It had taken Hamilton’s agent over a year to find the Guercinos, Hamilton reporting the find to Georgiana, while decrying the endless small bribes he had had to pay in order to get to the position of being able to buy them from the Marchese Loccatelli for 1,000 crowns. ‘Your ladyship by experience will be satisfied that nothing can be done in this country without money,’ he reassured his client.
Reading the correspondence surrounding this purchase, it is clear that the actual transaction was a less complicated business than getting such large works of art back to their new owners in Britain. Hamilton explained the procedure he felt forced to adopt:
As the pictures are in perfect preservation I have ordered a large roller to be made with a case in which they will remain suspended, after they are well secured with wax-cloth, canvass, etc. I propose to send them to Pesaro upon a stracino made with a network of cords to prevent any damage by jolting; from Pesaro I shall see them set out in the same manner for Civita Vecchia by the Furlo, so that by avoiding Rome, we shall save time, trouble and expense.
Gavin Hamilton was part of a network of art experts established across Europe for the continued embellishment of the interior of Spencer House. Even on holidays, the obsession with finding precisely the right type of chattel for each room continued, as this letter to Sir William Hamilton, a British minister in Naples, written on Christmas Day 1765, demonstrates:
I have not lost the taste I acquired in Italy for Vertu. I have been bidding through the means of your namesake at Rome, for a very fine picture there, but in vain; he has, however, succeeded in purchasing for me, some little marbles that are very clever. I shall be very glad if you can get the Mercury’s head. My house in Town is at last near being finished, and I believe will be fit to open next spring. As I have an aversion to China and Japan [i.e., china and porcelain], I shall endeavour to furnish it as much as possible with this sort of thing.
Building, decorating and furnishing his London palace was a very effective way of making huge inroads into the Sarah Marlborough inheritance. John was similarly extravagant with the house at Wimbledon, which his grandmother had completely rebuilt earlier in the century, altering the formal avenues and terraces laid out for the duchess by Bridgeinan, with the help of ‘Capability’ Brown, and making a ‘great sheet of water’, known to all who have been to the lawn tennis championships.
Similarly expensive overhauls to the Park at Althorp were fortunately avoided when ‘Capability’ Brown was satisfied that he could not improve on the layout of the land. The mansion of Althorp itself was relatively neglected in the first twenty years of John’s tenure, showing the results of a lack of even the most basic care when the library ceiling caved in during the early 1770s. A major programme of restoration was implemented, in 1772, with the usual lack of attention to cost or value for money. To avoid the inconvenience, noise and dirt of the builders, the Spencers spent the winter of that year abroad, again haemorrhaging money wherever they went. However, at least there was something to show for such expense, both in terms of architecture and treasures.
This was not to be the case in the world of politics, where John lost huge sums of money, with only slight temporary advantages of an altogether less tangible nature. As his grandson, Jack, Third Earl Spencer, recorded, ‘He spent extravagantly large sums in contested elections, and endeavoured to obtain great parliamentary influence, without as far as I am aware, ever having been at all eager as a politician.’ He certainly showed no aptitude for public speaking. Lady Mary Coke remarked, after listening to him in the Lords: ‘As much as could be heard was very pretty, but he was extremely frightened and spoke very low.’
It seems that John’s involvement in elections was directly connected to his addiction to gambling. There was also the feeling that his gargantuan wealth should entitle him to a say in the running of the country, even though his grandmother’s will made a direct hand in such affairs impossible.
In the latter part of the eighteenth century only the propertied classes were entitled to a vote. Those voters not over-interested in politics were available for persuasion, be it through generous entertainment or outright bribery. Either course was expensive; but the Northampton election of 1768 was to prove to be downright ruinous.
It was a contest of three lords, as much as of their favoured candidates. They were Spencer, Northampton and Halifax, and each built up a strong band of supporters to assist in their electioneering. The upshot of this was a fierce fight in the streets of Northampton, which resulted in some serious injuries to the brawlers, while their three lordships looked on.
Back at Althorp, John was using his money to back up the muscle of his mob. A footman was posted either side of the front door of the house, holding small cakes and sandwiches on silver salvers. Rather than having a conventional filling, each piece of food contained two golden guineas, as an inducement to vote for the Spencer candidate. News of this spread very quickly round the neighbourhood, resulting in an unprecedented stream of visitors to the house, eager to partake of the First Earl’s ‘hospitality’.
The cost of the election was enormous. Lord Halifax was ruined, and had to sell all his possessions. Lord Northampton was forced to dispose of all his timber in Warwickshire and Northamptonshire, and to sell a large proportion of the contents of his two main country residences, Compton Wynyates and Castle Ashby. He then retired to Switzerland for the rest of his life.
As for John, his losses were estimated at £120,000. He was not affected as dramatically as his opponents, but this was a hugely expensive trial of strength, which demonstrated a fundamental lack of judgement and a regrettable inability to control himself — both traits of someone who, according to his grandson, ‘was a man of generous and amiable disposition, spoiled by having been placed, at too early a period of his life, in possession of what then appeared to him inexhaustible wealth; and irritable in his temper, partly from the pride which this circumstance had produced, and partly from almost continued bad health.’
The irresponsible erosion of the Spencer estate was overwhelmingly John’s fault. However, he also had to contend with the fact that, unbeknown to him, his chief ‘man of business’, Thomas Parker, stole extensively from his employer. This was not discovered until three years after John’s death, by his heir. Parker was brought to account on a couple of easily detectable matters, but there was doubtless much more that never came to light. The crook died in penury in February 1792. When Parker’s widow, Frances, died, in January 1804, many deeds and papers belonging to John were discovered, hidden among her possessions.
Extravagances and misappropriation of family funds aside, there were also the normal demands upon its money that any eighteenth-century aristocratic family would be expected to meet, one of which was that of acting charitably to the needy. John was known as a man of great generosity, a 1768 notice in Wimbledon’s local newspaper recording one of many acts that led to this reputation: ‘We hear that the Rt Hon The Earl Spencer has given Orders for 200 guineas to the poor of Wimbledon and Roehampton in Surrey.’
It was not only the underprivileged who hoped for a share of the Spencer wealth, there was also the unwritten obligation of entertaining fellow aristocrats and aspiring gentry, richly and originally. For this role, John and Georgiana Spencer were perfectly suited, luring people into the hedonistic world they enjoyed inhabiting, and making guests relax, particularly in the more homely setting of Althorp — Spencer House could only ever be grand — where their genuine affection for one another was most readily on show. Georgiana’s happiness in the country was so evident that the Earl of Bristol stated, ‘Nothing could tempt Lady Spencer to London but the restlessness of her poor husband and I heard her say before him she hated even the sight of Town.’ Georgiana herself referred to Althorp as ‘this place, which I always must love preferably to any other’.
Another nobleman, the Earl of March, a guest at Althorp in December 1767, wrote of the mansion:
I like everything here so much, that I have n
o inclination to leave the place. I wish you were here. It is just the house you would wish to be in. There is an excellent library; a good parson; the best English and French cookery you ever tasted; strong coffee, and half-crown whist. The more I see of the mistress of the House, the more I admire her, and our landlord improves very much upon acquaintance. They are really the happiest people I think I ever saw in the marriage system.
March continued, before signing off this correspondence, ‘We are now all going to the ice, which is quite like a fair. There is a tent, with strong beer, cold meat, etc.; where Lady Spencer and our other ladies go on airing.’
Georgiana’s life-enhancing qualities never deserted her. Even as an old woman, she was written about with genuine appreciation by Susan, Marchioness of Stafford, in a letter of November 1801 to her son, Lord Granville Leveson Gower:
I do not wonder at your liking Lady Spencer; all men formerly liked her, and she was most captivating and pleasing. But the beauty of it was that she managed them ALL without their knowing it. Even the late Lord Bath never sat after dinner or supper at Wimbledon; he was among the first at skittles, cards or whatever Lady Spencer liked to have done ... She, somehow or another, has the art of leading, drawing or seducing people into right ways.
Despite John’s health being a constant worry throughout the marriage, Georgiana kept up the role of the enthusiastic and imaginative hostess, beguiling her guests with her entertainments. In October 1766, she managed to persuade a Mr Wildman, of Plymouth, to come up to the villa at Wimbledon with his performing bees, to entertain the Spencers’ guests. A variety of performances began with Mr Wildman hanging a beehive from his hat, and an empty second hive from his hand, before transferring the bees from one to the other. He then demonstrated how he could take honey and wax from the first hive, without destroying the bees.
To the delight of the guests, Wildman proceeded to go inside the house, only to return with the bees draped around his chin and cheeks, like ‘a very venerable beard’. He gathered the excited onlookers around him, then made a full hive of bees swarm busily around them, without anybody being stung. For his fourth trick, he took handfuls of bees and hurled them up and down, ‘like so many peas’, again without being hurt in any way. When he had done this several times, he gave a command which sent the bees flying back into their hive.
Because the First Earl was ill in bed, Wildman gave him a private performance in the earl’s bedroom, in which the bee-keeper was covered by three swarms of bees — one on his breast, one on his head and one on his arm. This manoeuvre involved Wildman being blindfolded, riding backwards and forwards on one of the Spencers’ horses in front of the house, himself still covered in live bees, before he dismounted, stood next to the hives and a table, and apparently made the bees march down on to the table and, ‘at his word of command, retire to their hive’.
Such original diversions made Georgiana one of the most popular and successful hostesses of her time. Her gifts worked even on visiting foreigners, as an anonymous French gentleman attested in his Memoirs of a Traveller:
La Bruyère has said that a pretty woman who has all the good qualities of a gentleman, is the most delightful companion in the world. The merit of the two sexes is then united.
This phenomenon, rare enough in these times, is to be seen in Lady Spencer; she has an easy and open manner; her physiognomy takes, in conversation, the air best suited to the subject, with a facility that makes her extremely interesting: she has a lively understanding and an elegant discernment and comprehends everything in an instant. A well cultivated mind renders her conversation varied, sensible and almost inexhaustible, without being at all studied; but appearing as if she were listening to your discourse.
Such gifts of personality and intellect resulted in a varied and talented group of people becoming regular guests at Spencer House and Althorp. David Garrick, the actor, was a special friend of Georgiana and John’s, spending Christmas at Althorp in 1778 as an honorary family member, less than a month prior to his death.
John Spencer and Garrick shared a close friendship with the Reverend William Arden, an Eton and Cambridge scholar whom the first Earl had involved in the early education of his son and heir, George John. Arden was as much a companion and friend as he was a country parson, accompanying the Spencers on their foreign travels in 1763 and 1764 — which was when the priest met Garrick. Subsequently John made Arden the vicar of Brampton Ash, a part of the Spencer estate situated on the Northamptonshire-Leicestershire border. On his appointment, Arden received at the vicarage the free services of Lord Spencer’s own head gardener, to make it more pleasant for the new incumbent to live there.
The Garricks spent part of their summers every year at Althorp. J. Cradock, a fellow thespian of Garrick’s, in his Literary and Miscellaneous Memoirs recalled that his eminent colleague enjoyed these visits enormously: ‘The mansion was always highly spoken of from the elegance of the society and the great attention that was paid to all the friends who had the honour to be admitted into it.’ As a token of his appreciation for being included in these house parties, Garrick gave a bust of himself to the Spencers.
There were frequent visits to and from William Arden. The vicar was a keen amateur actor, who used to enjoy reading parts with Garrick, the finest performer of his day. Cradock noted that, ‘When we were reciting parts [at Althorp], Garrick said that Mr Arden had the most genuine comic humour of any man he knew and particularly praised his Falstaff.’ Comedy may have been Arden’s forte, but it was tragedy that was to mark his end.
After an active bachelorhood, the time had come for Arden to contemplate marriage. It was a development he had sought to avoid for some time, but respectability demanded he settle down into a life of worthy domesticity. Eventually a wealthy young lady from Northampton was produced as a match for the vicar, and he speedily married her in July 1768. Cradock and Garrick went to pay their respects to the newly married couple, and Cradock was taken aback at the change in Arden’s demeanour:
I do not know that any blame could attach to the lady, but a lurking melancholy had overtaken Mr Arden. He had been accustomed to the highest company and certainly was a most finished scholar and gentleman, but I fear had not duly weighed that humble domestic life was not immediately adapted to a man who till then had only been connected with the excitements of society at the most splendid tables ...
It signalled the brutal end of a friendship that had given equal pleasure to the earl, the actor and the priest. Three months after the marriage, Cradock was having dinner with guests one evening when there was a violent rap at the door, and a messenger from Drury Lane Theatre told him he must come quickly, as Mr Garrick needed to speak with him at once. Cradock made his excuses, and rushed across London to find Garrick standing in the wings, dressed to go on stage as Felix, holding a letter in his hand, which he passed to Cradock. It reported that Arden had been found on his lawn at Brampton Ash, after blowing his brains out with a shotgun.
The intensity of the friendship of the three men was shown by Garrick’s reaction to the news of Arden’s suicide:
All was confusion at the theatre and the orchestra continued to play. The audience became quite clamorous; the play commenced; and Garrick absolutely rushed on with eyes swollen with tears and somehow or other dashed through the character of Felix. He was attended home and had a serious illness afterwards.
The Spencers were similarly stunned by the death of their dear friend.
*
By 1780, it was clear that the First Earl was not going to see old age. When his mother, the former Georgina Carteret, died in August of that year, after a long and painful battle against cancer, John’s demise was also believed to be imminent. Horace Walpole wrote to friends: ‘The Countess Cowper is at last delivered from her misery. She died with consummate courage and, at the same time, with the weakness of trying to conceal the cause of death.’ As a postscript, he added: ‘Her own son, Lord Spencer, is in a bad state of health.’
; The following year, John became permanently disabled, losing his hearing and suffering what appears to have been a severe stroke, which left him partially paralysed. No longer able to travel abroad, he spent time in Bath, trying to gain whatever healing goodness he could from taking the waters there. It was on such a visit, in October 1783, that he died. Georgiana, despite having known for years that such an event was increasingly likely, was dismayed when the blow actually fell, writing in her diary on the day after his death: ‘I have passed another day half-stunned with affliction and stupefied with laudanum.’ The following day’s entry expands further on her overwhelming grief:
I felt as if every nerve about my head and heart would break. I never can describe or forget what I felt when they came to fetch me — my reason almost forsook me, I was left frantic and wanted to go into his room — I had not power to pass by his door, and my brother and George [her son] were forced to drag me down the stairs and lift me into the coach.
She went back to her beloved Althorp, to await the arrival of her husband’s body. It was carried from Bath to Northamptonshire with the pomp reserved for a man of Spencer’s legendary wealth and power. Robert Hawdon, under-steward to the Spencers at their Holywell residence in St Albans, reported to his mistress on the progress of the coffin over the last few miles of its journey:
My Lady,
All your Ladyship’s servants met the corpse at Huntsbury [now Hunsbury] Hill yesterday morning at eleven o’clock, and joined the procession, which was nearly as follows: all the charity boys two and two first; about thirty tenants two and two, Doctor and Mr James Preedy in a mourning coach and six; next to the state horse with a man uncovered, carrying before him the coronet on a crimson velvet cushion; after a man on foot carrying the plume of feathers; after him eight mutes on foot two and two; after the hearse, richly ornamented; after, all the servants in order two and two; after, two mourning coaches, etc.; and the gentlemen and tradesmen about sixty in number, all in deep mourning, closed the procession, riding in order two and two; they went in this order through the town to Dallington Gate, where the procession ended, until they came to the Atterbury Gate, when it begun as before except the boys. There were the greatest concourse of people ever known on the like occasion, and I believe there were full three thousand people walked through Northampton streets with the procession and at Harlestone the whole or major part of the people came with the procession to the gate. I believe it was the most solemn, the most numerous, and most respectful procession that has ever been seen in this kingdom. The body lies in state in the great dining room, and will proceed to church in the same order it came here.
The Spencer Family Page 14