The Duchess. Amanda Foreman

Bess and my dear Little Charlotte tomorrow,’ she wrote. ‘It will do them so much good that I don’t allow myself to be much vex’d. But I shall miss them both very much.’³⁸ Lady Spencer hoped, as much as Bess feared, that the separation would mean the end of her reign over the Devonshires. But neither reckoned on the strength of Georgiana’s attachment. ‘My dearest, dearest, dearest Bess, my lovely friend,’ she wrote in a letter accompanying a box stuffed with gifts. ‘If I am mistaken and that you are grown “Ah te voilà ma petite” to your G. throw this into the sea. Mais non c’est impossible, pardonnez moi, mon ange, Je crois que je vous dis quelquefois des brutalités pour avoir le bonheur de m’entendre contredire.’^†39 Bess’s mother, Lady Bristol, informed her daughter that Georgiana had written and visited several times just to talk to her. ‘You have done well, most certainly,’ she congratulated, ‘to leave your interest in her hands.’⁴⁰

* She was referring to Bess’s grandfather Lord Hervey, who died before he could become the second Earl of Bristol. Despite suffering from severe epilepsy and general ill-health, Lord Hervey was, for a time, a brilliantly successful courtier. He recorded his career in the witty and scabrous Memoirs of George II, which was published after his death. Although he married the clever and beautiful Molly Lepel, his real love was for Stephen Fox, Charles Fox’s uncle. The poet Alexander Pope wrote a vicious poem about him: ‘Amphibious thing! that acting either part,/ The Trifling head, or the corrupted heart/ Fop at the toilet, flatterer at the board,/ Now trips a lady, now struts a lord …’

†George, the eldest son of Lord Hervey, died unmarried. His second son, Augustus, who became the third Earl of Bristol, did so in a blaze of scandal. Many years before he had secretly married Elizabeth Chudleigh, a rambunctious lady-in-waiting at court with ambition and a reputation to match. The alliance was short-lived and both of them agreed to maintain the pretence of there never having been a marriage. Elizabeth then married the Duke of Kingston, who knew nothing of her previous life, but after the Duke died her past was exposed in a court case over the will. The Countess-Duchess – as Horace Walpole called her – was tried for bigamy in the House of Lords in 1776 in front of 6,000 spectators. One of the many peeresses who crammed into the gallery during the lengthy trial was Georgiana. Because of her age and status, the Duchess of Kingston escaped branding on the hand, the usual punishment, and was allowed to retire abroad. Augustus was condemned for conniving in the deception and his punishment was severe: the Lords insisted the original marriage was indissoluble, thus depriving him of legitimate heirs.

* There is also a vague hint in surviving letters that Bess had become, or contemplated becoming, the mistress of that great seducer the Duke of Dorset. The clues come from gossip repeated by Lady George Cavendish, who baldly stated that Bess had an affair with Dorset, but also from some little admissions in Bess’s own letters. In one fragment she refers to her separation from Mr Foster and that she told him, ‘I never would quit him in any misfortune – it was after all that, that he went down to Ickworth and my mother would not see him. Yet I think I should not have answered at all, but to deny the thing.’ She does not say what she should have denied to Mr Foster, except that they were ‘imprudencies, which though no cause of my separation were subjects of blame’. Chatsworth 532.4: Bess to GD, circa Sept. 1783.

†But that is not possible. Forgive me, my angel. I believe I say these terrible things merely in order to hear them contradicted.

       7An Unstable Coalition1783

       Her Grace the Duchess of Devonshire has determined not to appear in public till after her lying-in; as she had long been leader of the fashion, we hope the ladies will follow her example, and get into the straw as fast as possible.

      Morning Herald and Daily Advertiser, 8 February 1783

      ONCE BESS had set sail on the packet to France, enriched with money, new clothes and a letter of introduction to the Polignacs, Georgiana was free to resume her former activities. Her long absence from London during 1782 had reduced her to the role of spectator of most of the developments affecting the Whigs. Defying reports by the Morning Herald and other newspapers that she would withdraw from public life until the end of her pregnancy, Georgiana now re-established herself as Fox’s ally and political confidante. He frequently stopped by Devonshire House to discuss his worries. The strain he was under showed in his bloodshot eyes and in the weight he had put on since the previous summer. ‘He says ev’ry body is grown fat even Mr Hare,’ Georgiana replied to her mother’s enquiry; ‘and that the people who are said to be thin are only call’d so because they have not increas’d with the rest of the world.’¹

      The Rockingham – Shelburne Coalition had been in trouble from the beginning. George III would only talk to Lord Shelburne and pointedly ignored all the Whigs’ requests for patronage. As early as June 1782 some Whigs were already condemning the Coalition as unworkable. Then Lord Rockingham came down with the flu; within two weeks he was dead. He had been in office for just three months, after almost two decades in opposition. The Duke of Portland took over as the official head of the party, while Fox remained the heir apparent. Rockingham’s death further exposed the deep fissures in the cabinet between his supporters and those of Lord Shelburne. Fox had been on the point of resigning his post as Foreign Secretary when Rockingham died. On 4 July he surrendered his seal of office. Lord John Cavendish, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer, followed – along with most of the Whigs. But many thought that Fox was wrong to give up so quickly. It took a nine-hour meeting at Lord Fitzwilliam’s before he was able to persuade his supporters that he had not made a terrible mistake.