The Mistresses of Cliveden: Three Centuries of Scandal, Power and Intrigue in an English Stately Home

by Natalie Livingstone

  Victoria was not in the least amused by these antics. ‘The folly about Garibaldi continues, & my good Dss of Sutherland & her daughters are behaving in a most foolish & undignified manner,’ she wrote disapprovingly in her journal, adding in another entry that ‘the people in England have gone really quite mad’ about Garibaldi. The Reading firm Huntley and Palmer had even named a biscuit after him. Though she conceded that the general was ‘Honest, disinterested & brave’, he was in her final analysis ‘a revolutionist leader!’, a status which, she believed, could not be excused.15

  With an optimism typical of her late politics, Harriet put the queen’s dislike of Garibaldi down to misinformation. Instead of being concerned by the damage that her own Garibaldi-mania could cause to her friendship with Victoria, she was worried that the queen did not share her infatuation. In early June, she wrote to Gladstone with dismay about Victoria’s attitude. ‘I am distressed at hearing from Argyll that the Queen has the falsest ideas on the subject of Garibaldi,’ she complained. It upset Harriet that Victoria thought the general was ‘a man who shot deserters with his own hands’, a ‘poison’ she thought had been spread by Victoria’s uncle Leopold II as ‘a way of accounting for the extraordinary love [Garibaldi] inspires’.16 She even visited the queen with the purpose of changing her mind. On Sunday 10 July, the queen recorded a ‘long visit from the good Dss of Sutherland who got quite excited & over-enthusiastic in speaking of Garibaldi, & of his divine Compassion, his head being so like Our Saviours… I am so sorry for her having such exalté & to me foolish views about him’.17 Victoria later acknowledged that she found Garibaldi’s visit ‘humiliating’, and it is testament to the depth and sincerity of her feelings for Harriet that the episode did not drive a permanent wedge between the friends.18

  Perhaps Victoria, who was after all 13 years her friend’s junior, put Harriet’s behaviour in part down to the eccentricity of old age. Throughout the 1860s, Harriet’s health had been going into steady decline. In July 1863, she had succumbed to a severe bout of flu, which never completely cleared up. From that point on, she was often wracked with ‘intense pain’ and weakness, which rendered her bedridden for weeks at a time. Harriet’s physicians recommended opium, a frequently prescribed remedy in the period, to dull her body aches. In the 19th century, doctors thought of opium as one of the most effective medications. There were numerous opium-based preparations stocked by chemists’ shops–pills, lozenges, opium powder, vinegar of opium, wine of opium, and the famous tincture of opium (essentially opium dissolved in alcohol) known as laudanum. There were even special opium-based preparations for children, including Godfrey’s Cordial and Dalby’s Carminative.19 The drug enjoyed a startling popularity, achieving something of a cult ‘cure-all’ status. Gladstone was famous for taking laudanum in a cup of coffee to steady his nerves before his speeches in the Commons.20 Her increasing dependence on the drug became a source of great frustration to the fiercely independent Harriet. ‘I am distressed at not finding myself able to leave off opium which is a sort of slavery,’ she wrote to Catherine Gladstone.21

  At the start of December 1864, Lord Carlisle, Harriet’s brother, died after a long illness. Harriet, now intensely aware of her own mortality, described his demise to Gladstone: ‘It has been in many ways a sudden death with prolonged existence,’ she wrote. ‘We can now say that we could not wish for life with such conditions of existence – I had not known that such could be.’22 It was a poignant moment for Harriet, who had lost not only a brother but also an ally in her political and philanthropic causes. Like his sister, Carlisle had been committed supporter of abolition. ‘He, at least, was never scared by the possible greatness of America, when purged of her great crime,’ Harriet’s son Ronald wrote of his uncle. ‘He, at least, was incapable of swerving from that hostility to African slavery which he had professed from his youth up.’23

  At the end of July, accompanied by Ronald, Harriet travelled to Vichy in France to take the waters. They stayed in an elegantly appointed, spacious chalet on the banks of the river, spending their days walking in Vichy’s ‘pretty park’ beneath the chestnut trees. However, the trip was cut short when Harriet’s maid, Mrs Penson, who had served her for over 40 years, was taken ill and died shortly after. ‘We have lost the truest, kindest, and best of friends, good and faithful Penson,’ Harriet sadly announced to her family. She returned to England and buried her loyal friend and servant near Trentham.24

  Throughout all of this, Harriet’s own health continued to blight her daily life. ‘I cannot get rid of pain, of exhaustion, of a constant anxiety,’ she lamented to Gladstone.25 Only in the grounds of Cliveden was she momentarily able to forget her woes. ‘Life is still accompanied with pain & weakness,’ she philosophised, ‘but when it is life in the Country in a place one loves – after worse pain & at home one must not complain & I do not.’26

  Chapter 13

  THE PUSHING STICK

  IN MAY 1866, Windsor was bustling with ‘the noise and turmoil of Ascot’ and Victoria needed a ‘change of air’.1 In the two years since the Garibaldi episode, relations between Harriet and Victoria had thawed sufficiently for the queen to ask Harriet a favour. Accompanied by an entourage of 90, including four of her nine children, two governesses, eight policemen, two doctors and five footmen, the queen made the short journey to Cliveden. She would stay there for ten days from 26 May. ‘Her Majesty will occupy the central portion of the mansion, the drawing room, library, dining-room, and boudoir, which are on a level with the south terrace,’ reported the Western Daily Press. ‘The east and west wings will be placed at the disposal of the Royal Household and domestics.’2 Victoria spent her time at Cliveden enjoying long walks by the Thames and sitting on the terrace, reading or sketching. She breakfasted at half past nine in the morning, had lunch at two o’clock, enjoyed tea in the garden beneath the trees at five and dinner at eight. Victoria slept in Harriet’s bedroom, keeping a photograph of Albert at the head of her bed. It was a perfect respite. On her departure, the queen wrote that ‘we passed a nice peaceful time’.3

  While Victoria reposed at Cliveden, Harriet remained in London solicitously following the progress of the reform bill. In April 1866, Gladstone, as Leader of the House, had introduced a new bill to the Commons on behalf of the Liberal Party. It was a cautious piece of legislation, which would have enfranchised a proportion of working-class men (those who earned an income of more than 26 shillings a week), eliminated most of the remaining very small boroughs, and increased the number of country and large borough seats. When it came to the vote, however, the bill was defeated by a coalition of Tories, led by Benjamin Disraeli, and reactionary ‘Addullamites’, who did not identify with the new Liberal Party to which many of their old colleagues had defected. The Liberal government crumbled.

  On 26 June 1866, a new minority Tory administration, with Lord Derby as Prime Minister and Victoria’s favourite, Disraeli, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, was formed. Derby could not ignore the popular protests sweeping the country, and was forced to introduce a reform bill of his own. The Liberal Party was still divided over the question of franchise reform and the Derby/Disraeli Bill was partly intended to split the party and undermine Gladstone’s leadership. In this it nearly succeeded, for Gladstone failed to carry significant amendments against the bill and as a result once again considered resignation. Thankfully, he kept his position: the new franchise brought about by the 1867 Representation of the People Act, or the Second Reform Act, would play a large part in his future electoral success, and he went on to become prime minister four times, finally resigning in 1894 at the age of 84.

  Harriet’s health had gone into further decline and, confined to her bed, she relied on members of her family for updates on the latest debates in the Commons. ‘Between 4 & 5 a heavy step made gentle came into my room, & told me of the little member & the finest speech Stafford thought you had ever made,’ she wrote to Gladstone, ‘how much these words fill my heart, & I found there was a very unco
nscious tear when he left me which I did not feel weak tho others followed.’4 As a young woman, Harriet had been present during the passage of the First Reform Act, yet had lacked the confidence and interest to act as an advocate for the bill. Now, in her sixties, she was desperate to play a part, but was thwarted by her frail body. ‘How I would like to be a clever clerk and work,’ she wrote wistfully, ‘and to listen to every word you say.’5 But in the final decade of her life, Harriet was forced finally to acknowledge the limitations imposed on her by her gender as well as by her failing health.

  Nevertheless, Harriet was far from isolated and retained her love of good company. From August to the end of November 1867, she received a small selection of guests at Cliveden, including the queen. ‘Drove off directly after luncheon with Lenchen [Victoria’s former governess] to Cliveden, where I had the pleasure of seeing my dear friend the Dss of Sutherland,’ Victoria recorded in her journal. ‘Found her really wonderfully well, though she has again been very suffering. She was so kind & affectionate & was in very good spirits.’6 The queen visited Harriet on two further occasions that year. Though frustrated by her ailing body, Harriet was determined to continue the tradition of walking the grounds at Cliveden with Victoria. A device known as ‘the pushing stick’ was therefore designed to help the duchess climb uphill from the river. The wooden stick, which is on display in the west wing of the house today, had a curved section at one end for support: it was held by a servant who walked behind Harriet as she painstakingly put one foot in front of the other. Once the two women had arrived on the banks of the Thames, they would often spend the rest of the afternoon bathing at Devey’s Spring Cottage. As sun set, they would make their way back, the house appearing in Harriet’s fading vision as a glorious blur of colours.

  When Harriet became too weak to walk, she was pushed around the gardens in a chair. In her fragile condition, horticulture had become increasingly soothing for her. ‘I cannot say what the flowers & the verdure are to me,’ she wrote to Gladstone.7 The recent work of Harriet’s gardener John Fleming had become famous, and the Cliveden gardens were much admired and copied throughout the country. Fleming had described his planting schemes in the Journal of Horticulture, and they were published in book form in 1864 as Spring and Winter Flower Gardening Containing the System of Floral Decoration as Practised at Cliveden. He dedicated it to Harriet, describing her as a ‘great patron’ and ‘noble employer’.

  In 1868, Fleming designed a bed of brightly coloured plants laid out in the shape of Harriet’s initials, ‘HS’. Each bed measured over 240 feet in length and was filled with more than 2,000 plants, including between 600 and 800 tulips. At the centre of each bed was a vibrant explosion of rhododendrons and azaleas. Connecting the two enormous beds was ‘an immense circle with a grassy centre’ encompassed with yet more flowers in blue, red, white and yellow hues. Fleming also set to work planting spring flowers in the surrounding woods of Cliveden and bluebells on the banks of the river. Maintenance of the 250 acres required a workforce of 21 men, whose responsibilities included mowing 16 acres of grass.8 Fleming’s ambitious, geometric scheme not only sparked an international gardening trend in the 1890s, but also stood the test of time: the parterre design he laid out for Harriet was preserved by the Astor family and remains intact today. Ronald Gower recalled his ‘childish grief at the ‘great waste of lawn’ being changed ‘from a huge field of grass and wild flowers’ into its current state.9

  By October 1868, Harriet’s health had reached crisis point. She was transported in an ‘invalid chair’ to Stafford House in London for urgent medical attention and her family was summoned to her bedside. Every day she lost more strength and suffered increasing pain, inching closer and closer to death. On 27 October, the Morning Post reported that ‘the Duchess Dowager of Sutherland is so seriously ill that no hopes are entertained of her recovery’. Her son Ronald stayed by her side, cradling his mother’s head in his hands. In their last conversation, Harriet asked for her ‘maids and nurses to be remembered’. Her final words to her family show that she was resigned to death: ‘I think I shall sleep now; I am so tired.’10 Just after one o’clock that day, Harriet’s pain was, at last, over. She was 62.

  ‘The loss is that of a very kind, devoted friend, whom I loved dearly, as she did me,’ Victoria recorded in her journal. Showing emotion previously reserved for her beloved Prince Albert, she described Harriet as ‘such a true friend’, a woman ‘adored by her whole family & a large circle of friends’. She was, the queen wrote, ‘so loveable, so noble, in body & mind, so handsome & so full of zest in everything in life’. Victoria also recorded her personal debt to the duchess: ‘for 31 years she had been my friend… She was with me from my accession in all the eventful moments of my life!’11

  Gladstone opened the ‘black bordered letter’ that announced Harriet’s death with equal heartache. ‘I have lost in her from view the warmest and dearest friend, surely, that ever man had,’ he lamented. ‘Why this noble and tender spirit should have had such bounty for me, and should have so freshened my advancing years, my absorbed and clouded mind, I cannot tell.’ His grief, he wrote, had reduced him to a childlike state: ‘I feel, strange as it might sound, ten years old for her death.’ He concluded that ‘none will fill her place for me’.12

  Harriet was buried on Tuesday 3 November 1868 in the family vault at Trentham, in Staffordshire. Her coffin was covered by a rich black velvet pall edged with white satin. As it was lowered into the ground, Victoria’s eldest son, Bertie, the Prince of Wales and future King Edward VII, placed a wreath of camellias and lilies upon it. Gladstone was one of six pallbearers. ‘Peace and light be hers ever more and more,’ he wrote in his journal, ‘until the end cometh, and God is all in all.’13

  Shortly after Harriet’s death, her sons sold Cliveden to Hugh Lupus Grosvenor, Earl Grosvenor, later Duke of Westminster. With the sale, the house did not entirely lose its connection to Harriet: Grosvenor had married the Sutherlands’ fifth daughter Constance in 1852, and the couple had spent their honeymoon at the estate. Queen Victoria was pleased that ‘dear Constance’ had succeeded her mother as the new chatelaine of Cliveden, and she continued to visit the house, even taking her customary strolls around the grounds, although these must have been lonely occasions without the company of her beloved friend.

  Grosvenor was a philanthropist and a keen horseman. In the course of his charitable work he chaired a July 1894 meeting at which a draft constitution for the ‘National Trust for places of historic interest and natural beauty’ was approved. In 1942 Cliveden would be donated to the National Trust, as the organisation became known. The earl was also a political ally of Gladstone, sitting as a Liberal in the House of Commons and later in the House of Lords. On 17 February 1874, at the end of his first term as prime minister, Gladstone wrote to Grosvenor informing his friend that he had ‘received authority from the Queen to place a Dukedom at your disposal’.14 Cliveden once again became home to a duke and duchess. Like her mother, Constance was a skilled hostess. Invitations to her annual parties for Royal Ascot each June were highly sought after among the social elite. Constance was also a doting mother, who gave birth to eleven children, eight of whom survived infancy. During her time at Cliveden, the house remained a family home as much as a social and political hub. Constance was also keen to preserve the essence of Harriet’s house and made very few changes to its structure and interiors. Her only major addition was the construction of a stable block to accommodate the duke’s many racehorses. For this, she turned, as her mother had done, to the architect Henry Clutton.

  However, at the end of 1879 domestic harmony was shattered when Constance was diagnosed with Bright’s disease, a fatal condition. Just nine months later she died from kidney failure, aged only 45. Two years after her death, the duke married his second wife, Katherine Cavendish. Thirty-two years his junior, Katherine was younger than some of the duke’s children with Constance, but somehow she won over the entire family. The duke and his ch
ildren enjoyed playing games in the woods and riding ponies on the estate. Among the guests who spent a summer at Cliveden were the teenage Winston Churchill and his brother Jack, who went rowing on the Thames; in the evening the precocious brothers took the Cliveden boatman to Maidenhead and bought him dinner and a cigar. By 1893, the burden of supporting 15 children, in addition to honouring a vast array of charitable commitments, was putting increasing strain on the duke’s finances. Consequently, he made the difficult decision to sell Cliveden.

  On 15 August 1893, the house passed, for the first time in its 300-year history, not only from British to American hands, but also from aristocratic to plutocratic ownership. The buyer, William Waldorf Astor, was the great-grandson of John Jacob Astor I, an illiterate German immigrant who had made his fortune in the New York fur trade and had gone on to become America’s first millionaire. ‘It is grievous to think of it falling into these hands!’ Queen Victoria thundered. But she was out of touch with the new contours of wealth and influence that had emerged by the end of the 19th century: in the following decades many further aristocratic residences would ‘fall’ into wealthy American hands.