” she wrote spitefully in April 1799, “her complexion coarse, one eye gone, and her neck immense. How frail is the tenure of beauty.” Earl of Ilchester, Journal of Elizabeth, Lady Holland (London 1908), p. 244.
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* On December 24, 1799, the Morning Post printed a parody of The Passage by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, which gently poked fun at its popularity:
Thenceforth your soul rejoiced to see
The shrine of social Liberty
O beautiful! O Nature’s child!
Twas thence you hailed the platform wild,
Where once the Austrian fell
Beneath the Shaft of Tell!
O! Lady nursed in pomp and p
leasure
Where learnt you this heroic measure. . . .
In 1802 the Abbé Delille translated The Passage into French, which proved very popular. Italian and German translations followed, all of which earned Georgiana considerable plaudits, but no money.
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Chapter 20
* It was one of those rare occasions when Georgiana could relive the happier times when she had unlimited money to spend. The bill from Nunn and Barber, lacemen and haberdashers to the aristocracy, alone amounted to £3,368 9s 6d.
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Chapter 23
* In his memoirs Colonel Greville described her as having “a great deal of genius, humour, strong feelings, enthusiasm, delicacy, refinement, good taste, naïveté which just misses being affectation, and a bonhomie which extends to all around her.” Lytton Strachey and Roger Fulford, eds., The Greville Memoirs (London 1938), I, p. 63.
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* Pitt was also blunt about the Prince; “I fear no very certain dependence is to be placed on any language he holds.” Philip Ziegler, Addington (London 1965), p. 209.
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* So as to avoid detection.
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* Thomas Moore recalled in his journal: “Sheridan was so jealous of Mr Fox and showed it in so many ways that it produced at last a great coolness between them—he envied him particularly his being a Member of Westminster, & in 1802 had nearly persuaded him to retire from Parliament, in order that he might himself succeed to that honour.” Wilfred S. Darden, Journal of Thomas Moore (London 1983), I, p. 61.
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Chapter 24
* Georgiana was resigned to the news: “It has long been evident to me how much she was in love with William Lamb, but till lately she had suppressed it,” she told Lady Spencer. “I really believe—so does the Duke, that any check would be productive of madness or death.” Harriet did not hide her disappointment to Leveson Gower: “My poor Caroline’s fate is probably deciding for ever,” she wrote. Relations had cooled between Harriet and Lady Melbourne and she doubted whether William would be able to control Caroline.
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