Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire

Georgiana Cavendish
Duchess of Devonshire
Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire by Sir Joshua Reynolds, c. 1775 The Devonshire Collection
Spouse	William Cavendish, 5th Duke of Devonshire
more... Issue Georgiana Howard, Countess of Carlisle Harriet Leveson-Gower, Countess Granville William Cavendish, 6th Duke of Devonshire
Full name Georgiana Cavendish née Spencer
Noble family	Spencer family (by birth) Cavendish family (by marriage)
Father	John Spencer, 1st Earl Spencer
Mother	Margaret Poyntz
Born	7 June 1757(1757-06-07)
Died	30 March 1806(1806-03-30) (aged 48)
Burial	All Saints', Derby
Occupation	Socialite

Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire (née Spencer;  /dʒɒrˈdʒeɪnə/ jor-JAY-nə; 7 June 1757 – 30 March 1806) was the first wife of the 5th Duke of Devonshire, and mother of the 6th Duke of Devonshire. Her father, the 1st Earl Spencer, was a great-grandson of the 1st Duke of Marlborough. Her niece was Lady Caroline Lamb. She is an ancestor (via her illegitimate daughter Eliza Courtney) of Sarah, Duchess of York. She is also related to Diana, Princess of Wales, who was her great-great-grandniece.

Life

With her siblings, Henrietta and George, by Angelica Kauffmann, c. 1774. The painting was painted just before Georgiana's marriage to the Duke of Devonshire

"THE DEVONSHIRE, or Most Approved Method of Securing Votes", by Thomas Rowlandson, 1784

The Duchess of Devonshire was a celebrated beauty and socialite who gathered around her a large circle Salon of literary and political figures. She was also an active political campaigner in an age when women's suffrage was still over a century away. The Spencers and the Cavendishes were Whigs. The Duchess of Devonshire campaigned for the Whigs—particularly for a distant cousin, Charles James Fox—at a time when the King (George III) and his Ministers had a direct influence over the House of Commons, principally through their power of patronage. During the 1784 general election, the Duchess was rumoured to have traded kisses for votes in favour of Fox, and was satirised by Thomas Rowlandson in his print "THE DEVONSHIRE, or Most Approved Method of Securing Votes".

Famously, when she was stepping out of her carriage one day, an Irish dustman exclaimed: "Love and bless you, my lady, let me light my pipe in your eyes!", a compliment which she often recalled whenever others complimented her by retorting, "After the dustman's compliment, all others are insipid."

In 1779, she anonymously published the epistolary novel The Sylph. The Duchess was also instrumental in formulating, with Thomas Beddoes, the idea of establishing a Pneumatic Institution in Bristol.

Husband and children

Lady Georgiana Spencer married the Duke of Devonshire on her seventeenth birthday: 7 June 1774.

She had a number of miscarriages before giving birth to four children: three with her husband, and an illegitimate daughter fathered by the 2nd Earl Grey. She also raised the Duke's illegitimate daughter, Charlotte, who was conceived with a maid.

• Georgiana Howard, Countess of Carlisle (née the Lady Georgiana Dorothy Cavendish; called "Little G"; 12 July 1783 – 8 August 1858), married the 6th Earl of Carlisle and had issue.
• Harriet Leveson-Gower, Countess Granville (née the Lady Harriet Elizabeth Cavendish; called "Harryo"; 29 August 1785 – 25 November 1862), married the 1st Earl Granville and had issue.
• William Cavendish, Marquess of Hartington, later 6th Duke of Devonshire (William George Spencer Cavendish; called "Hart"; 21 May 1790 – 18 January 1858), never married.

• Eliza Courtney (20 February 1792 – 2 May 1859), illegitimate daughter of the 2nd Earl Grey. Georgiana was forced to give her to Grey's parents. Eliza married Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Ellice and named her eldest daughter Georgiana.
• Unknown named son, illegitimate child of one of Georgiana's lovers. Different stories as to what happened to the child, some historians say that the child was given away to a couple of middle class origins, others say the child died at birth or shortly after.

The Duchess introduced the Duke to her best friend, the Lady Elizabeth Foster (who later married the Duke), and lived in a ménage à trois with them for the next 25 years. Lady Elizabeth had two illegitimate children by the Duke, a son (Augustus Clifford) and a daughter (Caroline Rosalie St Jules).

Fashion and debt

Georgiana's elaborate fashion sense is captured in this Thomas Gainsborough portrait, the famous stolen painting.

The Duchess of Devonshire is famous not only for her marital arrangements, her catastrophic affairs, her beauty and sense of style and best clothes, and her political campaigning, but also for her love of gambling. Even though her own family, the Spencers, and her husband's family, the Cavendishes, were immensely wealthy, she was reported to have died deeply in debt because they did not give her any money. She died on 30 March 1806, aged 48, from what was thought to be an abscess of the liver; she was buried at All Saints Parish Church (which is now Derby Cathedral). At her death, she owed today's equivalent of £3,720,000. The Duchess was so petrified of her husband discovering the extent of her debts that she kept them secret; the Duke only discovered the extent of her debts after her death and remarked, "Is that all?"

Stolen painting

During her years in the public eye, Georgiana was painted several times by both by Thomas Gainsborough and Joshua Reynolds.

Gainsborough's painting of her around 1785, in a large black hat (a style which she made sensationally fashionable, and came to be known as the 'Gainsborough' or 'portrait' hat), has become famous for its fascinating history. After having been lost from Chatsworth House for many years, it was discovered in the 1830s in the home of an elderly schoolmistress, who had cut it down somewhat in order to fit it over her fireplace. In 1841 she sold it to a picture dealer for 56 pounds, and he later gave it to a friend, the art collector Wynn Ellis. When Ellis died, the painting went for sale at Christie’s in London in 1876, where it was it was bought by the Bond Street art dealer William Agnew for the then astronomical sum of 10,000 guineas. Three weeks later it was stolen from Agnew's gallery, a theft that was highly publicised at the time, and for years the newspapers printed stories about claimed sightings of the painting.

However, not until 25 years later it became known that the thief had been the notorious "Napoleon of Crime", Adam Worth. He had intended to sell it to come up with the bail to release his brother from prison, but when his brother was freed without bail, he decided to keep it for himself, for "a rainy day", and brought it to his homeland, the United States. In early 1901, through the American detective agency Pinkerton's, he negotiated a return of the painting for $25,000. The portrait and payment were exchanged in Chicago in March 1901, and a couple of months later the painting arrived in London and was put up for sale. The Wall Street financier J. P. Morgan immediately travelled to England to obtain the painting and is claimed to have paid $150,000 for it.

The painting remained in Morgan's family until 1994, when it was put up for sale at Sotheby's and was purchased by the 11th Duke of Devonshire for the Chatsworth House collection. So, after more than 200 years it returned to Chatsworth.

Titles and styles

• Miss Georgiana Spencer (7 June 1757 – 3 April 1761)
• The Hon. Georgiana Spencer (3 April 1761 – 1 November 1765)
• The Lady Georgiana Spencer (1 November 1765 – 7 June 1774)
• Her Grace The Duchess of Devonshire (7 June 1774 – 30 March 1806)

In popular culture

Contrary to popular belief, the play The School for Scandal was not written about the Duchess of Devonshire's scandalous affairs. Despite interacting with Sheridan, the playwright, the inspiration for the play's various characters came from actors Sheridan knew personally.

Film portrayals

• The Divine Lady (1929), played by Evelyn Hall.
• Berkeley Square (1933) played by Juliette Compton
• The House in the Square (1951), played by Kathleen Byron
• The Duchess (2008), played by Keira Knightley. The film, directed by Saul Dibb, is based on the biography Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire by Amanda Foreman.

Gallery

• 

  The Duchess of Devonshire by Joshua Reynolds, c. 1780–81

• 

  The Duchess of Devonshire by Thomas Gainsborough, 1783

• 

  The Duchess of Devonshire by Joshua Reynolds, 1786

• 

  The Duchess of Devonshire by Thomas Gainsborough, 1787. From the Chatsworth Collection.

• 

  Elizabeth "Bess" Hervey Foster by Sir Joshua Reynolds

• 

  Georgiana's husband, William Cavendish, 5th Duke of Devonshire

Further reading

• Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, Amanda Foreman (1998) ISBN 0-00-655016-9 (now published as The Duchess)
• Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire, Brian Masters, Hamish Hamilton, 1981.
• Georgiana, The Earl of Bessborough (editor), John Murray, London, 1955.
• The Two Duchesses.., Family Correspondence relating to.., Vere Foster (editor), Blackie & Son, London, Glasgow & Dublin, 1898.
• An Aristocratic Affair - The life of Georgiana's sister Harriet, Countess Bessborough, Janet Gleeson, 2006, ISBN 0593054873
• Portraits of Georgiana by Gainsborough, Reynolds, Romney, Cosway and others.
• Extra material not included in Amanda Foreman's book
• Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire, The Sylph, ed. Jonathan David Gross (Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 2007), ISBN 0-8101-2229-4.