The Dukes (38 page)

Duchess Georgiana was fittingly a leader of fashion. The skirts worn at this time achieved an enormous circumference. Georgiana, in order to counterbalance this, took her powdered hair higher and higher above her head, until it could be piled up some two feet. Above this, she wore huge ostrich plumes, and the rest of fashionable London followed suit. So significant an innovation was it that even the
Dictionary of National Biography
mentions the Duchess's contri­bution to fashion.

Though not a learned woman, Georgiana was intelligent. She counted among her friends people like Johnson, who would never suffer a fool and was not a snob, and Sheridan. The stream of visitors to Devonshire House and Chatsworth included many men of culture as well as men of fashion or politics. She wrote a novel herself, published anonymously in 1779, called
The Sylph.
She never bothered to deny the attribution of authorship to her.

When Georgiana Spencer married in 1772 she captured the prize of the year in the Duke of Devonshire. Wealthy and undemanding, he was the perfect spouse. The marriage date had to be kept secret even from the bride, to avoid crowds and publicity which would have been inevitable had she blurted it out; she was told one morning after breakfast that she was to be married that day. Only the immediate family was present, including the Duke's sister, the Duchess of Port­land. On that happy day in June she could not have known that she was to embark on a very strange alliance, involving three people instead of two. But had she known, she would not have been afraid.

Lady Elizabeth Foster first appeared on the scene in 1782 when the Devonshires had been married for eight years and were yet childless. Born in 1758, she was the daughter of the Earl of Bristol (the "Earl-Bishop") and had been married very unhappily to John Thomas Foster,
m.p.,
in obedience to her parents. The marriage was a misery, Foster being a parsimonious tyrant. Two sons were born, but shortly afterwards Lady Elizabeth ceased to live with her hus­band. She was much admired by contemporaries, wooed by the Duke of Richmond and by Gibbon, amongst others, and was much more beautiful than Georgiana. To her friends she was known as "Bess". Gibbon writes of her, comparing her with the Duchess: "Bess is much nearer the level of a mortal, but a mortal for whom the wisest man, historic or medical, would throw away two or three worlds if he had them in possession." He also said that "if she chose to beckon the lord chancellor from his woolsack in full sight of the world, he could not resist obedience".
¹⁹

In short, Lady Elizabeth was the second most fascinating woman of the day. It is curious that she and the Duchess should have been drawn to each other; one would have expected them, with more reason, to be rivals. The mysterious chemistry of friendship occurred at their first meeting, and they established a firm and ardent fellow­ship which lasted all their lives. Georgiana wanted so much for her husband the Duke to like her new friend. She could not have asked for better, as Lady Elizabeth became his mistress within a very short time, and all three lived more or less happily ever after. More or less, because although the three-sided affair did not threaten to over­turn the love or friendship which each member felt for the other two, it did, perhaps naturally, cause some concern to other members of the family. Georgiana's mother, Lady Spencer, refused to meet Lady Elizabeth, so that the Duchess had tactfully to arrange her mother's visits to Chatsworth or Devonshire House while Lady Elizabeth was away. The imperturbable Duke did not waste energy in pondering the suitability or otherwise of the arrangement. He merely enjoyed it and went about his agreeable life as before. Nobody dared ask him about his domestic understandings, though everyone knew. Before long, he was fathering children by both ladies.

In July 1785 both wife and mistress gave birth, within a few weeks of each other. The Duchess's little girl was called Harriet and was born in the comfort of Devonshire House. (There was a previous daughter called Georgiana, born in 1783.) Lady Elizabeth's
ac­couchement
was squalid by comparison. Even the Devonshire House set could not risk the obloquy of the world by allowing the Duke's illegitimate daughter, as well as his legitimate one, to be born in his house in the same month. So Lady Elizabeth was packed off to Italy, where her little girl was brought into the world by a back- street amateur. She describes the scene in her diary: "Imagine a little staircase, dark and dirty, leading to the apartments of these people. The family consisted of the
Archi-Pretre des Amoureux;
his woman-servant, a coarse, ugly and filthy creature, the doctor and his wife . . . everything that one can imagine of wicked, vulgar and horrible ... I had to dine with him, and to endure the odious com­pany of these people; I had to live in a house which was little better than a house of ill fame."
²⁰
The girl was called Caroline St Jules, and when she came to London with her mother to take up her place in the nursery at Devonshire House she was passed off as the daughter of a French nobleman whom Lady Elizabeth and the Duchess had agreed to look after. One cannot be sure how many people were fooled, but the story grew increasingly thin with time, and with further additions to that strange nursery. Caroline grew up to marry George Lamb, brother of William Lamb, so that she too, was "Lady Caroline Lamb" as well as Lady Bessborough's daughter, who had married William Lamb. To differentiate the two, they were known as "Caro William" and "Caro George".

Three years later, Lady Elizabeth again went on her travels, this time to Rouen, to give birth to the Duke's son, whom they called Augustus Clifford (Clifford had been a title borne by the Duke's mother). Lady Elizabeth had what appears to us the cool effrontery to write to her dear friend the Duchess with the wish that she, Georgiana, may have a boy too. "Erring as I have been," she writes, "yet my heart can feel nothing but tenderness and joy at the sight of this dear child - I only wish now that my dear friend had a son also."
²¹

Georgiana gave birth to a son and heir in 1790, the Marquess of Hartington, known as "Hart", who as a young man was desperately in love with his cousin Lady Caroline Lamb
(i.e.
Caro William); he was subsequently the 6th Duke of Devonshire. To make the matter even more complex, the Duke had another daughter by a third woman, and this girl was called Charlotte. Georgiana, too, had her obligatory visit to the continent, to give birth to her daughter by Charles Grey in
1791,
a girl who was given the name Eliza Court­ney. The Duchess was banished from England for two years as a result of this indiscretion (or "scrape", as she would call it), but was welcomed home by the Duke in
1793
to resume the round of pleasurable living. Half a century later, Greville wrote that "the private (for
secret
it never was) history of Devonshire House would be very curious and amusing as a scandalous chronicle, an exhibition of vice in its most refined and attractive form, full of grace, dignity and splendour, but I fancy full of misery and sorrow also".
²²

Greville was writing at a time in the social history of England when a moral stance took the place of decent behaviour, and when it was no longer possible to understand the curious morality which allowed the Devonshire House arrangement to work. He may well think that such debauchery must bring misery and sorrow, but he would be wrong. However freely they bestowed their emotions, the Devonshire trio were honourable towards each other, and far more "moral" in their behaviour to each other and to other human beings than the constrained, frustrated Victorians could ever hope to be. It was moral, for example, that the various children of these liaisons should each receive the parental affection that was their due. Jealousy, envy, hatred, were unknown to them. Their instincts were decent.

Greville was also denied the perusal of letters which passed between wife and mistress, and which would have made his eyes blink in in­comprehension. Georgiana called her husband's mistress "my dearest, dearest, dearest Bess, my lovely
friend ...
my angel love", and she signs herself, "your idolizing G". In January
1784
she wrotes: "I am gulchy, gulchy when I reflect at the length of time that is elapsed since we first knew one another here, at the length of time since I have lost you and at the distance to our meeting, but I comfort myself by thinking what a sacredness all this gives to our friendship. Thank God, we have now been long enough united not to blush at the short period of our friendship. Dr Dr Dr Bess, you grow every day more and more Canis's* sister and yr Georgine's friend . . . you my love, are Canis's child's guardian angel, his and my benefac­tress." When she confesses to Bess that she is deep in shameful debt, she begs her: "My angel Bess, write to me, tell me you don't hate me for this confession, oh, love, love, love me ever."
²³

Before anyone should wonder, in this age when our sensibilities are smothered by psycho-analysis, I suppose one ought to point out that there was no trace of a lesbian relationship between the two women. It was common form to address one's friend as "dearest love"; people were less ashamed of emotion than they are now, and they valued attachments. Brothers used terms of affection when addressing their sisters that would now seem excessive. Bess was no doubt right to say that the friendship she had with the Duchess was stronger "than perhaps ever united two people".
²⁴
It certainly survived all the minor infidelities of love-making, and both Georgiana and Bess loved the Duke without feeling that they had therefore to hate each other.

Georgiana's decline into middle age was rapid, owing to the pace of her life, and the pills which she took to sustain her in it. Lady Holland described her in
1799,
when she was only forty-two, as "painful to see; scarcely has she a vestige of those charms that once attracted all hearts. Her figure is corpulent, her complexion coarse, one eye gone, and her neck immense."
²⁵
She had suffered torments with an infection of the eye, for which the medical attentions of the day were inadequate. She was prescribed an application of three spoonfuls of water mixed with two of brandy and one of vinegar, which all but ruined her sight completely. A handkerchief was tied around her neck to force all the blood into her head, and then leeches were applied to her eye to bleed it. Not surprisingly (to us) the eye became ulcerated and grew to the size of a grapefruit. She then changed to bathing it in warm milk, but it was too late. She fell back on laudanum to relieve the pain.

* "Canis" was the Duke. "Racky" was Bess, and "The Rat" was Georgiana.

Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire died in 1806 aged forty-eight, and with her died a brilliant epoch. Her friend Bess was distraught with grief. Her sister Lady Bessborough wrote : "Anything so horrible, so killing as her three days' agony no human being ever witnessed. I saw it all, held her thro' all her struggles, saw her expire, and since have again and again kiss'd her cold lips and press'd her lifeless body to my heart, and yet I am alive."
²⁶
Not having known her, we cannot judge how given to exaggeration her obituarists might have been, but one of them writes with the ring of conviction when he says, "never, we will venture to say, was the death of any human being more universally lamented than hers will be."
²⁷

With her died also that wonderful gift of affection possessed by the whole Devonshire House set. The next generation was much less generous of heart. Georgiana's children turned on Bess, who con­tinued to live with the Duke and grow old with him, and one of them, Harriet, known as Harryo, nursed an implacable hatred of her. When, three years later, the Duke took the only honourable and logical course by making Bess his second duchess, the children, now grown-up, were outraged. But the Duke first wrote a warm and eloquent letter to his mother-in-law Lady Spencer advising her of his intention.
²⁸

The marriage lasted only two years, for the Duke died in
1811,
though Bess's love for him continued beyond the grave. The children were quite insensitive, and Hart, now the new duke, ordered her to leave Devonshire House a week later. She spent her last years in exile in Rome, where she gathered around her a coterie of eminent people of culture, and where she died in 1824. Hart, by this time reconciled, had her body brought back to England, where it lay in state at Devonshire House, before being buried in the Cavendish vault at Derby, alongside her beloved duke and her beloved friend, Georgiana. Georgiana's son, Hart, the 6th Duke of Devonshire (1790-1858), led a life which was supremely characteristic of a Cavendish - unde­monstrative, unnoticed, and comfortable. In common with his ancestors, he was a man of much ability, which he never used. His talents lay neglected, for want of the energy to make them blossom. In his case, the habits of timidity and reserve were compounded by an incurable deafness, which showed itself in childhood and persisted throughout his life. As a result of this, he never spoke in the House of Lords, though he conscientiously sat there and gave his vote. His tastes were literary, being a member of the Roxburghe Club, and he devoted much attention to his library at Chatsworth, to which he added many volumes bought from the Duke of Roxburghe's collec­tion. A true Cavendish, his library was his home. Also like a Caven­dish, his hospitality was lavish. Though he may have preferred soli­tude, he saw it as his duty to entertain and to share his various homes. In his lights, it would have been immoral to live alone in a grand house, so he suffered what must have been torment for him, to be surrounded by forty people at dinner every day, talking in a cacophony of sound which he could not unscramble into words.