John’s mother, Georgina, subsequently married the Second Earl Cowper. She did not feel the necessity to bring up her son from her first marriage in a strict or disciplined way, and it would be fair to deduce that his later profligacy stemmed — at least in part — from the lack of parental control during his formative years. A tale from the boy’s childhood illustrates how he became used to getting his own way — and how cavalierly he treated his money.
Part of the inheritance from Sarah Marlborough had been the house where she herself had grown up, Holywell, on the outskirts of St Albans. It became a regular stopping-off point for the family on their travels between London and Althorp. As a boy, John Spencer used to visit an inn near by. One day, noting that the innkeeper was looking unhappy, the richest schoolboy in the kingdom asked him what was the matter, to which the reply was given that business was going badly, with creditors closing in. The subsequent conversation apparently went like this:
JOHN: That is pity; how much money will be required to reinstate you?
INNKEEPER: Oh! Your honour, a great sum: not less than a thousand pounds.
JOHN: And would that sum perfectly answer the purpose?
INNKEEPER: It would, Sir, and I could honestly repay any gentleman who would be generous enough to advance it.
On reaching London, John went to his guardian and asked for £1,000 to be immediately made over to him. The guardian was perplexed by the request: ‘A thousand pounds, Sir, it is a large sum; may I ask to what purpose it is to be applied?’ John’s reply was, ‘No purpose of extravagance, upon my honour; but I will not tell you to what use it is to be destined.’ Understandably, the guardian declined to advance the cash to his charge.
John then went to his mother, and consulted other senior relatives, complaining that it was effectively his money, and he should therefore be allowed to have it. A family meeting followed, and it was agreed that John should be given the money, with no questions asked as to its proposed purpose. John then took it to the innkeeper who, according to the tale, subsequently made a great success of his business.
John lived like a prince all his life, with a huge retinue of servants in his five main residences, and no concept at any stage that his wealth might be finite. All his tastes were expensive: he inherited the gambling addiction of his forefathers in full; he had also the family penchant for the very finest artistic acquisitions, regardless of cost; and he had an appetite for politics, without the personal attributes to forge a way forward for himself in that field — which left him funding ruinous election campaigns on the behalf of others.
The side of John Spencer’s character of which I was most aware when I was growing up was his romantic streak. From his late teens, he had been very much in love with Georgiana Poyntz, youngest daughter of the Right Honourable Stephen Poyntz, who had been governor to the Duke of Cumberland — who was later in charge of the English army when it destroyed Bonnie Prince Charlie’s Scots at Culloden — and of Anna Maria Mordaunt, a former maid of honour to Queen Caroline.
There was no question of marriage for the young couple until John had reached his twenty-first birthday. There were to be lavish entertainments at Althorp in December 1755 to mark this personal landmark, and John secretly decided to combine his birthday and his marriage celebrations.
Before setting off from London, John went to take his leave from Lord Granville, his grandfather, and told him in confidence that the next time they would meet, it would be with John as a married man. Lord Granville, angry that he was being presented with a fait accompli, said tersely, ‘I am very glad of it; I never interfere with what so nearly concerns anybody; one of the benefits of a great fortune is to be able to please oneself.’ The twenty-year-old John was expecting such prickliness, and refused to rise to the bait, replying, ‘So I always thought, my Lord, and I have done so. When I come back, I hope you will give me leave to bring Mrs Spencer to wait on your Lordship.’ Granville effected a bow, and said, ‘Most certainly, Sir.’ However, as John made to walk out of the room, Granville’s stiffness eased, and he called after him: ‘Johnny, goodbye, nobody wishes you happier than I do.’
The journey to Althorp was not uneventful. John’s carriage fell into a river, the horses and servants were only just saved, but the majority of the family’s finest clothes was soaked through, and the best silver had to be retrieved from the mud. It was also noted that John’s health was suffering from the excitement and the exertion of the trip, and members of the family began to question why the celebrations could not have been held at the Spencer home in Wimbledon, thus sparing everybody the inconvenience of a trek to Northamptonshire.
Meanwhile, on arriving at Althorp, Mrs Poyntz, Georgiana’s mother, set about establishing precisely how big the fortune was into which her beloved ‘Don’ — as she and her husband called their favourite child — was marrying. Triumphantly, on 15 December 1755, she relayed the following to Lady Sarah Cowper: ‘LC. [John’s mother, Lady Cowper] told me that Mr S. has two thousand pounds a year that is personal estate, and three hundred thousand pounds besides, which she says, and I daresay rightly, that his personal estate is greater than any man’s in England.’
Four days later, John beckoned Georgiana away from the party for his twenty-first birthday, and kissed his future mother-in-law’s hand, before saying: ‘Madam, I always resolved to marry my dear Miss P. the first moment it was in my power and I beg you will not let the ceremony be delayed one hour.’ The two of them then slipped upstairs into the Oak Bedroom with Georgiana, Lady Cowper, and other immediate members of the families, as well as John’s tutor, the Reverend Holloway. Mrs Poyntz continues the story, her report written immediately after its conclusion:
Holloway read so slow and prayed with such devotion that the ceremony lasted three quarters of an hour. Mr S. and Don behaved as well as possible with the greatest seriousness and spoke distinct though low. As soon as it was done he kissed her and they both knelt quite down to Lady Cowper and I, and almost to my Lord ... William [Georgiana’s brother] cried a little; we all cried a little; we all hugged and kissed and dispersed as soon as possible. They are all dancing. I must go down and see them.
Georgiana was now expected to dress and behave in a manner suited to her new wealth and status. Contemporary gossips noted approvingly the sumptuousness of her clothes. The first dress she was seen in in London was ‘white and silver, as fine as brocade and trimming could make it’. The second was blue and silver. After that, white, gold, with a colour design that cost £6 per yard. Then, a dress of plain pink-coloured satin.
And there were the jewels, inherited by her husband from Sarah Marlborough: the diamonds alone were worth £12,000; the earrings were ‘three drops all diamonds, not paltry scrolls of silver’; also a necklace, ‘most perfect brilliants, the middle stone worth £1,000, set at the edge with small brilliants ...’ Jealousy there most certainly was, but this was lessened by Georgiana’s obvious lack of interest in the material worth of all that now surrounded her. It was noted that even at this time, when she might be forgiven for being totally immersed in enjoying her husband’s wealth for her own ends, she was deeply affected by the pathetic pleas of a begging letter, ‘which brought tears into her eyes, and made her appear with much more lustre than the diamonds’. As one contemporary, Elizabeth Montagu, noted warmly: ‘I like Mrs Spencer, she is a natural good young woman, no airs, no affectations, but seemed to enjoy her good fortune by making others partakers, and happy with herself.’
Attention was soon centred on John and Georgiana’s fertility, since the dearth of Spencer males was a matter of concern to the wider family. Indeed, it became a topic that attracted attention throughout London society, as an entry in the betting book at White’s, a gentlemen’s club in St James’s, makes clear. Dated 20 January 1756, it reads: ‘Lord Middleton wagers Mr O’Brien Twenty Guineas that Lady Robt Manners has a child born alive before Mrs Spencer.’
In time there would be five children — one son and four daughters. Two of the girls died in infa
ncy; the surviving pair, Georgiana and Henrietta, known as Harriet, were destined to become two of the most celebrated figures in late eighteenth-century society. The son, though born prematurely, in 1758, was a celebrated addition to the family. Elizabeth Montagu reported on the boy, George John’s, arrival:
I went yesterday ‘pour égayer’ a little to see Mrs Spencer after her lying in, and there is nothing but joy and magnificence; the child is likely to live though it came, they reckon, six weeks before its time. Mrs Poinne showed me all the fineries; the papboat is pure gold ...
The health of the baby may have been sound, but that of his father was not. John Spencer’s continual physical frailty made him seek warmer climates, away from the English winter. He had completed the Grand Tour as a young man, and had acquired a taste for European travel. He was also an enthusiast of the fad, among the European aristocracy, of spending time in health spas on the Continent. The winter after his marriage he went with his wife, her sister and two brothers, her mother, a chaplain, a cousin, and Major Barton — who had been John’s governor — to Spa itself. The Spencers took with them such a retinue of servants that they needed two boats across the Channel: one for the family party and one for their attendants. They bought so many objects on their travels — John’s mother-in-law buying fourteen gowns for herself and her daughters in Antwerp alone — that they chartered a third boat on their return to bring their purchases home.
The Spencer-Poyntz party was embarrassingly loud in its behaviour, according to other English travellers. Georgiana’s mother was regarded as responsible for the boisterous mood of the party, and her lack of grace was put down to excitement at the fabulous wealth her daughter now possessed, and a belief that, having been a figure at court herself, she was somehow superior to the people she met on her travels. In particular it was noted that she would have very little to do with the English people she met abroad, claiming they were either Jacobites, or in political opposition to the court. However, she did not reserve such negative sentiment exclusively for her compatriots. She made no secret that she had only contempt for the French and Flemish, as well.
A later expedition to Spa resulted in uncalled for excitement. In September 1779, the Spencers and their daughter Georgiana were returning to England from Ostend after a recuperative visit to the Continent when their two packet boats were chased by French cutters, crewed by privateers. Fortunately John Spencer had arranged an escort for his party — a sloop called The Fly, captained by Captain Garner. The sloop had only fourteen guns, but it fought for two hours with the French, losing several of its crew in the fight while inflicting casualties on the two French ships. Eventually the privateers withdrew. At this juncture, John Spencer appeared from the hold of his boat, and was taken over to The Fly, where he thanked Garner, while adding that there had really been no need to fight, as he would have gladly paid whatever ransom the Frenchmen demanded! There is no record of how the captain responded to this statement, although no doubt he was grateful for the silver pieces his wealthy passenger gave him as a token of thanks for the safe delivery of his party.
Forbidden by the terms of his inheritance from actively serving the Crown — something that his ancestral traditions would otherwise have marked him out for — and weighed down with wealth, John needed to find appropriate ways of spending his money and his energies, while enhancing his status.
A priority was to secure a hereditary title, suitable to his financial and social standing. In 1760, the King let it be known that he was considering raising his 24-year-old millionaire subject to the peerage. This encouraged John to write on the subject to his cousin, Thomas Pelham, First Duke of Newcastle, with what appear now highly presumptuous recommendations as to how he would like to be styled, should the promotion proceed. ‘As I am now the representative of the Sunderland family,’ he wrote on 27 November 1760, ‘and as my particular circumstances are such (from the Duchess of Marlborough’s will) that I cannot receive any favour from the King except a title, I should hope that if his Majesty thinks me worthy of a peerage, he will not confer upon me a less dignity than that of a viscount, and it is for that honour I must beg your Grace to lay me at his Majesty’s feet. I am very cautious of not desiring to assume any of the titles, which have been in the Sunderland family — some of which are now vested in the Duke of Marlborough, but confine myself to the title of Althorp which has never been made use of ...’
Newcastle obliged his cousin, and John became Viscount Althorp in 1761. Further elevation followed, four years later. Lady Cowper was able to write to her confidante, Miss Lewes: ‘My son is to be Earl Spencer, offered in the most gracious manner by his Majesty, unasked, which greatly enhances the value of the dignity.’
Of equal importance to the issue of social status was the question of a suitable London residence. By the mid eighteenth century, the Spencer family’s annual tour of their various properties was beginning to fit a pattern, whereby they would be based in London from Easter till September, except when the heat and squalor of life in the city made a retreat to the house at Wimbledon desirable. Then there would be a trip to the Continent — Montpellier and Nice were both popular with the family — followed by autumn trips based around country sports — foxhunting from the lodge in Pytchley, near Althorp, or shooting on the Norfolk part of the estate, in North Creake — before spending the bulk of the period from November to March back at Althorp.
In London itself, Sarah Marlborough had left John and his father a house in Grosvenor Street, which was all she had to offer at the time, since Charles Marlborough had first claim to the grander family residences in the capital. John decided that the best option was to build something entirely new, both as a fitting reflection of his own importance and also as a love token for his wife. Out of these aims was born Spencer House.
The design for Spencer House was the work of an amateur, Colonel — afterwards Sir — George Gray, a friend of John’s from his dining club, the Society of Dilettantes. Traditionally, and incorrectly, much of the credit for the beauty of this private palace has gone to John Vardy, who, in fact, merely executed and superintended Gray’s designs. He incorporated the fashionable Greek styles of architecture, with statues in front, at the apex and at the base of the pediment. All things classical were enjoying huge popularity among the social elite at this stage — a taste that had been fostered by the recent rediscovery of the petrified remains of the city of Pompeii.
James ‘Athenian’ Stuart was chosen to decorate the interior of the first floor, including the most decorative and memorable room in the whole house: the ornate Painted Room. The Library was also important, given John’s keenness to build on the collection of books he had inherited. He had recently acquired 5,000 volumes from the late headmaster of Eton College, William George. As a result, the Spencer House Library was given the generous proportions, for a town house, of thirty feet in length and twenty-five feet in width, with a polished white marble chimney-piece. The drawing room, at twenty-four feet by twenty-one feet, was smaller, but no less impressive: the ceiling and ornaments were of white, gold and green, the chimney-piece bordered by Sienna marble. Then there was the saloon, forty-five feet by thirty feet, with its coved ceiling, adorned with compartments of mosaic, ‘green, white, gold, interspersed with gilt medallions’.
The basic structure of the house cost 50,000 guineas, the contents many times that sum. In Georgiana’s own handwriting, there is a record of the pictures which hung in her Spencer House dressing room. Among the twenty-four Old Masters she enjoyed in this most private of rooms were a landscape by Poussin over the chimney-piece, and great works by Titian, Leonardo da Vinci, Rubens and Guercino. The more public rooms were similarly bedecked with masterpieces from the finest painters in Europe.
In the Great Room, the theme of love that John wanted to celebrate in the creation of Spencer House was most graphically depicted through the designs of the pair of long mirrors, which can be seen today upstairs in Althorp’s own Great Room. Either side of the
tops of the mirrors, John had a chariot carved, each driven by Cupid. On one side of each mirror, Cupid is in full flow, the chariot charging ahead, pulled by a galloping griffin, the mythical animal the Spencers had incorporated into their coat of arms. On the other side, the chariot is stationary, the griffin equally immobile, the Cupid hunched with sadness. The message was clear to eighteenth-century onlookers, well versed as they were in classical tradition and clever symbolism: when Spencer’s love life was buoyant, then all was well with the world, and he could push forward with confidence and happiness; but if there was a problem in this sphere of his life, he was reduced to impotent slackness, dead in his tracks for as long as the unhappy state persisted.
These were two items among many that John Spencer bought for his London home, regardless of cost. In a letter to Sir Horace Mann, dated 9 February 1758, Horace Walpole wrote disapprovingly of this trend for ridiculous prices being achieved in the art world because of aristocratic spendthrifts like John:
But our glaring extravagance is the constant high price given for pictures: the other day at Mr Furnese’s Selection a very small Gaspar sold for 76 guineas; and a Carlo Marratti, which I am persuaded is a Giuseppe Chiari, Lord Egremont bought at the rate of 260 pounds. Mr Spencer gave no less than £2,200 for the Andrea Sacchi and the Guido from the same collection. The latter is of very dubious originality.
Even when Spencer House was completed, a decade after its inception, the trawling for great works of art to adorn its interiors continued. The Spencers employed Gavin Hamilton to hunt out suitable treasures in Italy. His brief was not solely connected with quality, though. John and Georgiana were once advised that one of the rooms required a pair of paintings that needed to be seven feet three inches by five feet six inches, in order to match the proportions of the other works of art there. It was because of this design requirement that the two great Guercinos — of King David, and of the Samian Sybil — came into the possession of my family. They now hang in the Marlborough Room at Althorp, and it is hard to believe that such exquisite paintings were bought primarily to fill a pair of walls in Spencer House.
The Spencer Family Page 13