Georgiana Cavendish, an Amazing Woman

Happy Birthday to Georgiana Spencer Cavendish, the 5th Duchess of Devonshire!

She was born on 7 June 1757, the eldest child of John Spencer (who would later become 1st Earl Spencer) and Georgiana Poyntz. As a girl she was affectionately called “Little Gee” by her family, and she was an indirect ancestress of Lady Diana Spencer’s. During their lives, both Little Gee and Lady Di were the focus cultural fascination and intense media scrutany, luminaries of fashion and charity, renown as devoted mothers, known to be in unhappy marriages, and a source of profound public grief upon their deaths.

Georgiana, a beautiful, accomplished, intelligent, and wealthy peeress, married William Cavendish, the 5th Duke of Devonshire on her 17th birthday in 1774. The groom was the catch of the season, and his being only 25 and not bad to look at made him that much more of a matrimonial coup for the Spencer family. However, the duke was also spoiled beyond belief and weirder than anyone had an inkling of.

Their union was strange and often tumultuous, filled with persistent affairs on his side and at least one extreme lapse on her part, but nonetheless it was not entirely unhappy. It was also, scandalously, a  ménage à trois (probably a platonic one for the duchess).

The duke was a very cold and distant spouce, so in 1782 Georgiana turned to the warm and loving Lady Elizabeth “Bess” Foster to met her emotional needs. There is, in spite of speculation, no evidence the two women were in a sexual relationship. However, Bess was — without doubt — in a sexual relationship with the duke. She also enjoyed dalliances with other men. Neither the duke or the duchess minded their friend’s exuberantly lusty ways, and all three of them lived together contentedly. The stresses in the relationship between William and Georgiana were the result of his hard-hearted personality and her unfortunate miscarriages during the first decade of their marriage, not the duke’s affairs. Bess seems to have made these stresses more bearable for both parties when she became a fixed part of their marriage.

Another thing that should have caused problems in Devonshires’ marriage, but didn’t, was the duke’s illegitimate daughter, Charlotte Williams. The little girl was the fruit of the duke’s liaison with a milliner, and he honorably provided upkeep for his offspring and her mother. When Charlotte’s mother died, the child came to live with the duke and his wife. Even though the duchess had been wracked by miscarriages and could have understandably been reluctant to have proof of her husband’s virility rubbed in her face, she did not resent Charlotte’s presence one tiny jot. Instead, Georgiana welcomed the tot with open arms and loved her as a daughter. When Georgiana’s own mother complained of the child’s presence, and told her daughter to not let people know about Charlotte, the duchess  merely praised her semi-adopted daughter and went on her merry, nurturing way. Moreover, the duchess was just as loving toward Bess’s children by the duke, Caroline Rosalie St Jules and Augustus Clifford.

Georgiana was eventually able to carry a pregnancy to term, and she was (to no one’s surprise) a profoundly devoted mother. Her first daughter, Lady Georgiana Dorothy Cavendish, was born on 12 July 1783. The duchess called her namesake “Little G”, and breastfed her newborn rather than allowing a wet nurse to be brought in. Georgiana simply adored Little G, and her daughter was the sun around which the duchess revolved.

The first successful pregnancy must have brought good luck, because on 29 August 1785, Georgiana gave birth to another daughter. The baby was named Lady Harriet Elizabeth Cavendish, but was called called “Harryo” by her family. Then, on 21 May 1790, the duchess gave birth to the duke’s heir, William George Spencer Cavendish. The little boy was nicknamed “Hart”, possibly because he kicked like a deer. Sadly, Georgiana’s love for her children would make it very easy for her husband to manipulate her, since they were, by law, HIS property and he could forbid her access to them on a whim.

Ironically, Georgiana was almost universally adored and loved by everyone BUT her husband. Her sweet nature, good humour, and stunning looks made her immensely popular. Horace Walpole called her a “phenomenon” and declared that she “effaces all without being a beauty; but her youthful figure, flowing good nature, sense and lively modesty, and modest familiarity make her a phenomenon.” Likewise, Sir Nathaniel William Wraxall said she was so alluring because of the “amenity and graces of her deportment, in her irresistible manners, and the seduction of her society.” The duchess herself, though, claimed her highest praise came from an Irish dustman who cried out upon seeing her, “Love and bless you, my lady, let me light my pipe in your eyes!” From then on, whenever she was lauded by anyone else she would respond by saying, “After the dustman’s compliment, all others are insipid.”

She wasn’t just a pretty face; she was also a gifted author. She wrote Emma; Or, The Unfortunate Attachment: A Sentimental Novel in 1773, and then anonymously published The Sylph in 1778. The Sylph was a huge hit, and is thought to be a semi-autobiographical tale of how she went from a promising young bride to a jaded matron no longer capable of being shocked by any depravity committed by a member the peerage.

The duchess was also a badass political campaigner and full-on progressive. She was a hard-core Whig, and she supported Catholic emancipation, the abolition of slavery and what we would now call labour reform and human rights. She “inspired a mass of women to promote the Whig party” and campaigned fiercely for the reelection of Charles James Fox.  Of course, she paid for her political activities by being slut shamed. How dare this woman have political influence! Rumours were spread by the Tories that the duchess was using sexual favours to turn the political tide for the Whigs; after all, she couldn’t have just been using reason and intellect to influence people! Women didn’t use their brains. Women could only use their vagina.

Her mother begged her to stop campaigning, because of the incessant slut shaming Georgian was enduring. Nevertheless, she persisted. The duchess actually walked the streets of London before elections arguing for political candidates, and she was a critical factor in the Whig gains in parliament. It seems a shame to think the duchess is remembered more for her unorthodox marriage and love-life than for her literary accomplishments and her sociopolitical expertise.

Through her political activities on behalf of the Whigs, she met and fell in love with Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey. They began their affair in 1791, and Grey begged her to leave the duke and marry him instead. She knew she would never see her children again if she did that, so she had to refuse him. When the news of their relationship became too public, the duke, while continuing to sleep with Bess and any other woman who’d have him, called Georgina to heel and used their children to blackmail her into giving Grey up. Georgiana left Grey for the sake of her children in 1792, but by then she was pregnant with Grey’s child. Although she had welcomed several of the duke’s illegitimate children into her home and raised them, the duke forced her to go to France to have Grey’s daughter in secret, and then forced her to give the child to Grey’s parents.

Her letters to her children while she was away in France were heartbreaking. She wrote to her eldest daughter, “”Your letter dated the 1st of Nov was delightful to me tho’ it made me very melancholy my Dearest Child. This year has been the most painful of my life. . . when I do return to you, never leave you I hope again–it will be too great a happiness for me Dear Dear Georgiana & it will have been purchased by many days of regret – indeed ev’ry hour I pass away from you, I regret you; if I amuse myself or see anything I admire I long to share the happiness with you – if on the contrary I am out of spirits I wish for your presence which alone would do me good.” She also left a letter for her infant son, in case she died in childbirth and never saw him again, in which she declared, “As soon as you are old enough to understand this letter it will be given to you. It contains the only present I can make you–my blessing, written in my blood…Alas, I am gone before you could know me, but I lov’d you, I nurs’d you nine months at my breast. I love you dearly.”

Georgiana was devastated when she had to turn over her daughter, Eliza Courtney, to Grey’s parents. The duchess wrote several poems to her illegitimate daughter, and you can positively wring the anguish from them. In one poem she compares Eliza to a secret flower she cannot see but constantly remembers and yearns to hold again:

And yet remote from public view / flower there is of timid hue,
Beneath a sacred shade it grows / But sweet in native fragrance blows.
From storms secure, from tempests free / But ah! too seldom seen by me.
For scarce permitted to behold / With longing eyes each grace unfold.
My bosom struggles with its pain / And checks the wishes form’d in vain;
Yet when I perchance supremely blest / I hold the floweret to my breast,
Enraptur’d watch its purple glow / And blessings (all I have) bestow.
The gentle fragrance soothes my care / And fervent is my humble prayer
That no dread evil may beset / My sweet but hidden violet.

Unhappy child of indiscretion,
poor slumberer on a breast forlorn
pledge of reproof of past transgression
Dear tho’ unfortunate to be born

Although Georgiana forgave her husband, assuming (like other women of her time) that it was his right to treat her that way and to have full ownership of her children, her spirit was broken by the relinquishment of Eliza Courtney. Her health began to decline, and she became a gambling addict.

She didn’t let her personal grief and illnesses prevent her from spending the last decade of her life productively, though. She was still able write two significant pieces of work before her death, Memorandums of the Face of the Country in Switzerland in 1799, and in 1802 an epic poem that she dedicated to her children entitled The Passage of the Mountain of Saint Gothard. The poem was a hit with both critics and the public both at home and abroad, and was translated into French, German, and Italian. Additionally, she became interested in science, supporting the work of pioneering chemist with Thomas Beddoes and amassing an impressive geological collection at Chatsworth. As if all these accomplishments were not enough, she threw herself back into Whig politics at home, taking strides to rejuvenate the party despite the long-term Tory domination of parliament. She also had the pleasure of seeing her daughter Little G come out into society, and make an excellent marriage to George Howard, Viscount Morpeth, the eldest son and heir 5th Earl of Carlisle.

Sadly, Georgiana would die before seeing her first grandchild. The duchess slipped away after a long illness (suspected of being liver disease), on 30 March 1806 and was laid to rest in the Cavendish family vault at All Saints Parish Church (now Derby Cathedral). Her family, even her husband, were all said to have been “inconsolable” when she died. A contemporary of the couple wrote, “The Duke has been most deeply affected and has shown more feeling than anyone thought possible–indeed every individual in the family are in a dreadful state of affliction.” 

All of Britain seemed to feel her loss. “Thousands of the people of London congregated at Piccadily, where the Cavendish home in the city was located, to mourn her.” Her friends, such as Charles James Fox, werent the only ones who wept when they heard she had passed on. The Prince of Wales — who had come to hate her politics — also grieved that, “The best natured and the best bred woman in England is gone.” 

Her last two literary works were reprinted again after her death, and she remained a noted figure of near legendary admiration among the Ton and English politics for decades.