I have the greatest horror of her crime, I can not nor do not try to excuse her. But her conduct has been long imprudent, and yet, I have sup’d at her house, and I have enter’d with her into any scheme of amusement, etc., and now it does seem shocking to me, that at the time this poor creature is in distress, that at the time all her grandeur is crush’d around her, I should entirely abandon her, as if I said, I know you was imprudent formerly, but then you had a gay house and great suppers and so I came to you but now that you have nothing of all this, I will avoid you.21
The Spencers disagreed. They gave Georgiana a choice: either she dropped Lady Derby or they would never allow her sister Harriet to visit Devonshire House or Chatsworth. ‘If you sacrifice so much for a person who was never on a footing of friendship,’ wrote Lady Spencer, ‘what are you to do if Lady J or Lady M should proceed (and they are already far on their way) to the same lengths?’22 Georgiana surrendered, a little relieved to be excused from the unpleasant bickering which surrounded the affair. Lady Carlisle had issued an invitation to a party which included Lady Derby as a test of her friends’ loyalty. For four months society thought about nothing else. Then, in April, Lord Derby announced that he would not be divorcing her. It was a terrible revenge; by his refusal – it was almost impossible for a wife to divorce her husband except on the grounds of non-consummation – he consigned his wife to social limbo, disgraced, separated and unprotected. Only marriage to the Duke of Dorset would have brought about her social rehabilitation. Their relationship did not survive the strain of her ostracism, confirming Lady Sarah Lennox’s prediction. Two years later Lady Mary Coke recorded a rumour that Lady Derby had left for Italy with a certain Lord Jocelyn which, she wrote spitefully, merely confirmed her opinion of her.23
The reputation of the Duke of Dorset did not suffer. He had seduced another man’s wife, but while many people looked askance at his behaviour there was no question of excluding him from society. He even remained friends with Lord Derby and continued to be invited to his house. The Derby affair illustrates the point made by Georgiana in The Sylph: eighteenth-century society tolerated anything so long as there was no scandal. Publicly immoral behaviour earned public censure; private transgressions remained whispered gossip. In Lady Spencer’s words, Lady Derby ‘insulted the World with her Vice’.24
In July 1779, when the season was over, Georgiana went with her parents to Spa. The Duke did not accompany them, pleading military duty, and spent the summer marching his soldiers at the camp. The English and French aristocrats on holiday at Spa behaved as if the two countries were not at war. Good breeding and fine manners counted for more than martial spirits. Madame de Polignac had been waiting for Georgiana to arrive and they passed the holiday together, walking arm in arm through the wooded fields surrounding the village. They were such conspicuous companions that their friendship reached the notice of the English press. The Morning Herald and Daily Advertiser reported: ‘The reigning female favourite of the Queen of France is Madame Polignac, a great encomiast of the English, and a particular admirer of her Grace the Duchess of Devonshire …’25
On her return in September Georgiana experienced her first battle. They were travelling in a convoy of two packet boats, escorted by a naval sloop, The Fly, for protection. At dawn on 14 September French privateers attacked her boat. The Fly moved in to engage the French ships, enabling the packet boats to escape. Although he possessed only fourteen guns, Captain Garner fought for over two hours until both sides were too exhausted to continue. The half-sinking ship then managed to rejoin its frightened escorts and sail for England. Captain Garner immediately became a hero and the adventure was seized upon by the press as welcome propaganda.26 Spain had also declared war against Britain. The country was now fighting against a triple alliance.
When Georgiana rejoined the Duke at the camp in October 1779 she was appalled by the soldiers’ low morale as well as the lethargy of their leaders. The combined French and Spanish fleets had been sighted in the Channel; the government expected an invasion force to arrive at any day.
Lord Cholmondeley and Cl Dalrymple arriv’d here from Plymouth at 7 – they give a terrible account of the defenceless state of the place and the danger of the troops encamp’d on the Mount Edgcumb side [she wrote]. In case of the enemy’s landing they must all either perish by the invaders or be drown’d in making their escape. They say the troops are all out of spirits and looking on themselves as a forlorn hope, and the Duke of Rutland says he should think himself lucky to escape with the loss of an arm or a leg.27
She was determined to stay and watch the fight, telling her mother: ‘I rather think there will be an invasion and that I shall see something of it to complete the extraordinary sights I have been present at this year.’28 But the camp waited in readiness for an invasion which never came. The strain of anticipation was reflected in the drinking and debauchery that went on after dark; during one all-night party the stables burned down and six horses were killed.
Georgiana was soon fed up with camp life. She was more sensitive now to the sycophancy she perceived in some of her friends. Mrs Crewe, she complained, was caressing her without ceasing. Lady Frances Masham, she noticed, ‘always talks to me as if she thought I had not my five senses like other people’.29 She returned to Devonshire House without the Duke. Her departure annoyed the Cavendishes, who thought she had no right to go anywhere on her own when she had not yet given them an heir. ‘I found the Dss in town,’ wrote Lord Frederick Cavendish to Lady Spencer on 11 November 1779. ‘I never saw her Grace look better, [but] she laments that she has grown fat. To say the truth she does look bigger, I would fain have dropt the last syllable.’30
Fearing that she would never have a child, Georgiana noted every variation in her menstrual cycle with obsessive diligence. ‘The Prince is not yet come,’ she wrote to her mother in October, ‘but my pains are frequent and I continue the Spa water.’31 After five and a half years of marriage she was so desperate to conceive that she went to the notorious quack Dr James Graham. Lady Spencer was dismayed. ‘Let me entreat you not to listen to Dr Graham with regard to internal medicines,’ she urged, ‘but consult Warren.’32 Graham’s use of electricity, milk baths and friction techniques to encourage fertility in women and cure impotency in men left her unimpressed. Society, however, had taken him up and Graham was earning sufficient money to practise out of the Adelphi, where his Temple of Health and Hymen attracted long queues of desperate women. ‘Lady Carlisle went to see Dr Graham’s Electrical Machinery in the Adelphi,’ wrote Miss Lloyd to Lady Stafford, ‘[it is] a most curious sight, and he is a most wonderful man. She and I agree that he might be of use to you.’*33 Georgiana saw him for a couple of months, and then abruptly stopped. Her wish for a child had been answered, only the child was not hers: the Duke had asked her to accept his daughter Charlotte by his late mistress.34
Charlotte Spencer had remained his mistress until at least 1778, but what had happened to her then remains a mystery; it is known only that she died shortly afterwards. Georgiana’s thoughts on the situation have not survived – she almost certainly knew of the relationship: articles about it had appeared in the Bon Ton Magazine and the Town and Country Magazine. The latter had declared, ‘it was the greatest paradox’ that the Duke must be the