by John Pearson
The Duke was responsible for both almost simultaneous conceptions.
Georgiana claimed to be delighted, but Elizabeth was more practical. She had no wish to bring scandal on the Duke, so before her pregnancy began to show, she left once more for Italy, where the wilting, soft, romantic Bess showed just how tough she was by thoroughly enjoying life and concealing her condition even from the friends she stayed with. She refused to blame the Duke for her situation. As she wrote in her diary, ‘His nature is noble, tender, honourable and affectionate … Passion has led us both astray.’ And early in August 1785, in the house of a Palermo midwife, she bore the Duke a third daughter, naming her Caroline St Jules. Less than two weeks later, back in Devonshire House, Georgiana followed suit, presenting the Duke with yet another daughter, christened Harriet.
Although he was now the father of four daughters, the Duke remained convinced that his wife would still produce the all-important son, provided they could both rely on the support of ‘Dearest Bess’. So when Bess returned to London, having left Caroline St Jules with a nurse in Paris, the Duke’s previous concern with appearances was entirely forgotten. After the public battering she had been receiving in the press following the Westminster election, Georgiana was grateful to have those she loved around her, and the Duke seemed positively brazen as he took both his women back to Devonshire House. Both had a call on his attentions, Bess because he was now in love with her and Georgiana because she was his wife and she and she alone could still produce the heir he needed.
The Duke seemed happy with this rational arrangement. So was Elizabeth, and so, in theory, was Georgiana, who had her dearest ‘Mrs Bess’ back with her at last. The press and the scandal mongers could do their worst, and there seemed no reason now why all the Duke’s children, legitimate and illegitimate alike, should not live happily beneath the all-embracing roof of Devonshire House. There was room for all of them and, if gossip started, why should anybody worry? They loved each other.
But however rational a menagé a tràts may seem, and however much its members speak of mutual love, it can prove difficult to maintain. One member is usually left out in the cold, and with the personalities involved at Devonshire House this was unlikely to be Bess. Seeing Georgiana now, Fanny Burney noted, ‘She appeared to me not happy. I thought she looked oppressed within, though there is a native cheerfulness about her which I fancy scarce deserts her.’
This was not surprising given the strain of the life that she was leading. ‘She verges fast to a coarseness’, wrote her one-time admirer, Horace Walpole, and although Georgiana was not yet thirty she was suffering chronic headaches, using sleeping draughts and her looks were fading.
On the surface, everything at Devonshire House continued as before and Georgiana was as much the queen of society as ever, at the centre of the balls, the dinners and the grand receptions, at a time when Charles James Fox was still unsuccessfully attempting to unseat William Pitt in parliament. But behind the scenes ‘sorrow and misery’ were starting to afflict her, through her addiction to the same vice which brought such trouble to her parents - obsessional gambling.
Everyone around her gambled, especially her mother who now blamed herself for the bad example she had set. Georgiana answered, ‘I do assure you that it is innate, for I remember playing from seven in the morning until eight at night at Lansquenet with old Mrs Newton when I was nine years old and sent to the King’s Road for the measles.’
In fact her gambling was destroying both her health and happiness, and the debts were a constant worry; although the Duke usually ended up paying them they inevitably became a source of anger and distrust between them. Lady Spencer was increasingly concerned for her daughter’s health.
‘For God’s sake try to compose yourself. I am terrified lest the perpetual hurrye of our spirits, and the medicines you take to obtain a false tranquillity should injure you … 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, as I am sure that if I do not, I shall hurt myself or my child.’
One may as well ask an alcoholic to give up drink. For Georgiana, gambling was an addiction she could not control. When Little Gi was born, Walpole said Georgiana would probably ‘stuff her poor babe into her knotting-bag when she wants to play at Macao, and forget it’. Since then the self-destructive gambling had increased and enormous losses had mounted.
Throughout this time Bess continued to consolidate her role in Devonshire House. No longer the dependent victim who had once relied upon the Duke and Georgiana’s pity, she had made herself indispensable. With her abounding health and sense of purpose, she had the strength the others lacked and could offer both the love and the support they needed. Through love she had the now gouty, often fuddled Duke totally beneath her thumb and could persuade him to brazen out the situation as he would never have dared do on his own. Love kept Georgiana dependent on her too, but dependence was not the same as happiness and Georgiana’s situation was profoundly wretched underneath the surface gaiety. She was suppressing emotions which, as a wife, she must have felt in such a situation. If for a moment she allowed such feelings to emerge, she was in danger of losing everything - husband, children, ‘dearest Bess’ and the glittering world around her.
By the beginning of 1789 Georgiana was desperate. She had borrowed from everyone to pay her debts - her maid, Anne Scafe, Louis XVI’s former Minister of Finance, Calonne and the London banker, Thomas Coutts. Her acknowledged debts were £60,000 and the Duke refused to meet them.
Georgiana felt she had one hope remaining. The Duke still wanted one thing that she alone could give him - his long overdue heir -and she felt that if she finally succeeded in providing a son the Duke would forgive her, pay her debts and all her problems would be over. Somehow she convinced the Duke that in London, with its endless distractions, she was unlikely to conceive. Instead they would take a lengthy holiday in France, along with Bess and all the family. In June 1789 - a fateful year in European history - the Devonshires embarked en masse for France from Dover.
First they stayed in Paris in order to give the Duke and Bess a chance to see their daughter, the now four-year-old Caroline St Jules, before going on to Versailles for an audience with Queen Marie Antoinette. It is some indication of the social standing of the Spencers that the Queen was an old friend of the family, and was particularly interested in Georgiana as the acknowledged fashion queen of London.
By a curious trick of history this visit of the Devonshires to Versailles offered the Duke, as hereditary standard-bearer of the English Revolution, a chance to witness the beginning of its counterpart in France. For he and Georgiana were in the palace talking to the Queen when the people staged their historic march from Paris and forced themselves into the presence of the King. What is fascinating is how little attention Georgiana or the Duke appear to have given to what was happening. When the populace departed, the ceremonial of the court continued as before and Georgiana apparently enjoyed her conversation with the Queen. Even back in Paris she was not particularly disturbed by the threatening presence of the revolutionary mob. It was tiresome, but it took more than the threats and catcalls of the common people to distract Georgiana from the joy of being back in Paris.
Besides, as enlightened Whigs, the Devonshires and Spencers were all in favour of popular liberty, and however charming the fat, balding Marie Antoinette might be, the French monarchy could only be improved by some of the constitutional reforms that had already been imposed on the English monarchy in 1688.
‘I confess I amuse myself,’ Georgiana wrote a trifle smugly from Paris in July, ‘and have been well the whole time I have been here.’ A few days later came the fall of the Bastille and the French revolution began in earnest.
Back in England Charles James Fox exulted. ‘How much the greatest event that ever happened in the history of the world, and how much the best!’ Georgiana,
and probably the Duke, agreed, although they sensibly kept their comments to themselves. Only the realistic Bess foresaw trouble for them in Paris when noticing the arms of noblemen being obliterated from their carriages. The Devonshires had more important matters to attend to and, before the mob had finished demolishing the Bastille, they were on their way again to Spa in the Ardennes, with the Cavendish succession now at stake, together with Georgiana’s personal salvation.
The Duke and the waters did their work. By the end of August Georgiana was pregnant and, this time, Elizabeth was not. Georgiana was probably unwilling to risk the unborn baby by returning to London and her creditors. Instead, the whole Devonshire ménage, including Bess, installed itself in considerable style in Brussels in readiness for the great event. Georgiana’s daughters, Georgiana Dorothy and Harriet, hurried over with their governess, Miss Trimmer. They were followed by her sister and brother-in-law, the Duncannons. Doctors and fresh servants arrived, and finally the deeply disapproving Lady Spencer overcame her bitterness against what she saw as the immoral presence of Lady Elizabeth, and joined the party.
The most crucial moment in Georgiana’s life had almost come, and as an addicted gambler she must have realised the high stakes for which she was playing. She was only thirty-two but her looks and health were going and she would not get another chance like this. Another daughter or a still-born child would spell her ruin. Either an heir to the dukedom or disaster.
Even Bess’s nerve was shaken. ‘I can’t express to you how my courage fails me as your time draws near,’ she told Georgiana. But Georgiana faced the outcome with the born gambler’s equanimity. Even the sudden threat of revolution in the Belgian capital failed to shake her, when the whole family had to hurry back to Paris. They arrived just in time, and were in Passy, on the outskirts of the city, when Georgiana’s labour started. Practical as ever, Lady Spencer sent Bess off to the Paris Opera to appear among the audience showing her slim figure, just to prove that it was not she who was giving birth - otherwise, with the ménage à trois, later Cavendishes might claim the child was hers. Then on 21 May 1790, in the house of their friend the Marquis Boulainvilliers, Georgiana’s gamble paid off and she was able to present the Duke with an heir to his possessions and his title. He was christened William George Spencer Cavendish, and as heir to the dukedom took the title Viscount Harrington. In August the strange threesome - Bess, Georgiana and the Duke - brought him back to London.
The family is all arrived safe here,’ wrote Anne Scafe from Devonshire House. ‘Many hearts are made glad at a young heir being brought home. He is three months old - a fine strong healthy child. The Duchess suckles him and is quite well.’
All should have ended happily, but even now the travails of Georgiana were not over. Lady Spencer went on making trouble over Bess; her sister, Harriet, fell ill; and the Duke was none too eager, even now, to pay her debts. It was somehow typical of impulsive Georgiana to choose this very moment to involve herself in a fresh emotional disaster.
She may have felt that, having finally performed her unromantic duty by the Duke, she was free to fall in love at last. For several years Charles Grey, the clever, uncomfortably good-looking young Whig politician, had been professing his undying adoration and, although she was seven years his senior, she was suddenly emotionally and physically besotted. By the spring of 1791, barely a year after giving birth to Harrington, she was pregnant by her lover.
The last thing Georgiana needed was another scandal, but when the Duke realised that she was pregnant, she made no attempt to convince him that the child was his. His own past behaviour notwithstanding, he was suddenly beside himself with righteous anger. Charles Grey, all adoration now forgotten, was suddenly reluctant to endanger his political career by becoming openly involved with such a famous married woman. And the virtuous Duke, appalled by the possibility of scandal, insisted that Georgiana left the children and went abroad to have the baby.
What followed was an extraordinary demonstration of the unexpected power of late eighteenth-century women, as all the females in the family, Bess included, rallied to support Georgiana. In the autumn of 1791, when a noticeably pregnant Georgiana set off for Montpelier in the South of France to have her baby, she travelled with a small platoon of women - including her mother, her now convalescent sister, Harriet Duncannon, the Duncannon’s daughter, Caroline Ponsonby, Caroline St Jules - and her husband’s mistress, dearest Bess. At the same time, back in England, the Duke was drinking heavily and threatening legal separation, while his two daughters, Georgiana and Harriet, were looked after by Miss Trimmer.
Georgiana missed her daughters, but her greatest misery came from being parted from her infant son. In early January in Mont-pelier, she gave birth to a daughter, who was entrusted to a wet nurse and almost immediately sent back to Grey’s family in England, where she was brought up as his baby sister.
Meanwhile, Georgiana and the women stayed on in exile on the Continent until the Duke relented. As they were rich and titled it was no great hardship as, with Bess to guide them, they took a long extended holiday in that final year before war with revolutionary France would change their world for ever. In Naples they were entertained by the King and Queen in their great Versailles-like palace at Caserta. In Rome they enjoyed the carnival, and in Switzerland Bess took them all to visit her old admirer, Edward Gibbon. Finally, the Duke had no alternative but to surrender.
The truth was that he was missing Bess, and the only way to get her back was by extending his forgiveness to Georgiana. He did so, reluctantly, in the summer of 1793. Once the travellers returned to Devonshire House, his relief was obvious to all. As the servants lined up to welcome back their Duchess, it was clear that it was Bess whom they really wanted. The house had been dead in her absence. With her return, life could begin again.
At thirty-six, Georgiana should have been able to count her many blessings and enjoy her family and friends in relative tranquillity at last. She was still the undisputed queen of society and was universally loved. But the evil fortune that accompanied her gambling pursued her. Her ‘wild and scrambling life’ was claiming retribution and it seemed that there was no escape.
Early in 1795 she was deeply hurt when Charles Grey suddenly married her young kinswoman, Mary Ponsonby, without a word to her of his intentions. The following year her left eye became seriously inflamed. A corneal ulcer had developed, and after ‘a dreadful operation which she bore with great courage’ - and without anaesthetics - she lost the eye, and with it what remained of her beauty. ‘The change is painful to see,’ wrote Lady Holland. ‘Scarcely has she a vestige of those charms which once attracted all hearts.’ Not surprisingly, Georgiana increasingly retired from the world and started seeking consolation in religion. But religion would not pay her gambling debts. Nor would the Duke, and as they went on mounting they added to her misery.
Bess, in contrast, was in perfect health. With the death of her wayward husband she was free to marry, and wasted several years pursuing the Duke of Richmond, who proved to be a male tease. It was hard to believe that she was still in love with Canis, who was growing fat and lazy, but her life was still totally involved with the Devonshires and Georgiana depended on her more than ever. This did not prevent Bess enjoying life. In 1802, during the temporary peace with France, she was among the first English visitors to Paris, where she made a point of witnessing Napoleon review his regiments and was most impressed. In her absence Georgiana missed her frightfully. ‘Do you hear the voice of my heart crying to you?’ she asked pathetically.
‘My dearest,’ Bess wrote back in the private language of the Devonshire House set. ‘Why are’ oo gloomy? Why are ‘οο vexed?’
The answer was obvious - Georgiana’s gambling debts and fearful state of health. When war resumed with France, with William Pitt as firmly in charge as ever, the influence of Charles James Fox and the Devonshire House set was over. The patriotic fear of France and its revolutionary principles had completed the work begun by Georg
e III and destroyed the unity of the great Whig families, few of whom supported Fox’s principles or policies. Georgiana’s brother, the second Earl Spencer, had actually become a member of Pitt’s government in the war against Napoleon and Canis also offered his support.
Not until Pitt collapsed and died in 1806 did Charles James Fox get into government at last. Georgiana and her political friends and allies had got what they had always wanted, and with Lord Grenville as Prime Minister, Fox at the Foreign Office, Grey at the Admiralty and her brother, Lord Spencer, now responsible for Home Affairs, the new Whig Ministry ‘read like a dinner party guest list for Devonshire House’. But the triumph was too late, the party over.
Georgiana did her best, forcing herself out of self-imposed obscurity to give her last Devonshire House supper party for the new ministers and forty-six assorted guests. Her ex-lover, Charles Grey, was there, now called by his courtesy title Lord Howick, and this would be the last time she would see him. Fox was dropsical and clearly ailing, and the Duke, who had been offered any post he wanted in this ‘Ministry of all the Talents’ had, from lethargy or common sense, quietly declined. This motley combination of Georgiana’s friends and relatives had little hope of surviving long, and nor had she.
Despite the spectacles shielded with black crepê which she wore to protect her failing eyesight, the strain of the occasion brought on blinding headaches, and she was suffering from jaundice, caused by an abscess on the liver. Sick, half-blind and in continual pain, Georgiana now composed herself to meet her Maker.
Her last letter to her mother, Lady Spencer, begged her for a banker’s draft for £100 by return of post to pay her latest gambling debts. Her ladyship sent £20, but before it reached her, Georgiana was caught in three days of agony ‘more horrible, more killing than any human being ever witnessed’. In the end, Georgiana sank into a coma and on 30 March 1806, at the age of forty-nine, she died. Three years later, Dearest Bess would marry Canis, succeeding Georgiana as Duchess of Devonshire.