Georgiana combined a perfect mastery of etiquette with a mischievous grace and ease which met with approval in the artificial and mannered atmosphere of the French court. Wherever Georgiana accompanied Lady Spencer people marvelled at the way in which she seemed so natural and yet also conscious of being on show. Many were daunted by the complex and highly choreographed set-pieces which passed for social discourse in French salons. ‘It was no ordinary science,’ reminisced a retired courtier, ‘to know how to enter with grace and assurance a salon where thirty men and women were seated in a circle round the fire, to penetrate this circle while bowing slightly to everyone, to advance straight to the mistress of the house, and to retire with honour, without clumsily disarranging one’s fine clothes, lace ruffles, [and] head-dress of thirty-six curls powdered like rime …’39
The family travelled around France for a few months and then moved on to Spa in the summer of 1773, where Georgiana celebrated her sixteenth birthday. They found many friends already there, including the twenty-four-year-old Duke of Devonshire. His family had always been regular visitors: it was at Spa that his father the fourth Duke had died in 1764 aged forty-four, worn out after his short but harrowing stint as Prime Minister in 1756.* The Devonshires ranked among the first families of England and commanded a special place in British history. They had been involved in politics since the reign of Henry VIII, when Sir William Cavendish oversaw the dissolution of the monasteries. Sir William was the second husband of four to the redoubtable Bess of Hardwick, the richest woman in England after Elizabeth I and the most prolific builder of her age. He was the only one whom she married for love, and when she died all her accumulated wealth went to her Cavendish sons. The eldest, William, used his mother’s fortune to purchase the earldom of Devonshire from James I for £10,000. His descendants followed his example and devoted their lives to increasing the family’s wealth and power.
Seventy years later, on 30 June 1688, the fourth Earl of Devonshire joined with six other parliamentary notables (‘the Immortal Seven’) and issued a secret invitation to William of Orange to come to England and take the throne from the Catholic James II. When William arrived the Earl personally toured the Midlands with his own militia and subdued the countryside around Derbyshire and Cheshire. He received a dukedom for his bravery, as did several of his Whig colleagues. It was not bigotry which had prompted the first Duke to act but political idealism; he, along with many other Whigs, had suspected King James of plotting to reduce the power of parliament in order to establish an absolutist monarchy, similar to that enjoyed by his cousin Louis XIV in France. William’s acceptance of their offer of the crown, as well as the conditions imposed by parliament, resulted in the establishment of the Revolution Settlement. This guaranteed the sovereignty of parliament over a constitutional monarchy, and restricted the succession to royal members of the Protestant faith. Subsequent generations of Whigs revered the 1688 revolutionaries as the guardians of English liberty. They looked to the descendants of the Immortal Seven to maintain the Whig party and to keep its ideals alive.
At first the fortunes of the party fluctuated as its leaders gained or lost favour at court, and factions fought for control. By 1714, however, the Whigs had crushed the rival Tory party and from then on they experienced little opposition except from disgruntled members within their own party. The first two Georges suspected the defeated Tories of having Jacobite sympathies – certainly some had links with the exiled heir of King James – and proscribed the party from office. By the time the twenty-two-year-old George III ascended the throne in 1760 the terms Whig and Tory had become almost obsolete. Instead there were different factions of Whigs led by rival politicians. The Cavendishes, Pelhams and Russels had been in power for so many years that political office seemed theirs by right; they were entirely unprepared for what followed. The new King’s first act was to dismiss the cabinet. He had long regarded the Whig leadership as a cynical and corrupt rabble, and in their place he appointed his tutor, Lord Bute, to form a new government.
The fourth Duke of Devonshire was among the casualties. Without warning the King removed him from his post as Lord Chamberlain and had his name scratched from the Privy Council. After a lifetime spent serving the court this graceless demotion was an insult which the Duke would never forgive nor the party forget. When he died a few years later his sixteen-year-old son William (who was never referred to as anything except ‘the Duke’) inherited the quarrel and automatically became heir-presumptive to the leadership of the Whig party. But a contemporary politician, Nathaniel Wraxall, who knew him well, bemoaned the fact that the Whigs had to rely on a man so ill-suited to public life: ‘Constitutional apathy formed his distinguishing characteristic. His figure was tall and manly, though not animated or graceful, his manners, always calm and unruffled. He seemed to be incapable of any strong emotion, and destitute of all energy or activity of mind. As play became indispensable in order to arouse him from his lethargic habit, and to awaken his torpid faculties, he passed his evenings usually at Brooks’s, engaged at whist or faro.’40
The Duke had had a lonely upbringing which was reflected in his almost pathological reserve. One of his daughters later joked that their only means of communication was through her dog: ‘the whole of tea and again at supper, we talked of no one subject but the puppies … I quite rejoice at having one in my possession, for it is never a failing method of calling his attention and attracting his notice.’41 However, behind the Duke’s wooden façade was an intelligent and well-educated mind. According to Wraxall, his friends regarded him as an expert on Shakespeare and the classics: ‘On all disputes that occasionally arose among the members of the club [Brooks’s] relative to passages of the Roman poets or historians, I know that appeal was commonly made to the Duke, and his decision or opinion was regarded as final.’42
The Duke had barely known his mother, Lady Charlotte Boyle, who died when he was six. The fourth Duke had married her against his own mother’s wishes. There was no clear reason for the Duchess’s objection – she called it ‘an accursed match’ – particularly since Lady Charlotte brought a vast fortune to the family, her father, the Earl of Burlington, having no heir. But the Duchess would have nothing more to do with her son; when he died ten years later she made no attempt to see her grandchildren. The fifth Duke, his two brothers Lords Richard and George, and sister Lady Dorothy, were brought up in cold splendour in the care of their Cavendish uncles.
Georgiana’s future husband was only sixteen when he came into an income that was twice Lord Spencer’s; by one account it amounted to more than £60,000 a year. His property included not only the magnificent Chatsworth in Derbyshire and Devonshire House in London, but five other estates of comparable grandeur: Lismore Castle in Ireland, Hardwick House and Bolton Abbey in Yorkshire, and Chiswick House and Burlington House in London. He was one of the most sought-after bach-elors in London – although Mrs Delany was mystified as to the reason why. ‘The Duke’s intimate friends say he has sense, and does not want merit,’ she wrote. But in her opinion he was boring and gauche: ‘To be sure the Jewell has not been well polished: had he fallen under the tuition of the late Lord Chesterfield he might have possessed les graces, but at present only that of his dukedom belongs to him.’43 As one newspaper delicately put it, ‘His Grace is an amiable and respectable character, but dancing is not his forte.’44
Superficially, the