Beaux and Belles of England by Mary Robinson

M >> Mary Robinson >> Beaux and Belles of England

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On the youth, who addresses him as _mon pèr_, a slight glance is allowed
even from those downcast eyes which none may ever look into too full.
Eugène Beauharnais, his stepson, the son of his ever-loved Josephine,
has a place in that remorseless heart. "All are not evil." Is it some
inkling of the parental love, is it ambition, that causes the first
consul to be always accompanied by that handsome youth, fascinating as
his mother, libertine as his stepfather, but destitute at once of the
sensibilities of the former and of the powerful intelligence of
the latter?

It is on him--on Eugène Beauharnais--that the hopes of the proud Duchess
of Gordon rest. Happily for her whom she would willingly have given to
him as a bride, her scheme was frustrated. Such a sacrifice was
incomplete.

Look now from the windows of that gallery; let your gaze rest on the
parade below, in the Rue de Rivoli, through which Buonaparte is riding
at the head of his staff to the review. He has mounted a beautiful white
horse; his aids-de-camp are by his side, followed by his generals. He
rides on so carelessly that an ordinary judge would call him an
indifferent equestrian. He holds his bridle first in one hand, then in
another, yet he has the animal in perfect control; he can master it by a
single movement. As he presents some swords of honour, the whole bearing
and aspect of the man change. He is no longer the melancholy student;
stretching out his arm, the severe, scholastic mien assumes instantly a
military and commanding air.

Then the consular band strike up a march, and the troops follow in grand
succession toward the Champs Élysées. The crowds within the gallery
disappear; I look around me: the hedges of human beings who had been
standing back to let the hero pass, are broken, and all are hurrying
away. The pages are lounging; the aids-de-camp are gone; already is
silence creeping over that vast gallery of old historic remembrances. Do
not our hearts sink? Here, in this centre window, Marie Antoinette
showed her little son to the infuriated mob below. She stood before
unpitying eyes. Happier had it been for him, for her, had they died
then. Will those scenes, we thought, ever recur? They have--they have!
mercifully mitigated, it is true; yet ruthless hands have torn from
those walls their rich hangings. By yon door did the son of Égalité
escape. Twice has that venerable pile been desecrated. Even in 152, when
crowds hastened to the first ball given by Napoleon III., he traces of
the last revolution were pointed out to the dancers. They have darkened
the floors; all is, it is true, not only renovated, but embellished, so
as to constitute the most gorgeous of modern palaces; yet for how long?

It is, indeed, in mercy that many of our wishes are denied us. Eugène
Beauharnais was even then, destined to a bride whom he had never seen,
the eldest daughter of that Elector of Bavaria to whom Buonaparte had
given royalty; and the sister of Ludwig, the ex-King of Bavaria, was the
destined fair one. They were married; and she, at all events, was fond,
faithful, nay, even devoted. He was created Duke of Leuchtenberg, and
Marie of Leuchtenberg was beautiful, majestic, pious, graceful; but she
could not keep his heart. So fair was she, with those sweet blue eyes,
that pearl-like skin, that fine form, made to show off the _parures_ of
jewels which poor Josephine bequeathed to her--so fair was she, that
when Buonaparte saw her before her bridal, he uttered these few words,
"Had I known, I would have married her myself." Still she was but
second, perhaps third, perhaps fourth ('tis a way they have in France)
in his affections; nevertheless, when he died,--and it was in his youth,
and Thorwaldsen has executed a noble monument of him in the Dom Kirche
at Munich,--when that last separation came, preceded by many a one that
had been voluntary on his part, his widow mourned, and no second bridal
ever tempted her to cancel the remembrance of Eugène Beauharnais.

For Lady Georgiana Gordon, a happier fate was reserved. She married, in
1803, John, the sixth Duke of Bedford, a nobleman whose character would
have appeared in a more resplendent light had he not succeeded a brother
singularly endowed, and whose death was considered to be a public
calamity. Of Francis, Duke of Bedford, who was summoned away in his
thirty-seventh year, Fox said: "In his friendships, not only was he
disinterested and sincere, but in him were to be found united all the
characteristic excellencies that have ever distinguished the men most
renowned for that virtue. Some are warm, but volatile and inconstant; he
was warm too, but steady and unchangeable. Where his attachment was
placed, there it remained, or rather there it grew.... If he loved you
at the beginning of the year, and you did nothing to lose his esteem, he
would love you more at the end of it; such was the uniformly progressive
state of his affections, no less than of his virtue and friendship."

John, Duke of Bedford, was a widower of thirty-seven when he married
Georgiana, remembered as the most graceful, accomplished, and charming
of women. The duke had then five sons, the youngest of whom was Lord
John Russell, and the eldest Francis, the present duke. By his second
duchess, Georgiana, the duke had also a numerous family. She survived
until 1853. The designs formed by the duchess to marry Lady Georgiana to
Pitt first, and then to Eugène Beauharnais, rest on the authority of
Wraxall, who knew the family of the Duke of Gordon personally; but he
does not state them as coming from his own knowledge. "I have good
reason," he says, "for believing them to be founded in truth. They come
from very high authority."

Notwithstanding the preference evinced by the Prince of Wales for the
Duchess of Devonshire, he was at this time on very intimate terms with
her rival in the sphere of fashion, and passed a part of almost every
evening in the society of the Duchess of Gordon. She treated him with
the utmost familiarity, and even on points of great delicacy expressed
herself very freely. The attention of the public had been for some time
directed toward the complicated difficulties of the Prince of Wales's
situation. His debts had now become an intolerable burden; and all
applications to his royal father being unavailing, it was determined by
his friends to throw his Royal Highness on the generosity of the House
of Commons. At the head of those who hoped to relieve the prince of his
embarrassments were Lord Loughborough, Fox, and Sheridan. The
ministerial party were under the guidance of Pitt, who avowed his
determination to let the subject come to a strict investigation.

This investigation referred chiefly to the prince's marriage with Mrs.
Fitzherbert, who, being a Roman Catholic, was peculiarly obnoxious both
to the court and to the country, notwithstanding her virtues, her
salutary influence over the prince, and her injuries.

During this conjuncture the Duchess of Gordon acted as mediator between
the two conflicting parties, alternately advising, consoling, and even
reproving the prince, who threw himself on her kindness. Nothing could
be more hopeless than the prince's affairs if an investigation into the
source of his difficulties took place; nothing could be less desired by
his royal parents than a public exposure of his life and habits. The
world already knew enough and too much, and were satisfied that he was
actually married to Mrs. Fitzherbert. At this crisis, the base falsehood
which denied that union was authorised by the prince, connived at by
Sheridan, who partly gave it out in the House, and consummated by Fox. A
memorable, a melancholy scene was enacted in the House of Commons on the
8th of April, 1787,--a day that the admirers of the Whig leaders would
gladly blot out from the annals of the country. Rolle, afterward Lord
Rolle, having referred to the marriage, Fox adverted to his allusion,
stating it to be a low, malicious calumny. Rolle, in reply, admitted the
legal impossibility of the marriage, but maintained "that there were
modes in which it might have taken place." Fox replied that he denied it
in point of fact, as well as of law, the thing never having been done in
any way. Rolle then asked if he spoke from authority. Fox answered in
the affirmative, and here the dialogue ended, a profound silence
reigning throughout the House and the galleries, which were crowded to
excess. This body of English gentlemen expressed their contempt more
fully by that ominous stillness, so unusual in that assembly, than any
eloquence could have done. Pitt stood aloof; dignified, contemptuous,
and silent. Sheridan challenged from Rolle some token of satisfaction at
the information; but Rolle merely returned that he had indeed received
an answer, but that the House must form their own opinion on it. In the
discussions which ensued, a channel was nevertheless opened for mutual
concessions--which ended eventually in the relief of the prince from
pecuniary embarrassments, part of which were ascribed to the king's
having appropriated to his own use the revenues of the duchy of
Cornwall, and refusing to render any account of them on the prince's
coming of age. It was the mediation of the Duchess of Gordon that
brought the matter promptly to a conclusion, and through her
representations, Dundas was sent to Canton House, to ascertain from the
prince the extent of his liabilities; an assurance was given that
immediate steps would be taken to relieve his Royal Highness. The
interview was enlivened by a considerable quantity of wine; and after a
pretty long flow of the generous bowl, Dundas's promises were
energetically ratified. Never was there a man more "malleable," to use
Wraxall's expression, than Harry Dundas. Pitt soon afterward had an
audience equally amicable with the prince.

From this period until after the death of Pitt, in 1806, the Duchess of
Cordon's influence remained in the ascendant. The last years of the man
whom she had destined for her son-in-law, and who had ever been on terms
of the greatest intimacy with her, were clouded. Pitt had the misfortune
not only of being a public man,--for to say that is to imply a sacrifice
of happiness,--but to be a public man solely. He would turn neither to
marriage, nor to books, nor to agriculture, nor even to friendship, for
the repose of a mind that could not, from insatiable ambition, find
rest. He died involved in debt--in terror and grief for his country. He
is said never to have been in love. At twenty-four he had the sagacity,
the prudence, the reserve of a man of fifty. His excess in wine
undermined his constitution, but was source of few comments when his
companions drank more freely than men in office had ever been known to
do since the time of Charles II. Unloved he lived; and alone, uncared
for, unwept, he died. That he was nobly indifferent to money, that he
had a contempt for everything mean, or venal, or false, was, in those
days, no ordinary merit.

During the whirl of gaiety, politics, and matchmaking, the Duchess of
Gordon continued to read, and to correspond with Beattie upon topics of
less perishable interest than the factions of the hour. Beattie sent her
his "Essay on Beauty" to read in manuscript; he wrote to her about
Petrarch, about Lord Monboddo's works, and Burke's book on the French
Revolution,--works which the duchess found time to read and wished to
analyse. Their friendship, so honoured to her, continued until his
death in 1803.

The years of life that remained to the Duchess of Gordon must have been
gladdened by the birth of her grandchildren, and by the promise of her
sons George, afterward Duke of Gordon, and Alexander. The illness of
George III., the trials of Hastings and of Lord Melville, the general
war, were the events that most varied the political world, in which she
ever took a keen interest. She died in 1812, and the duke married soon
afterward Mrs. Christie, by whom he had no children.

The dukedom of Gordon became extinct at his death; and the present
representative of this great family is the Marquis of Huntley.

GEORGIANA, DUCHESS OF DEVONSHIRE

[Illustration: Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire From the painting by
Gainsborough]

GEORGIANA, DUCHESS OF DEVONSHIRE

Notwithstanding the purity of morals enjoined by the court of George
III., the early period of his reign presents a picture of dissolute
manners as well as of furious party spirit. The most fashionable of our
ladies of rank were immersed in play or devoted to politics; the same
spirit carried them into both. The Sabbath was disregarded, spent often
in cards or desecrated by the meetings of partisans of both factions;
moral duties were neglected and decorum outraged.

The fact was that a minor court had become the centre of all the bad
passions and reprehensible pursuits in vogue. Carlton House, in Pall
Mall, which even the oldest of us can barely remember, with its elegant
screen, open, with pillars in front, its low exterior, its many small
rooms, the vulgar taste of its decorations, and, to crown the whole, the
associations of a corrupting revelry with the whole place,--Canton House
was, in the days of good King George, almost as great a scandal to the
country as Whitehall in the time of improper King Charles II.

The influence which the example of a young prince, of manners eminently
popular, produced upon the young nobility of the realm must be taken
into account in the narrative of that life which was so brilliant and so
misspent; so blessed at its onset, so dreary in its close--the life of
Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. Descended in the third degree from
Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, Georgiana Spencer is said to have
resembled her celebrated ancestress in the style of her beauty. She was
born in 1757. Her father, John, created Earl of Spencer in 1765, was the
son of the reprobate "Jack Spencer," as he was styled, the misery at
once and the darling of his grandmother, Sarah, who idolised her
Torrismond, as she called him, and left him a considerable portion of
her property. Whilst the loveliness of Sarah descended to Georgiana
Spencer, she certainly inherited somewhat of the talent, the reckless
spirits, and the imprudence of her grandfather, "Jack;" neither could a
careful education eradicate these hereditary characteristics.

Her mother was the daughter of a commoner, the Right Honourable Stephen
Poyntz, of Midgham, in Berkshire. This lady was long remembered both by
friends and neighbours with veneration. She was sensible and
intelligent, polite, agreeable, and of unbounded charity; but Miss
Burney, who knew her, depicts her as ostentatious in her exertions, and
somewhat self-righteous and vainglorious. She was, however, fervently
beloved by her daughter, who afterward made several pecuniary sacrifices
to ensure her mother's comfort. The earliest years of Lady Georgiana (as
she became after her father was created an earl) were passed in the
large house at Holywell, close to St. Albans, built by the famous Duke
of Marlborough on his wife's patrimonial estate. Aged people, some
fifteen years ago, especially a certain neighbouring clergyman,
remembered going to play at cards in this house; and the neighbourly
qualities of Lady Spencer, as much as her benevolence to the poor,
endeared her much to the gentry around. She exercised not only the
duties of charity, but the scarcely minor ones of hospitality and
courtesy to her neighbours. Before the opening of railroads, such duties
were more especially requisite to keep together the scattered members of
country society. Good feelings were engendered, good manners promoted,
and the attachment then felt for old families had a deeper foundation
than servility or even custom. As Lady Georgiana grew up, she displayed
a warm impressionable nature, a passion for all that was beautiful in
art, strong affections, and an early disposition to coquetry. Her
character spoke out in her face, which was the most eloquent of all
faces; yet it was by no means beautiful if we look upon beauty
critically. There were persons who said that her face would have been
ordinary but for its transcendent loveliness of expression. Unlike the
fair Gunnings, she was neither regular in features nor faultless in
form, yet theirs was baby-beauty compared with hers. True, her hair
inclined to red, her mouth was wide, but her complexion was exquisite;
and the lips, ever laughing, were parted over a splendid set of teeth,
an attribute rare in those days when the teeth were often decayed in
youth. She had, too, a charm of manner natural to her, and a playfulness
of conversation, which, springing from a cultivated mind, rendered her
society most fascinating. "Her heart, too," writes Wraxall, her
cotemporary, "might be considered as the seat of those emotions which
sweeten human life, adorn our nature, and diffuse a nameless charm over
existence."

A younger sister, Henrietta Frances, afterward Lady Duncannon, and
eventually Countess of Besborough, was also the object of Lady
Georgiana's warm affection; and, although Lady Duncannon was very
inferior to her in elegance of mind and personal attractions, she
equalled her in sisterly love.

During the middle of the last century, literature was again the fashion
among the higher classes. Doctor Johnson and the Thrales, Miss Gurney,
Hannah More, still clustered at Streatham; many of our politicians were,
if not poets, poetasters. It is true, if we except the heart-touching
poems of Cowper, the Muses were silent. The verses which were the
delight of polished drawing-rooms were of little value, and have been
swept away from our memories of the present day as waste paper; but a
taste for what is refined was thus prevalent, and thus affected the then
rising generation favourably.

Lady Georgiana Spencer had, however, a very few years allotted her for
improvement or for the enjoyment of her youth, for in her seventeenth
year she married.

William, the fifth Duke of Devonshire, at the time when he was united
to Lady Georgiana was twenty-seven years of age. He was one of the most
apathetic of men. Tall, yet not even stately, calm to a fault, he had
inherited from the Cavendish family a stern probity of character, which
always has a certain influence in society. Weight he wanted not, for a
heavier man never led to the altar a wife full of generous impulses and
of sensibility. He was wholly incapable of strong emotion, and could
only be roused by whist or faro from a sort of moral lethargy. He was,
nevertheless, crammed with a learning that caused him to be a sort of
oracle at Brookes's when disputes arose about passages from Roman poets
or historians. With all these qualities, he was capable of being, in a
certain sense, in love, though not always with his lovely and engaging
first wife.

Miss Burney relates a characteristic trait of this nobleman; it was
related to her by Miss Monckton. The duke was standing near a very fine
glass lustre in a corner of a room in the house of people who were not
possessed of means sufficient to consider expense as immaterial; by
carelessly lolling back, he threw the lustre back, and it was broken. He
was not, however, in the least disturbed by the accident, but coolly
said: "I wonder how I did that!" He then removed to the opposite corner,
and to show, it was supposed, that he had forgotten what he had done,
leaned his head in the same manner, and down came the second lustre. He
looked at it with philosophical composure, and merely said: "This is
singular enough," and walked to another part of the room without either
distress or apology. To this automaton was the young Lady Georgiana
consigned; and the marriage was, in the estimation of society, a
splendid alliance.

Her animal spirits were excessive, and enabled her to cope with the
misfortune of being linked to a noble expletive. Her good humour was
unceasing, and her countenance was as open as her heart. Fitted as she
was by the sweetest of dispositions for domestic life, one can hardly
wonder at her plunging into the excitements of politics when at home
there was no sympathy. Hence her bitterest misfortunes originated; but
one cannot, with all her indiscretions, suffer a comparison between her
and the Duchesse de Longueville, which Wraxall has instituted. The
Duchess of Devonshire scarcely merits the covert censure; except in
beauty and talents there was no similarity.

Buoyant with health and happiness, the young duchess was introduced into
the highest circles of London as a matter of course. Her husband
represented one of the most influential families of the Whig
aristocracy, and his name and fortune made him important.

Three West End palaces, as they might well be termed, Canton House,
Devonshire House, and Burlington House, were open to every parliamentary
adherent of the famous coalition,--the alliance between Lord North and
Charles James Fox. Devonshire House, standing opposite to the Green
Park, and placed upon an eminence, seemed to look down upon the Queen's
House, as Buckingham Palace was then called. Piccadilly then, though no
longer, as in Queen Anne's time, infested with highwaymen, was almost at
the extremity of the West End.

In right of his descent, on his mother's side from the Boyle family, the
Duke of Devonshire was also the owner of Burlington House, situated near
Devonshire House, and inhabited by his brother-in-law, the Duke
of Portland.

Thus a complete Whig colony existed in that part of London, the head and
front of their party being no less a person than George, Prince of
Wales. He was at this time in the very height of his short-lived health
and youth, and still more short-lived popularity; a man who possessed
all the exterior qualities in which his father was deficient,--grace as
well as good nature, the attribute of George III., a certain degree of
cultivation, as well as of natural talent, a tall, handsome person, with
a face less German in type than those of his brothers, some generosity
of character--witness his kindness to Prince Charles Stuart and his
brother, whom he pensioned--an appearance, at all events, of an
extremely good heart, and a great capacity for social enjoyments.

Doctor Burney states that he was surprised, on meeting the prince at
Lord Melbourne's, to find him, amidst the constant dissipation of his
life, possessed of "much learning, wit, knowledge of books in general,
discrimination of character, and original humour." He spoke with Dr.
Charles Burney, the distinguished scholar, quoting Homer in Greek with
fluency; he was a first-rate critic in music, and a capital mimic. "Had
we been in the dark," said Doctor Burney, "I should have sworn that
Doctor Parr and Kemble were in the room." Hence, the same judge thought
"he might be said to have as much wit as Charles II., with much more
learning, for his merry Majesty could spell no better than the
_bourgeois gentilhomme._" Such was the partial description of the prince
by a flattered and grateful contemporary, who wrote in 1805. Twenty
years later Sir Walter Scott, after dining with the then prince regent,
paid all justice to manners; but pronounced his mind to be of no high
order, and his taste, in so far as wit was concerned, to be condemned.

The prince was, however, just the man to be the centre of a spirited
opposition. In his heart he was Conservative; but the Whigs were his
partisans against a father who strongly, and perhaps not too sternly,
disapproved of his mode of life and his politics.

The circle around him was as remarkable for their talents, and, in some
respects, as infamous for their vices, as any Lord Rochester, or Sedley,
or Etherege of the time of the second Charles. In that day, a Protestant
Duke of Norfolk took an active part in political affairs, and formed one
of the chief supporters of the Whigs. Carlton House, Devonshire House,
often received in their state rooms "Jock of Norfolk," as he was called,
whose large muscular person, more like that of a grazier or a butcher,
was hailed there with delight, for his Grace commanded numerous
boroughs. He was one of the most strenuous supporters of Fox, and had
displayed in the House of Lords a sort of rude eloquence, characteristic
of his mind and body. Nothing, however, but his rank, his wealth, his
influences, his Whig opinions, could have rendered this profligate,
revolting man endurable. Drunkenness is said to have been inherent in
his constitution, and to have been inherited from the Plantagenets. He
was known in his youth to have been found sleeping in the streets,
intoxicated, on a block of wood; yet he is related to have been so
capable of resisting the effects of wine, that, after laying his father,
a drunkard like himself, under the table at the Thatched House, St.
James's, he has been stated to have repaired to another party, there to
finish the convivial rites. He was often under the influence of wine
when, as Lord Surrey, he sat in the House of Commons; but was wise
enough, on such occasions, to hold his tongue. He was so dirty in his
person, that his servants used to take advantage of his fits of
intoxication to wash him; when they stripped him as they would have done
a corpse, and performed ablutions which were somewhat necessary, as he
never made use of water. He was equally averse to a change of linen. One
day, complaining to Dudley North that he was a prey to rheumatism,
"Pray," cried North, "did your Grace ever try a clean shirt?"

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