Duchess of Decadence: Georgiana

Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, was also known as the Empress of Fashion. Married at the age of 16, the Duchess soon became enormously popular and led a life of excess. Learn what happened next in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm editor Kendis Keener, joined by fellow editor Katie Lambert. Candice. Hi, Katie.
I am delighted for Katie today to share with you

(00:24):
a bunch of news about one of her favorite historical figures.
And we decided it was only fair that Katie should
get to talk about her since I have spent probably
hours yemm orring on and on about the greatness of
Thomas Jefferson. She is a very fascinating lady, much like
Marie Antoinette, which brought Candace and I together over this
one um. But her name is Georgiana, the Duchess of Devonshire,

(00:47):
although she was born Georgiana Spencer. And if the name
sounds familiar, that's because Princess Diana was one of her descendants.
That's right, that's right. And many people say that the
stories of Diana and Georgiana, alternately referred to as Georgiana,
are pretty similar. We see that the women suffer from bulimia.

(01:10):
They have sort of reckless lifestyles and engage and questionable
romantic pursuits, and these are criticisms that have been thrown
out them, and perhaps the most poignant one is that
Georgiana got a chance to redeem herself later in life,
whereas Diana never got that chance because her life was
so tragically short. And you may remember that The Duchess

(01:32):
came out in the theaters what a year ago not
too too long ago, because it won an Oscar back
in January for costume design. But I think a lot
of press was drawn to the fact that these women
led similar lives, and perhaps people would be more interested
in a period drama if they thought it would smack
of Diana well in Candas and I both owe a

(01:55):
lot of our research to Amanda Foreman's book The Duchess.
But before we get too much into what she's done,
maybe we'll start with her childhood. Georgiana was born in
seventeen fifty seven to the Earl and Countess Spencer, and
they were one of the richest families in England, so
her marital prospects were very much look forward to. They
had five houses. Her upbringing was very ladylike. She studied

(02:19):
in deportment and harp playing and drawing, nothing too strenuous,
but enough so she would be a polished young lady.
And she met the Duke of Devonshire when she was
sixteen years old, and her mother didn't want her to
get married too young because she had a love match
of her own and she was really hoping for the
same thing for Georgiana. But if you look at some

(02:40):
of Georgiana's letters, you can tell a couple of things,
one of which is that Georgiana was a people pleaser.
Perhaps she had loose self esteem, but she wanted always
to have her mother's praise lavished upon her. And when
she met the Duke and she got the scent that
this was a match people would regard very highly, she
was pretty ancho for it to happen. She was excited

(03:02):
to pursue him, or rather for him to pursue her
her hand in marriage. And his family, the Cavendishes, were
another huge family in England, so uniting the two would
be quite the big deal, and united they were. And
uh we mentioned that she was alternately termed or referred
to as Georgiana and Georgiana and Geordana came to be

(03:23):
because the Cavendishes had a rather affected way of speaking
or drawing, as it were, and once they christened her Georgana.
Georgana she was for the rest of her life. She was.
And it's funny because members of the Coterie of the
Devonshires would affect that same sort of accent, just like
Georgana did. Their marriage was the marriage of the year.
She got married I think on her seventeenth birthday, um,

(03:45):
and there were only five people present. Weddings then weren't
a big affair. But they had it actually two days
earlier than they were supposed to, because they were afraid
she was going to be mobbed paparazzi style on her
way to the nuptials. And she quickly became a rather
permanent fixture in newspapers. She was the source of much
speculation and gossip. And she was a sort of girl who,

(04:08):
if you knew her, you might have loved to hate her.
I mean, she was beautiful and she captured everyone's attention.
She had all the right clothes, all the right hairstyle.
She set the trends, and yet she was so magnetic
you couldn't help but be drawn to her as a friend.
Horace Walpole said that her youthful figure, flowing good nature,

(04:28):
sense and lively modesty and modest familiarity make her a phenomenon.
Even though he didn't consider her a great beauty, she
was still incredibly attractive and sexy, and other sources at
the time say that she was a great beauty. So
I wonder if she just had one of those faces
where maybe if you got to know her a little
bit better, she was incredibly attractive to you. They said
the same thing about Marie Antoinette. Some people said she

(04:49):
was a great beauty and others said it was more
her charisma. But despite beauty questionable or not or charisma,
her husband didn't have a whole lot to do with her.
And now, perhaps that could be explained by the fact
that he already had a mistress tucked away somewhere. So
and he was a lot like her father, kind of
reserved and not very emotional. But um, as a. Manda

(05:12):
Foreman points out in her book, Georgana's father had no
know this hidden core of sweetness. And she says that
perhaps Georgana thought so did her husband, but he didn't.
He wasn't a particularly nice man. And it's a story
you may have heard time and time again. When a
woman can't get the love and intention she needs, she

(05:33):
turned to other pursuits, and in the case of Georgana,
some of these were pretty self destructive. She was living
life at extremes for a while and some of it
wasn't her fault. When they first got married, she made
five hundred visits in three weeks to the notable lords
and ladies of the area, because that's what was expected.
I hate returning calls. It's just too taxing after a

(05:55):
long day. Five visits a lot. It makes me tired
just thinking about it. But she did. It was very
send of palm she did. And she was very fashionable
and very much the bell of society, the center of
attention um and with that came a gambling addiction because
she was the head of her the fast set in London,

(06:16):
let's say, the bright young people. It was the bright
young people, yes, very wall And what what do you
do when you sit around a gambling table while you drink?
Maybe you dabble in drugs, might overeat. She definitely had
an addiction to opiates. And when one of her relatives
was saying that the problem with her living at extremes,

(06:37):
she would go dancing for ten days and never sleep,
and then she would crash and for the next ten days,
you know, she'd be in bed, unable to function, and
she might blot it all out with a big dose
of opiates and eventually she'd get back on her feet
and go back out. But it was the same thing.
She couldn't figure out how to stay on that middle
ground right now, a sense of moderation. And this was
unfortunate because for a gentlewoman of her stature in this

(07:01):
time period, her primary responsibility was to produce an air
for the Caven dishes for the Duke of Devonshire. And
looking back now, we could attribute some of these early
miscarriages to her lifestyle, the drinking, the drug taking, the
lack of sleep, and then the fast pace at which
she lived and moved, which is too bad for her
because she could kind of use an air as a

(07:22):
bargaining chip to pay off some of her gambling debts.
She really didn't like telling the Duke about how much
she owed, and at one point she owed I think
the first time she really got into trouble, she owed
something like three hundred thousand dollars in today's money, and
she didn't want to tell her husband. But later when
these debts kept piling up because she would get them
paid off. She would talk to the Duke or talk

(07:44):
to someone else and the debts would be excused and
she would make you heartfelt resolution that it wouldn't happen again,
and then you know, soon enough she was in the
hole again. Um. But when she had a son, she
could use that as a bargaining chip with the caven Dishes.
So at this point you may be injuring, Wow, what
kind of person is this Katie Lambert who admire such

(08:04):
a gambler and drug taker? Katie redeemed Georgianata because she does.
She has very many redeeming qualities. She does. She was
very involved in politics and actually Canadas she can probably
talk more about her role. Um with the Whigs in England,
Georgiana existed. I've got to pick a consistent pronunciation. I'm
saying everyone, I'm airing on the side of the Spencers,

(08:26):
and I guess I should be calling her the Cavendish Georgiana,
but gee, I'll call her g because many of her
friends did. Ge was coming about and becoming more politically
aware in a time when the Wig party we can
see with them as a party today, but the Tories
and Whigs weren't necessarily political parties and the proper sense
back then, but alas I digress, The point is the

(08:50):
Whigs were starting to support the idea of a constitutional monarchy,
and they were they were pro America, weren't they anti
slavery right around the time of the American Revolution. And
the idea of the constitutional monarchy is essentially that there
is limited say in the king's power over legislation, and

(09:16):
it doesn't dispute the fact that the king gets the
throne on the basis of inheritance, not like in a
republic where a popular vote elects the leader, but it
does say that there are some restrictions to what the
king can do, and for instance, the king could actually
tap the Prime Minister who he wanted to preside over
the people, whereas the Whigs said that the House of

(09:38):
Commons majority vote should decide the prime minister. So essentially
it's a division between the royalists and a more liberal
party who want more power granted to the people. And
some marked debates that showed the Whigs differences from the Tories,
where things like the abolition of slavery, which you mentioned,
and also at this time as we've mentioned in earlier podcasts,
Britain was very much an involved in India and the

(10:01):
Whigs wanted to see that kind of power curtailed the
power that they had over the people. And if you're
wondering how politics would have appealed to someone like Gee,
who was more known for her three foot hair towers
Marie Antoinette style with Ostrich feathers, and then the Queen
actually had to ban Ostrich feathers because people were paying
of scene amounts of money for them. She got into

(10:23):
politics because of Charles Fox, and Charles Fox was pretty
much synonymous with the term Wig at this time. His
greatest adversary was William Pitt, who was a Royalist, and
Fox was very much an advocate for the abolition of
Flavory and he was also behind that India reform that
I mentioned earlier, and his personality just clicked with Geez

(10:45):
and they were instant friends, and she was not only
a confidante to him, but some even suggest that they
had a romantic partnership. Whether or not that's true, I
think there's more doubt than agreement, but it was a
thought that was on society at least. And Fox also
got g interested, I think in reading and in learning.
When she married the Duke, she was attempting to cater

(11:07):
to his interest because he was so cold and uninterested.
So she would get history books, you know, and try
to bone up on his favorite areas that she could
discuss it at dinner with him. Again, much like Marie
Antoinette Stewart does with me. It works, it really does.
Read history and I'll talk to you. But Charles Fox
is a hugely controversial figure too, because around the time

(11:29):
of the French Revolution and the genesis of that movement
beginning in France, here's a man who who applauded when
the Bastille fell, and he very much aligned his ideologies
with the Jacobins, who promoted constitutional monarchy, and he was
slow and reluctant to retract that alignment even after the

(11:50):
Jacobins gave way to the radicalism of Robespierre, whom you
may remember from the French Revolution podcast just sort of
devolved into this strange chaos of madness and godliness, and
of course there was so much bloodshed and madness in
France it was very damaging for any political party to
align with them, and he also did some had some

(12:11):
not so great ideas during the regency crisis in sev
seventeen eighty nine, which is when George the third started
to go mad and they were trying to figure out
who could take over for him because Parliament couldn't make
any decisions until the Speech from the Throne was made
and the king was completely incapacitated, So Georgiana, Georgiana and

(12:33):
Fox were gunning for the prince to have complete unlimited
power as the regent, whereas other people were advocating for
limited power, saying, you know, let's take that first step
and then later we'll kind of get what we want
that way, um. And it ended up damaging the Whig
Party quite a bit because, of course the king came

(12:54):
back from that particular illness and no one was particularly
pleased with how they had handled the situation. And Georgina
was very good at orchestrating these kinds of discussions. At
the Devonsers Home, this was seen as sort of an
enclave not only for romantic interlopers. It would you know
that there are several illicit couples who had interminglings there,

(13:17):
but it was also a hot bed of political discussion.
She had this knack for drawing people in and getting
people from unlikely walks of life to have conversations with
each other, and she was almost like the puppet master
of these very powerful political men. Dinners at the Devonshire
House were a really integral part of many of these

(13:38):
elections because it was this nice, informal, sort of neutral ground.
You could invite people and it would look like a
social invitation, but then of course you could turn it
into something more if you wanted, which she did right
and everyone wanted in naturally. But of course, all through
this political turmoil, she also had a lot going on
in her personal life, and there was one person in

(13:59):
her life who made a huge difference, and that was
Lady Elizabeth Foster, known as best Drawling my eyes. This
woman is such a piece of work. It's very single
white female. She's kind of she's kind of a creepy stalker. Um.
She was separated from her husband when she met Georgiana,
and he had custody of her children. She had very
little money and since she was the wife of the earl,

(14:21):
she couldn't actually go out and work, so she was
in straightened circumstances to say the least, and she ingratiated
herself with the Devonsures and became as Amanda Foreman describes,
the keeper of their secrets, and the strange relationship between
Bess as she's known and a duke and g became

(14:43):
a very strange type of manage ortoi in which, you know,
you may call that kind of love triangle forbidden love,
but it wasn't it was permissible. I think, well, G
didn't exactly. I love the idea of best having romantic
relations with her husband. Who would? Who would? She was
able to intimately interact with the Duke as a sort

(15:05):
of intermediary in the bedroom and in conversation. She could
convey to the Duke that Georgiana had outstanding debts. She
could convey to him other messages from his wife, and
because the Duke was such a poor communicator, he could
communicate through Buss, who acted as Georgiana's bestie and told
her what was going on in his mind. It's very strange,

(15:26):
very strange. She started off as this no one and
came into their lives and stayed there for forever. She did. Yeah,
three years after Georgiana died, she actually became the Duchess
of Devonshire. Which which is what some say she wanted
all along. But she and Georgiana were truly good friends.
They wrote impassioned letters to each other, which unfortunately were

(15:48):
censored by Georgiana's airs crazy Victorians, I love you Victorians.
There may have been more erotic messages in them. No
one's really sure if the relationship between them was a
sexual one or simply a friendship, or maybe both. But
the records that exist today are a bit muted because
of the people who came through and tried to edit

(16:09):
the story to read a certain way. But someone who
was always very suspicious of Best's motives was Georgiana's mother.
She never liked the woman ever, And Lady Spencer was
a bit of a piece of work too. She was
very She and Georgiana were very, very close, and that
kind of a suffocating relationship again, sort of like a
parallel U with Marie Antoinette and her mother at the Empress.

(16:33):
But she was very self indulgent. I guess when Georgiana
was a child and when she was older, I had
this constant guilt tripping thing going on, always sending her
letters about what she was doing wrong, what she was
doing wrong, and Georgiana took it all very much to heart,
and you know, to deal with the guilt from that,
she would just go off and gamble more and drink more.
And Lady Spencer eventually got into that as well, didn't

(16:54):
she at least she did playing right, and Georgiana's other
sister too. But what we see here is a life
of decadence punctuated by very important moments of political contribution
cultural contribution. She was a patron of the arts, she
was a patron of wearable fashion and style, and people

(17:15):
looked to her as a kind benefactress. She was involved
with peace negotiations with France and America. She was involved
with the Westminster elections. She was involved with the regency stuff.
Like we talked about before, she wasn't an idle woman,
and with the true grace of a lady, she didn't
flash around her contributions. It was understood that the Judgess

(17:37):
of Devonshire was a very powerful and well respected woman,
and it was also understood that she had her faults too.
But I think that for a long time one of
the reasons she went unacknowledged in history until arguably this
great biography by A. Manda foreman came out was that
she handled her successes and her accomplishments with such quiet grace.
They really went and hushed when people were more interested

(18:00):
in the scandalous personal aspects of her life. And like
you mentioned earlier, she sort of had a chance to
come back. That's after she was exiled for her affair
with Charles Gray, when she come Earl Gray to use me,
which were big fans of um, and she was pregnant
with his child, and the Duke said, you know, get
out of the country, have the baby and give it up,

(18:22):
or you're never seeing your other children again. And Georgiana
had the very difficult decision of choosing, you know, her
child was someone she loved very much, or her children
she already had with the Duke, and she chose her children,
and he wouldn't let her come back for a couple
of years. But when she did return, politics was the
thing she had. She had her children and she had

(18:42):
these political ambitions. And by this time she had come
down with a strange eye infection. Reading about that was
painting it and I couldn't quite understand. And maybe because
her contemporaries didn't understand what exactly was wrong, but she
essentially lost one eye and almost lost her vision entirely,
and the way that she was treated for the illness

(19:04):
left her very visibly changed. And so at this point,
like you said, politics was what she had, and she
was able to help orchestrate an uprising of the Whig
Party again because they had fallen out of favor with
the events of the French Revolution. But she had one
final coup left in her. It was time to make
a comeback. She successfully helped usher the Whig Party into power,

(19:27):
and in eighteen thirty with Charles Gray at the Helm,
slavery was abolished and the Reform Act of eighteen thirty
two was passed. So how about that that's a pretty
major accomplishment. Puppet Master ge Georgiana died at the age
of forty eight, and we think it was from a
liver abscess, and she was very much mourned by her
children and oddly especially by someone like a Bess who immediately,

(19:51):
of course went through all of their correspondence and crossed
out all the things that made her look bad. And
to bring the discussion full circle back to Diana, who
we mentioned at the beginning of the podcast, many would
say that at age forty eight. This was well before
her time, and even though the life expectancy wasn't as
long done as it is today, one could arguably say
that Georgiana had much left in her to accomplish. But

(20:14):
she's a fascinating study and I really encourage you, and
I'm sure Katie does too, to read The Duchess, or,
if you're not into a reader and we tend not
to associate with people like that, to at least to
at least see the movie to get an idea of
the powerful figure that she was. And as always, be
sure to look for more articles about the Wigs and Tories,

(20:36):
the French Revolution, and all sorts of government gore on
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