Charles James Fox, her second new acquaintance, made a great impression on Georgiana, not in a romantic way – that would emerge later – but intellectually. It was Fox, more than anyone else, who led Georgiana to her life’s vocation – politics. Fox was a brilliant though flawed politician. Short and corpulent, with shaggy eyebrows and a permanent five o’clock shadow, he was already at twenty-eight marked down as a future leader of the Whig party when the Marquess of Rockingham retired. Georgiana became friends with him when he came to stay at Chatsworth in 1777. His career until then had veered between political success and failure, between unimaginable wealth and bankruptcy. He confounded his critics with his irrepressible confidence, and exasperated his friends by his incontinent lifestyle. Eighteenth-century England was full of wits, connoisseurs, orators, historians, drinkers, gamblers, rakes and pranksters, but only Fox embodied all these things.
He was born in 1749, the second of the three surviving sons of the Whig politician Henry Fox, first Baron Holland, and Lady Caroline Lennox, daughter of the second Duke of Richmond. Although an unscrupulous and – even for the age – corrupt politician, Lord Holland was a tender husband and an indulgent father who shamelessly spoilt his children. No eighteenth-century upbringing has received more attention or encountered such criticism as Fox’s. By contemporary social standards the Holland household was a kind of freak show. There were stories of Fox casually burning his father’s carefully prepared speeches, smashing his gold watch to see how it would look broken, disrupting his dinners – and never being punished.
Having enjoyed such an unrestricted existence, both materially and emotionally, Fox was similarly open and generous with his friends. He was incapable of small-mindedness or petty ambition. It was this, coupled with his natural talent for leadership, which won him instant popularity at Eton and enduring friendships throughout his life. Before he joined the Whig party Fox seemed to have no ambition except pleasure and no political loyalties except to his father’s reputation. This he vigorously defended in parliament against charges that, as Paymaster-General during the Seven Years War, Lord Holland had embezzled the country out of millions. No one could deny that the family had become unaccountably rich during this period. However, after his father’s death in 1774 Fox did his best to return the fortune to the nation by gambling it away at Newmarket and Brooks’s.
Lord Holland’s last act before he died had been to pay off his son’s £140,000 debt,36 but this generous gift had no effect on Fox’s behaviour. He stayed up night after night, fighting his body’s urge to sleep with coffee and platefuls of food. According to one anecdote, he played hazard continuously from Tuesday to Wednesday night, winning, losing, recovering and finally losing all his money. He stopped on Thursday to rush to the House of Commons to participate in a debate on the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England, and went straight back to White’s afterwards. There he drank until Friday morning, when he walked to Almack’s and gambled until 4 p.m. Having won £6,000 he rode to Newmarket, where he lost £10,000.37 Though he very quickly frittered everything away, Fox could always count on friends like the Duke to support him financially and politically.* Occasionally he won money but he avoided games of skill, which he was very good at, for the excitement of games of chance. He spent so many hours at Brooks’s that he was rarely out of his gambling clothes.†
Fox displayed a sense of fun and theatre that equalled Georgiana’s. The term ‘macaroni’ was coined to describe the fashionable young fops of the 1770s who wore exaggerated clothes about town. The term probably originated in the 1760s, when members of the short-lived Macaroni Club brought attention to themselves by their predilection for all things foreign, especially food. Macaronis were much criticized in the press. The Oxford Magazine complained: ‘There is indeed a kind of animal, neither male nor female, a thing of the neuter gender, lately started up amongst us. It is called a Macaroni. It talks without meaning, it smiles without pleasantry, it eats without appetite, it rides without exercise, it wenches without passion.’38 Until his gambling debts made him poor, Fox was one of its most visible exemplars. Like Georgiana, he had an eye for colour and a talent for whimsy. The macaroni uniform strove for a super-slim elegance with narrow breeches and short, tight-fitting waistcoats. The flourish was in the finishes: large buttons and extravagant nosegays were essential; high-heeled shoes and a small hat perched on the side of the head added a certain flair. Fox’s particular contribution was to experiment with hair colour, powdering his hair blue one day, red the next. He wore multi-coloured shoes and velvet frills, a daring combination which challenged the fainthearted to follow him.
He went to stay at Chatsworth in August 1777, joining a large house party that included the Jerseys, the Clermonts, the Duke of Dorset, all the Cavendishes as well as their cousins the Ponsonbys, and the violinist Giardini. The week before his arrival Georgiana had written of her alarm and distress ‘at my own dispositions’. But she hid her feelings from her guests and no one noticed that her liveliness was as much a performance as the after-dinner entertainments.
Fox’s presence wrought an immediate change in Georgiana; he intrigued and stimulated her. For the first time since her initial attempts to educate herself two years before, she had found someone to emulate.
The great merit of C. Fox is his amazing quickness in seazing any subject’ [she wrote to her mother in August]. He seems to have the particular talent of knowing more about what he is saying and with less pains than anyone else. His conversation is like a brilliant player at billiards, the strokes follow one another piff puff – and what makes him more entertaining now is his being here with Mr Townsend and the D. of Devonshire, for their living so much together makes them show off to one another. Their chief topic is Politics and Shakespear. As for the latter they all three seem to have the most astonishing memorys for it, and I suppose I shall be able in time to go thro’ a play as they do …39
In her next letter Georgiana informed her mother that she was reading Vertot’s Revolutions of Sweden. ‘I think it is the most interesting book in the world, I really was quite agitated with my anxiety for Gustavas Vasa,’ she wrote. ‘Especially at seeing a generous and open hearted Hero fighting for the liberty of his country and to revenge the memory of an injur’d friend against lawless cruelty and oppressive tyranny.’40 This was the Whig political creed in a single line: the hero fighting for liberty against lawless cruelty and oppressive tyranny. In practical terms for the Rockingham Whig party of the 1770s it meant opposition to George III, a mistrust of the powers of the crown and a vigilance over civil liberties. Fox had probably suggested Vertot to Georgiana. He had only lately converted to Whiggism, having served as a junior minister in the treasury until his outrageous behaviour and erratic support drove George III and Lord North to remove him. ‘Indeed,’ the King wrote in disgust, ‘that young man has so thoroughly cast off every principle of common honour and honesty that he must become as contemptible as he is odious.’41 After his dismissal Fox became the protégé of Edmund Burke and under his tutelage recast his political ideas. The politician who once declared ‘[I] will not be a rebel to my King, my country or my own heart, for the loudest huzza of the inconsiderate multitude’ now claimed that the King ‘held nothing but what he held in trust for the people, for their use and benefit’.42
Fox’s ardour moved Georgiana. He talked to her as no one else did, treating her as his equal, discussing his ideas and encouraging her participation. She had once visited the House of Commons out of curiosity with Lady Jersey (women were banned from the gallery in 1778), but had not repeated the experiment. Fox awakened in her a sense of loyalty and commitment to the Whig party. By the time he left Chatsworth she was his devoted follower. Twenty years later she was still his most loyal supporter. ‘Charles always had faults,’