Both parents justified their strictness by stressing their devotion to God, Frederick sometimes taking church services in the Chapel at Althorp. It was a severe and cold upbringing for the three children. His daughter, Sarah, told my grandfather that Frederick had a ‘terrifying manner, as well as being a very strict disciplinarian, but those who knew him all agreed that underneath this stern exterior was the kindest heart imaginable’.
They had been happier at Harlestone House, in a village between Althorp and Northampton, where Frederick and Elizabeth were free from the obligation of overseeing the main estate, since Jack was alive, and yet had the benefits of living on Spencer land, with its beauty, its privacy and its history. Frederick’s sister, Sarah, recalled in her old age,
There were often grievances formerly while your dear father and mother occupied that place [Harlestone]. But ... though my eldest brother [Jack] was — in spite of his many noble qualities — VERY difficult to live with, and your father felt his faults too strongly, yet it was a happy affectionate time to all; and the removal from Harlestone was a grief in itself.
The regrettable strictness of the children’s upbringing aside, it does appear that Frederick wanted only the best for all three of them. He had very firm views, one of which was that nails should not be cleaned with a nail brush, because to do so would spoil the shape of the nails. The result of this bizarre diktat was that both the children who lived to be adults had exceptionally beautiful hands.
There are several other stories which reduce this deeply contradictory character to the level of fallible, but well-intentioned man. One day his two younger children, John and Sarah, had just been given pogo sticks, and they were testing them out by the West Lodge at Althorp Park. Frederick spotted them by the brook, and, seeing that they had not got the courage to leap over the water, he lost his temper, and finally said he would show them how to do it himself. Apparently the children did not dare to show their amusement when his stick snapped in two in mid-air and he fell, fully clothed and full length, into the brook.
Another short snippet from the family folklore shows how Frederick’s well-meaning interference extended beyond his own children. As head of the wider family, he believed it to be his duty to sort out problems among his dependants. His sister Sarah had a difficult son, Spencer Lyttelton, who was for many years the bane of his paternal and maternal families. He was always in debt, and he was perpetually squabbling in public with his wife. Frederick thought he had the solution to the latter problem, and invited the Lytteltons to stay at Althorp, having first of all ordered the removal of the bed from their dressing room, in order to force the couple to sleep together. The simplistic plan failed completely, Spencer Lyttelton refusing to speak to his uncle again until the latter was on his deathbed, so insulted was he by Frederick’s clumsy meddling.
Frederick’s perfectionism was famous in the family; indeed, it verged on the obsessive. When he was in the Navy in the 1820s, his mother, Lavinia, had written complaining that she found it hard to decipher his writing and told him with typical bluntness she would enjoy his news far more if she were able to read it. As a result, Frederick taught himself to write again from scratch, adopting a style unrecognizable from his earlier hand, but clear enough to gain his mother’s approval.
His brother, Jack, died in 1845; Frederick was with him at Wiseton during his final moments. Jack spent his last conscious hours going through his will with his heir, ‘talking over every point and explaining his wishes, as if it had been another’s; and when all was done, and he had conversed beautifully with him, his countenance took an expression of perfect peace, and with a smile on his lips, he remained perfectly placid, and death came like a gentle sleep upon him like that of a child’.
Although Jack’s death had been unexpected, Frederick would have found some small consolation in learning how exceptionally well his eldest brother had coped with the burden of debt he had inherited eleven years earlier: all the mortgages were paid off, and the Spencer estate was truly solvent for the first time since the heyday of the First Earl. Beyond that, Frederick had a wealthy wife with an income of her own of £5,500 per year.
According to Grandfather, Frederick was the only Earl Spencer to have possessed any business sense. He sold Wiseton and the villa at Wimbledon for good prices, and devoted his attention to the core family properties, leaving Spencer House and Althorp in as good a condition as they had ever been in. However, his thriftiness did result in some surprising decisions. In 1850, for his daughter Georgiana’s coming-out party at Spencer House, he had the Ball Room redecorated in a beautiful red damask silk. Yet, out of a wish to economize, he had had no silk placed behind the paintings hanging in that room — the result being that it was impossible to put smaller pictures in their place, ever again, without the whole room being redecorated.
He was unsentimental about the individual objects that comprised his inheritance, selling a pair of large paintings by Lucarelli, of Jason and Hercules, that Sir William Hamilton had found for the First Earl, for 100 guineas each. The great chandelier from the Spencer House Ball Room was also disposed of, and some mahogany doors which he did not care for were sawn in half and transported to Althorp.
At the same time, he liked incorporating new ideas into the classical settings of his homes. Having particularly enjoyed seeing Queen Victoria’s Persian carpet in the Indian department of the Great Exhibition, he had it copied by Lapworth of Old Bond Street, and had the result installed in the Library at Althorp to complement his father’s splendid book collection.
He also collected porcelain; he had apparently acquired a taste for such things on his naval travels. This was a completely new departure for a Spencer, the First Earl in particular having a strong aversion to ‘China and Japan’. However, Frederick’s one true luxury was horses, not hunters, like many of his family, but racehorses — thus bringing back to Althorp a sport that had been absent since the time of William, Second Baron Spencer, in the early seventeenth century.
Frederick was a member of the Jockey Club, and at the time of his death his stud at Althorp included the famous Cotherstone, the first horse of note that he had bought, for the astronomical sum of £3,000, from Mr Bowes. Cotherstone had won the Derby, and in 1844 was the founder of the Althorp stud, standing at a fee of 25 guineas. The most successful horse sired by Cotherstone was Stilton, who won the Epsom Metropolitan as a three-year-old, beating Joe Miller in an epic race. However, Stilton’s career was compromised in the most cruel way through suspected poisoning — not that that stopped the Prussian Government from buying him for £7,500, at the end of his racing career.
The other horses of note bred at Althorp during Frederick’s earldom were Glenmasson, Farthingale, Pumicestone, Speed the Plough and Boadbil. The stud did not long out-survive the Fourth Earl, for his son was the most passionate foxhunting man that the Spencers ever produced, and he saw that the stables quickly reverted to catering for his sport and not that of his father.
Beyond his hobbies and his family, Frederick occupied his time in untaxing, but respectable, ways. He remained nominally in the Navy throughout his life, attaining the rank of vice-admiral shortly before his death. There was also a spell as a politician in the 1830s, when his brother Jack was in the cabinet. Frederick seems to have made less of an impression than Lord Althorp, The Times later writing that, ‘He has represented Worcestershire and Midhurst with much silent effect.’
He subsequently became a courtier, following his elder sister, Sarah, into royal service. Sarah had married Lord Lyttelton at Wimbledon in 1813, but Lyttelton had died in 1828, leaving her a widow for the remaining forty-two years of her life. After a spell as a lady in waiting to the Queen, from 1842 she became governess to Queen Victoria’s children. As the Morning Post remarked:
We need not point out that the duties of such an office far exceed those which are ordinarily comprehended in the term ‘Governess’. They represent rather the position of one who stands ‘in loco parentis’, and it woul
d be difficult to overrate the tact, the common sense, the intellectual power, and the qualities of disposition requisite to fulfil the requirements of such an office effectively. To say nothing of the pre-eminent station of Lady Lyttelton’s pupils, she had the responsibility of supervising those who were selected to instruct them in this or that branch of knowledge, and, above all things, she had the duty of acting towards her pupils as a court of moral or intellectual appeal whenever they felt burthened with a difficulty or a grief.
Sarah was highly intelligent, with an active and wide-ranging mind. A formidable letter writer, although imbued with courtly discretion, she has left us pictures via her correspondence of the Queen and her consort, Prince Albert, away from the public gaze. In 1845, the royal couple returned from a foreign tour. It had been reported that Victoria had been suffering from Verdriesslichkeit — the appearance of being cross — during the trip, and it was agreed by the other courtiers that Sarah Lyttelton, being particularly close to the monarch, ought to inform her of this criticism. Sarah recorded:
Of course she listened with an air of meek endurance, as usual, and said she feared she might have looked cross from fatigue and shyness, before she reached Coburg, but that it was dreadful to have it interpreted into ingratitude ... The Prince advised her (on her saying, like a good child, ‘What AM I to do another time?’) to behave like an opera-dancer after a pirouette and always show her teeth in a fixed smile. Of course he accompanied the advice with an immense pirouette and prodigious grin of his own, such as few people could perform after dinner without being sick, ending on one foot and t’other in the air.
In 1849 she left her post, Bertie — later Edward VII — being considered too old to require a governess. He wept on Sarah’s departure, as did his siblings, and the link between governess and royal pupils remained throughout their lives, the surviving princesses reportedly deeply distressed at the news of Sarah’s death, even though she had reached the age of eighty-two.
Frederick’s time at court overlapped with that of his sister. From 1846, he was Lord Chamberlain, followed by a period as Lord Steward. In its obituary of Frederick, the Northampton Herald noted that the Fourth Earl had resigned the latter position just prior to his death, ‘a place at Court, always uncongenial, it is understood, to his tastes ...’ The most enjoyable moment for him during his courtier days was when, dressed in knee breeches, he was complimented by Queen Victoria on having the best-shaped legs she had ever seen on a man.
It was largely due to his personal popularity with the Queen that he was made a Knight of the Garter in 1849. The Times of London took it upon itself to ridicule the award of such an honour to an aristocrat who in its opinion had done nothing to warrant it:
We have no wish to disparage the man whom the Sovereign delighteth to honour, but we cannot help asking, with nineteen in twenty of our readers, Who is Lord Spencer? When our readers see it announced that Lord Spencer is to have the vacant Garter, half of them will resuscitate for that honour the man better known as Lord Althorp. There was the venerable Lord Spencer, the scholar and bibliomaniac ... But who is this Lord Spencer, and why is he to be enrolled in Victoria’s first rank of valiant men?
The Times then disparagingly listed Frederick’s achievements, naval and political, before concluding: ‘Now the question is, Does Earl Spencer, the third of that title within a dozen years, come up to the mark? We cannot say that he does.’
It was an attack that sparked off great controversy about the general composition of the Order of the Garter, a rival newspaper stepping in to defend Frederick, while taking the opportunity to have a side swipe at other aristocrats whom it believed had been given Knighthoods of the Garter because of their social status, rather than as a result of individual achievement. Setting out the entire list of Garter Knights, the article continued:
And who of all the names chronicled above has done more than this for the country? We pick out Wellington, Anglesey, and Clarendon, and then defy the ‘Times’ itself to show us the fourth man among its motley lot who has half the claims of Earl Spencer to belong to the noble order of the Garter. He brings honour to it even upon the showing of his low and bitter assailant ... We might ask for the particular and peculiar achievements which have raised a Rutland, a Richmond, or a Salisbury, to this pre-eminent distinction; — but we are satisfied to say they never added any services to the country, to their political importance, to their party. Earl Spencer has. He has gilded his title with new lustre, while they have shone by the reflection of the lustre which their titles have conferred upon them.
Frederick carried both the above cuttings with him in a notebook, where they were found on his death.
The last years of Frederick’s life were marked by family tragedies, and also by a renaissance of romance. In 1846, he had built a third vault in the family tombs at Brington church. Within five years, it was to have its first occupant, for, in 1851, his wife, Elizabeth, died. She had never enjoyed good health — indeed, Frederick had married her in the knowledge that she might be too frail to have children — but her death seems to have been avoidable. She had a blockage in her uterus which, if attended to in time, could have been cured. However, she found the subject to be one that she could not even share with her husband, because it would have offended her genteel sensibilities to have done so, and the penalty for this Victorian coyness was death.
The family was surprised when Frederick remarried, and even more so when they learned of the age difference between the 56-year-old widower and the 29-year-old bride, Adelaide Seymour. However, the unlikely couple were besotted with one another, Frederick choosing the best pearls from all the pieces of Spencer jewellery to compose a row of rare perfection as a wedding present for his young wife.
Adelaide, known as ‘Paddy’, was from a distinguished fighting family. Her grandfather was Admiral Lord Hugh Seymour. Adelaide’s father, Sir Horace Seymour, was — as we have seen — not the most gallant husband, but as a soldier he was exceptional. He had served in the cavalry in the Peninsular War, against Napoleon’s armies, with enormous distinction, and was ADC to the Marquis of Anglesey at the Battle of Waterloo, where he was wounded, having had three horses shot dead from under him during the day’s fighting.
His son — the new Countess Spencer’s brother — was Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Seymour of the Scots Fusilier Guards. He had entered the army in 1835, and then seen service in the first Kaffir War, in South Africa, in 1846-7. He returned to South Africa in 1852, as military secretary to Sir George Cathcart.
At the outbreak of the Crimean War, when the French and British allied against the Russians, Charles Seymour was very ill. However, he was determined to follow Cathcart into war, and managed to secure the post of adjutant-general to the Fourth Division.
At the Battle of Inkerman, already wounded, Seymour saw Cathcart without a horse and with the Russian infantry closing in on him. Seymour cut his way through the enemy in an attempt to help Cathcart escape, before trying to assist the general on to his own horse. As he did so, he was bayoneted to death by the Russians, and was later found with his body slumped over that of the slain Cathcart.
Another brother, Beauchamp Seymour, enjoyed lasting distinction. A naval officer, he was involved in the Burmese War of 1852. He led the Fusiliers in the capture of the Pagoda Pegu, was gazetted four times and received the Burmese medal.
The culmination of Beauchamp’s career came much later, in 1882, when he was in his early sixties. By this stage he was Sir Beauchamp Seymour, supreme commander of the Mediterranean Fleet. He used his combined gunnery in the bombardment of Alexandria, destroying or knocking out of action all the forts, with very few British casualties sustained, either in terms of lives lost or ships damaged. For this success, he was awarded the thanks of Parliament, £20,000 and the hereditary title of Baron Alcester.
The new Countess Spencer was therefore from excellent fighting stock, and she needed to show her own strength and determination in order to overcome the reservations sh
e met from members of her new family who resented her replacing Elizabeth at Althorp. The most difficult person to convince about her motives proved to be Sarah Lyttelton, the erstwhile royal governess. She was scathing in her criticism of the new châtelaine of Althorp, telling a younger relative: ‘Yaddy was always (I daresay with good intentions) condescending and artificial; and if I had been a country neighbour, I should have been affronted by her continually.’
However, she did manage to produce two children. The first, Victoria, was born in 1855. It was thought a small consolation to Frederick to have another daughter, since Georgiana, the eldest child from his first marriage, had died of measles three and a half years earlier. There was one more child from this union — my great-grandfather.
Lady Stanley of Alderley went to stay at Althorp at the end of 1856. She reported to her husband: ‘Lady Spencer is delicate ... [she] never comes down in the morning and lies in the evening with her feet up. I suppose she is trying to make a little Spencer.’
She was proved correct, with the appearance of Charles Robert Spencer in October 1857. But father and son were not to know one another, for Frederick died quite unexpectedly, in what is now the Princess of Wales Room at Althorp, in December of the same year.
Even the local Tory newspaper, which had vehemently attacked Frederick’s Whig views throughout his life, was shocked by the Fourth Earl’s sudden passing:
In the death of Earl Spencer the country has sustained a great loss. We ourselves, often as we have been opposed to, have always been able to respect, the late peer. In dealing with him, every one felt there was no fear of petty subterfuge or underhand chicanery. Accustomed in early life to command, his position in the county may have sometimes led him towards the side of severity, but always, we fully believe, from a strict sense of duty, and never from personal feeling or pique. Characters such as this are rare, and valuable as rare. Few neighbourhoods can afford to lose a man who, elevated by his position above jealousy, and by a conscientious sense of duty above manoeuvring, can always be relied on in an emergency for an honest and straightforward course of conduct. Such a man this county has lost by the lamented death of Frederick, fourth Earl Spencer.
The Spencer Family Page 25