Cavendish was one of the richest men of his day, but could not be bothered to do anything about it. He behaved as if he were a pauper, not through meanness, but indifference to the subject. The income was allowed to accumulate without attention. The bankers, discovering one day that they held £80,000 of his money, sent a messenger to apprise him of the fact. "What do you come here for? What do you want with me?" squeaked the nervous philosopher to a probably terrified bank clerk.
"Sir, I thought it proper to wait upon you," he said, "as we have a very large balance in hand of yours, and we wish your orders respecting it."
"If it is any trouble to you, I will take it out of your hands. Don't come here to plague me."
"Not the least trouble to us, sir, not the least. But we thought you might like some of it to be invested."
'Do so, do so, and don't come here to trouble me, or I'll remove it." And he showed the poor man the door.
The result of this academic indifference to money was that when he died Cavendish was the largest holder of bank-stock in England, with a fortune amounting to £1,175,000. His heir was his cousin, Lord George Cavendish, who had been allowed to visit the old man for half an hour each year, and who was grandfather of the 7th Duke of Devonshire. So the mad scientist's wealth found its way eventually back into the Devonshire pocket.
Dr George Wilson remembers Cavendish as "an intellectual head, thinking; a pair of wonderful acute eyes, observing; a pair of very skilful hands, experimenting or recording".7
The day he died, he ordered his servants not to come near him, and sat alone all day, sinking into death. The doctor found him too late, and Cavendish permitted himself an uncharacteristic but revealing comment with his last breath. "Any prolongation of life would only prolong its miseries," he said.
Meanwhile, his cousin, the 5th Duke of Devonshire (1748-1811), was leading a life devoted to prove the opposite, that pleasure was the principle which made the world go round. He had succeeded to the title at the age of sixteen and had early tasted the agreeable fruits of an inactive life. He need not have been so lethargic, being endowed with the Cavendish intelligence, and a sound judgement, but he saw no reason to exert himself, and so he didn't. He chatted pleasantly to friends, gambled constantly, and married two of the most engaging women of the day. In his time Devonshire House became the most famous house in London, and his domestic life the most talked about. For within those walls there occurred an amazing triangular relationship. The Duke, his duchess, and his mistress all living together, in defiance of public gossip, the offspring from both women sharing the nursery, and both women protesting the most undying affection for each other, a bond as strong between them as between each of them and the man they both loved.
Devonshire House entered the period of its greatest splendour in ,1774, when the Duke married Georgiana Spencer, one of the two fascinating daughters of Lady Spencer. For the last quarter of the eighteenth century this house occupying the entire block between Berkeley Street and Stratton Street, with imposing forecourt and wrought-iron gates, "those gates that seemed to open but for kindness or to gaiety",8 was the pivot of London society, the best known house in town. Through those gates passed the most famous men and women of the day - the Prince Regent, Sheridan, Fox, Lady Bessborough (Harriet, Georgiana's sister). Lady Caroline Lamb was growing up in the nursery, with a clutch of the Duke's legitimate and illegitimate children, and no doubt learning lessons in quiet observation which were to form her headstrong character. The lights were on all night, as Devonshire House parties would continue until dawn, gambling, dancing, gossiping, intriguing.
In the centre of this "vertiginous glitter"9 sat the amiable Duke, holding court, scarcely bothering to move, a man able to make indolence appear attractive and inevitable. People eddied around him, eager to hear his opinion or ask his advice, which was always sound, but his qualities were known only to his friends. Not tempted to seek public office, he remained to the rest of the world an idle, nebulous character, overshadowed by his wife and his mistress.
A contemporary describes him as "a nobleman whose constitutional apathy formed his distinguishing characteristic. His figure was tall and manly, though not animated or graceful; his manners always calm and unruffled. He seemed to be incapable of any strong emotion, and destitute of all energy or activity of mind. As play became indispensable in order to rouse him from his lethargic habit, and to awaken his torpid faculties, he passed his evenings usually at Brook's engaged at whist or faro. Yet, beneath so quiet an exterior, he possessed a highly improved understanding; and on all disputes that occasionally arose among the members of the club, relative to passages of the Roman poets or historians, I know that appeal was commonly made to the duke, and his decision or opinion was regarded as final."10 Someone else commented, "All his ideas arose in his mind with very gradual progress."
If the public knew little about the Duke, they knew everything about Duchess Georgiana. With impulsive joyful abandon, she exposed every facet of her character to public scrutiny, and seemed not to care what anyone thought.
Georgiana Spencer was descended from the ubiquitous Villiers family (see Chapter 2), which had included Charles II's mistress Barbara Villiers, through one of the Duke of Marlborough's daughters; she descended also, in another line, from Lettice Knollys, wife of Queen Elizabeth's Leicester, and mother of the same Queen's Essex. There was in her blood more than one gene of feminine fascination, and they all fused in her to create a creature who was undeniably the most irresistible woman of her age.
She was not particularly beautiful, but her personality was seductive to a degree. Everyone fell in love with her, everyone wanted to know her, everyone felt better for having met her. Walpole says, "The Duchess of Devonshire effaces all without being a beauty; but her youth, figure, flowing good nature, sense, and lively modesty, and modest familiarity make her a phenomenon."11 Wraxall, another contemporary witness, agrees: "... the Duchess of Devonshire, one of the most distinguished females of high rank whom the last century produced. Her personal charms constituted her smallest pretension to universal admiration; nor did her beauty consist, like that of the Gunnings, in regularity of features and faultless formation of limbs and shape; it lay in the amenity and graces of her deportment, in her irresistible manners, and the seduction of her society."12
The charm of Georgiana's company lay in her impish spontaneity, and the genuine kindness of her heart. She was wild, loving, reckless, intoxicating. She jostled, bustled, winked her way through life, her days packed with feverish activity about nothing in particular, leaving a trail of men prostrate with admiration. She had above all the gift of enthusiasm, which she imparted to all who came her way.
Typical of her was the way in which she attacked the problem of canvassing for Fox in 1784. The Devonshires were a famous Whig family, Fox was a Whig candidate. It was essential that enough votes be cast to elect him. If the votes had to come from the working-class slums of London, then Georgiana and her sister Harriet, the Duchess and the Countess, would do their canvassing in those slums. They took the matter very seriously, a list of names and addresses in their hands. The story is justly famous, for the picture of incongruity it suggests is irresistible, and the portrait of Georgiana's unconventional character is vivid. The two ladies, from the pinnacle of London society, immaculately, expensively and exquisitely dressed, bubbling over with good nature and sparkle, walked into the pubs and shops of the East End and persuaded the locals to give their votes to Fox. Such ladies had never been seen in those parts. Georgiana and Harriet were triumphant; they caused a sensation. Georgiana gave a butcher a kiss (the most celebrated kiss in parliamentary history) for the promise of his vote, and an Irish sweep said that if he were God he would make her Queen of Heaven.13 Georgiana now had half working-class London in her pocket, as well as the Prince of Wales and the whole of the smart set. Fox was elected.
The extravagance of this behaviour, while it might win admirers of her elan, did not win friends. Tongue
s began to wag, the newspapers to make unpleasant inferences. Malicious gossip, to which Georgiana was serenely indifferent, followed her everywhere, and caused her mother much anguish. Year after year Lady Spencer wrote letters of gentle remonstrance to her wild daughter, begging her to have a care of her reputation. "You must learn, my dearest Georgiana," she wrote in 1775 (nine years before the votes-for-kisses incident had marked her for posterity), "to respect yourself, and the world will soon follow your example, but while you herd only with the vicious and the profligate you will be like them, pert, familiar, noisy, and indelicate, not to say indecent in your language and behaviour, and if you once copy them in their contempt for the censures of the grave, and their total disregard for the opinion of the world in general, you will be lost indeed past recovery."14 This was when Georgiana had been Duchess of Devonshire for only a year. Ten years later, the mother is worried about the killing pace of her daughter's life, and the injury to her health which must result. It is clear from this letter, one among many, that the Duchess was taking tranquillisers to calm her down, and laudanum (i.e. opium, a common enough remedy at the time) to keep her going. "For God's sake try to compose yourself. I am terrified lest the perpetual hurry of your spirits, and the medicine you take, to obtain a false tranquillity, should injure you . . . Nothing is so bad for you as continual fretting. 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 . . The Duchess did not, of course, heed her mother's advice; she never heeded a moment's advice in her life. It was not that she was too stupid to understand that everyone was right. She knew that her mode of life was harmful, spoke herself of her "giddyness", and begged her children not to follow her example. But she was a creature of impulse and joy, who could assent to the force of rational argument, and immediately act in total disregard of it. The power of pleasure was paramount in her, so strong that it carried its own conviction.
Georgiana's greatest single fault was gambling. She lived in a gambling age, when almost the whole of the nobility loved to play, but she was the worst kind of gambler, one who lost, and who didn't know when to stop. She borrowed money, and went on as before, with the result that she accumulated enormous debts. The Duke gambled too, so did Old Q (the Duke of Queensberry), and Charles Fox, who once lost £20,000 at play. Gibbon tells us that Fox once played for twenty-two hours without pause, losing £500 an hour. And we already know of the Duke of Bedford's disastrous losses. People laid bets on anything, and when not laying bets they were amusing themselves at some other game. Most of the games have now been forgotten, and only some street names remain (such as The Mall) to remind us of the elegant times when the Court played at Mall. In old prints of St James's Park you can see the marks on the wall to note the balls. Thackeray says, "I have calculated the manner in which statesmen and persons of condition passed their time - and what with drinking, and dining, and supping, and cards, wonder how they got through their business at all."16
To such temptations, Georgiana was an easy prey. She threw herself into the dissipation of play with sublime disregard for the consequences, and without so much as a word to her husband (who does not seem to have cared what she did when she was not with him). In 1797 her sister Lady Bessborough was arrested and fined for gaming at the house of Lady Buckingham. Though Georgiana was never arrested, her addiction would have ruined her were it not for the help, understanding, and patience of her mother, her husband, and friends who willingly advanced her money. She was in debt all her life. She lied about the amounts she owed, and lied to herself about their importance. If she admitted to owing £6000, it was likely the true total of her debt was £26,000. She would borrow another few thousand, and then banish the matter from her mind.
By the end, she owed well over £120,000 to a variety of creditors, including the Duke of Bedford, and Coutts the banker. She kept the revelation of her sins from the Duke until the last possible moment. He appeared not to know what the rest of London knew, that his wife was a compulsive loser, and remained in ignorance of the truth for years. It is quite clear from her letters that she was terrified of telling him, and equally clear that he reacted like an angel, albeit a lethargic angel.
The dismal story of self-deceit is told in letters from poor Thomas Coutts (who later married Harriot Mellon, the actress who became Duchess of St Albans; see Chapter 2). Flattered that the most famous lady of London should come to him for help, the banker offered avuncular advice with one hand, and money with the other. The Duchess listened to the first in order to get hold of the second. In 1787 he wrote: ". . . how much it shocks me to think what your Grace puts into hazard by indulging a passion for play ... I should be happy beyond expression if I could think I had even the smallest share in saving your Grace from the dreadful consequences I foresee. It is presumptuous, I confess, to suppose I can have any such power, and impertinent perhaps to obtrude my opinion, or to suppose any such advices at all requisite. From all this I can only take shelter in the purity of my intentions, and your Grace's goodness to see them in the true light."17 Two years later, when the Duchess, far from repaying the debt, as she naively assumed it would somehow be repaid, had actually asked for more, Coutts is beginning to get anxious. "It is really romance what I have done with money already, and how to reconcile to any bounds of discretion (with my little means) to do more, I know not. Besides, tho' you say it will save you, how does it appear that the second £6000 will succeed (in this charming purpose) better than the first." After warning the Duchess again of the precipice on which she stands, of the danger to which she is exposed, the faithful Coutts promises to advance another £6000, at the same time suggesting that she ought perhaps to tell the Duke all. By 1792, five years after the first loan, and without any sign that a penny will be repaid, Coutts is disenchanted. "I have never yet refused a draft of yours," he says with conspicuous irritation, "perhaps it would have been quite as well for you, and much better for me, I had never paid one." And ten months later: "But in money matters ninety-nine favours granted are annihilated by the hundredth when refused."18 Well might he regard the fascinating Duchess as a kind of Circe.
Duchess Georgiana was fittingly a leader of fashion. The skirts worn at this time achieved an enormous circumference. Georgiana, in order to counterbalance this, took her powdered hair higher and higher above her head, until it could be piled up some two feet. Above this, she wore huge ostrich plumes, and the rest of fashionable London followed suit. So significant an innovation was it that even the Dictionary of National Biography mentions the Duchess's contribution to fashion.
Though not a learned woman, Georgiana was intelligent. She counted among her friends people like Johnson, who would never suffer a fool and was not a snob, and Sheridan. The stream of visitors to Devonshire House and Chatsworth included many men of culture as well as men of fashion or politics. She wrote a novel herself, published anonymously in 1779, called The Sylph. She never bothered to deny the attribution of authorship to her.
When Georgiana Spencer married in 1772 she captured the prize of the year in the Duke of Devonshire. Wealthy and undemanding, he was the perfect spouse. The marriage date had to be kept secret even from the bride, to avoid crowds and publicity which would have been inevitable had she blurted it out; she was told one morning after breakfast that she was to be married that day. Only the immediate family was present, including the Duke's sister, the Duchess of Portland. On that happy day in June she could not have known that she was to embark on a very strange alliance, involving three people instead of two. But had she known, she would not have been afraid.
Lady Elizabeth Foster first appeared on the scene in 1782 when the Devonshires had been married for eight years and were yet childless. Born in 1758, she was the daughter of the Earl of Bristol (the "Earl-Bishop") and had been married very unhappily to John Thomas Foster, m.p., in obedience to her parents. The marriage was a misery, Fost
er being a parsimonious tyrant. Two sons were born, but shortly afterwards Lady Elizabeth ceased to live with her husband. She was much admired by contemporaries, wooed by the Duke of Richmond and by Gibbon, amongst others, and was much more beautiful than Georgiana. To her friends she was known as "Bess". Gibbon writes of her, comparing her with the Duchess: "Bess is much nearer the level of a mortal, but a mortal for whom the wisest man, historic or medical, would throw away two or three worlds if he had them in possession." He also said that "if she chose to beckon the lord chancellor from his woolsack in full sight of the world, he could not resist obedience".19
In short, Lady Elizabeth was the second most fascinating woman of the day. It is curious that she and the Duchess should have been drawn to each other; one would have expected them, with more reason, to be rivals. The mysterious chemistry of friendship occurred at their first meeting, and they established a firm and ardent fellowship which lasted all their lives. Georgiana wanted so much for her husband the Duke to like her new friend. She could not have asked for better, as Lady Elizabeth became his mistress within a very short time, and all three lived more or less happily ever after. More or less, because although the three-sided affair did not threaten to overturn the love or friendship which each member felt for the other two, it did, perhaps naturally, cause some concern to other members of the family. Georgiana's mother, Lady Spencer, refused to meet Lady Elizabeth, so that the Duchess had tactfully to arrange her mother's visits to Chatsworth or Devonshire House while Lady Elizabeth was away. The imperturbable Duke did not waste energy in pondering the suitability or otherwise of the arrangement. He merely enjoyed it and went about his agreeable life as before. Nobody dared ask him about his domestic understandings, though everyone knew. Before long, he was fathering children by both ladies.
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