Lord Charles and Lady D. Thompson and Miss Hatham arrived and I was obliged (for they were let in before I knew anything about it) to pretend that I was gone walking and at last went down Drest the greatest figure you can Imagine [she wrote sadly to her mother]. To compleat my Distress another Coachful arrived – of People I had never seen before. As I could not have much to say for myself, and some of the Company were talking about things I knew nothing of, I made the silliest figure you can conceive, and J [Lord John Cavendish] says I broke all the rules of Hospitality in forgetting to offer them some breakfast.11
She also had to preside over the Public Days which had resumed after Lady Spencer’s departure. Chatsworth still maintained the tradition of holding a Public Day every week. On these occasions the house was open to all the Duke’s tenants, as well as to any respectable stranger who wished to see the house and have dinner with its owners. Georgiana and the Duke stood in the hall wearing their finest clothes, as if attending a state occasion, and personally greeted each visitor. They had to remain gracious and sober while their guests helped themselves to the free food and drink. ‘Some of the men got extremely drunk,’ Georgiana recorded after one dinner, and her friends, ‘if they had not made a sudden retreat, would have been the victims of a drunken clergyman, who very nearly fell on them.’12 Her first appearance naturally caused great excitement in Derbyshire, but after a few weeks the Public Days became less crowded. She learned how to orchestrate a room full of strangers, how to pick out those whom she ought particularly to distinguish, and how to detach herself from those who would otherwise cling to her arm all day.*
Public Days were a feudal relic from the era of vassals and private armies. Because of the expense only the grandest of families continued the tradition. Such lavish entertainment was now a means of cultivating good relations with the tenantry and of safeguarding local political influence. In the eighteenth century the maintenance of an electoral borough was a family matter; it was part of the estate, as tangible and valuable as land. The Cavendish influence in parliament depended on the number of MPs who sat in the family’s ‘interest’. At its height, thirteen MPs owed allegiance to the Duke, the second largest grouping within the Whig party after the Marquess of Rockingham, who had eighteen.13 Since the Duke’s brother-in-law the Duke of Portland controlled ten, when the Cavendishes collaborated they presented a formidable faction.
That year the Public Days had a particular purpose; a general election was scheduled in October and the Cavendishes were defending their electoral interests in Derbyshire. Since peers were barred from personally campaigning in parliamentary elections, their wives and relatives had to look after their interests for them. On 8 October Georgiana went to her first election ball in Derby, dressed in fashionable London clothes for the benefit of the locals. The Duke’s brothers were already drunk by the time she arrived and Lord Frederick Cavendish, the Duke’s uncle, almost fell on her as she climbed the stairs to the assembly room. An open-door policy operated, and the heat and sweat of so many bodies crammed together made the room suffocating. The musicians – the usual country players – made an appalling noise, each following a different measure.14 Nevertheless Georgiana kept her poise and danced to the tunes from memory, smiling graciously at her partners and at any townspeople who caught her eye. The next ball she attended revealed the Derbyshire voters’ opinion of the new Duchess: ‘we were received there by a great huzza,’ she recorded. ‘The room was very much crowded but they were so good as to split in 2 to make room for us.’15 Although the Whigs did not do well as a party in the election, the Duke’s candidates were voted in without any trouble. His bill came to £554, which was low compared to the average £5,000 spent on a contested election.16
The Spencers had to pay considerably more. Lady Spencer went to the borough of Northampton Town because Lord Spencer’s nominee Mr Tollemache was facing a challenge from a newcomer, Sir James Langham. ‘I have dined each day during the Poll at the George with all the gentlemen and am extremely popular among them,’ she wrote contentedly to Georgiana.17 She not only courted the gentlemen voters but bravely went out to rally the whole town:
I set out on Thursday morning with Mrs Tollemache in my Cabriolet and four, in hopes of putting a little spirit into our people who were sadly discompos’d at having neither money or drink offer’d them [she informed her daughter on 9 October 1774]. I succeeded beyond my expectations, for I no sooner got to the George than a little mob surrounded us and insisted on taking off our horses and drawing us around the town … in a very few minutes we had a mob of several hundred people screaming Spencer for ever – Tollemache and Robinson – No Langham. In this manner did they drag us about thro’ every street in the town, and were so delighted with my talking to them and shewing no signs of fear at going wherever they chose, that it was with the utmost difficulty I could in the evening … prevent their drawing me quite home to Althorp. I went thro’ the same ceremony again on Friday, when very luckily my chaise was broke … it has ensur’d Mr Tollemache a great majority, by putting such numbers of people in spirits and good humour who before were cross and sulky and would not vote because there was nothing to enliven them.18
Despite the fact that people responded favourably to her youth and enthusiasm, Georgiana was constantly terrified of forgetting herself and committing some faux pas. This worry was exacerbated by the Cavendishes, who sternly demanded that she conform to their ways. A century of political leadership and proud public service had made them self-conscious and introverted in their dealings with the outside world. The Cavendish way of doing things stamped itself on all members of the family, from the relentless self-control they exerted on their emotions to the peculiar drawl which marred their speech – they pronounced her name ‘George-ayna’. In her eagerness to be accepted Georgiana adopted all their mannerisms, even vigorously applying the Cavendish drawl.
By now, three months into her marriage, Georgiana could not help but suspect the true nature of the Duke’s feelings towards her. He was kind in a distant sort of way, but he was naturally reticent and she soon realized that they had little in common. Her innocence bored him and Georgiana was too acute not to notice his lack of interest in her. She told her mother that she was secretly making an effort to be more attractive to him. Since he was so much more worldly than her, she read Lord Chesterfield’s Letters to His Son; and knowing of his interest in history and the classics she began several books on ancient Greece and on the reign of Louis XIV, ‘for as those two periods are so distant there will be no danger of their interfering so as to puzzle me’.19
At first Lady Spencer tried to reassure her that the Duke ‘was no less happy than herself’.20 She also supplied her daughter with advice on how to please him, suggesting that she should curb any thoughts of independence and show her submission by anticipating his desires:
But where a husband’s delicacy and indulgence is so great that he will not say what he likes, the task becomes more difficult, and a wife must use all possible delicacy and ingenuity in trying to find out his inclinations, and the utmost readiness in conforming to them. You have this difficult task to perform, my dearest Georgiana, for the Duke of D., from a mistaken tenderness, persists in not dictating to you the things he wishes you to do, and not contradicting you in anything however disagreeable to him. This should engage you by a thousand additional motives of duty and gratitude to try to know his sentiments upon even the most trifling subjects, and especially not to enter into any engagements or form any plans without consulting him …21
Unwilling