Scandalous Women in the News

Happy Birthday to Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire.  Recently a copy of the Gainsborough portrait was found and restored by two Syracuse University alumnae (my alma mater). Joyce Dallaportas and Ronald K. Theel found the painting at a Syracuse estate sale and confirmed that it was the lovely Duchess. You can read the article from Syracuse University magazine here

Speaking of Duchesses, Sarah Ferguson The Duchess of York has been in the news lately since it was revealed that she involved in a cash-for-access scandal uncovered by the tabloid newspaper The NEWS OF THE WORLD.  The whole thing was a set-up on the part of the newspaper. The Duchess got caught on videotape offered to help a gentleman that she thought was a businessman gain access to her ex-husband Prince Andrew for the tidy sum of 500,000 pounds. Last week, she went on Oprah to explain her actions, saying that she has gotten into financial trouble again, and had hit rock bottom. You can read about it here in HELLO Magazine. Poor Fergie! She wouldn't admit to Oprah exactly how much she owed but did admit that she's been living beyond her means trying to keep up appearances. There has been much talk about why the Queen doesn't bail her out, but Ferguson is no longer a member of the Royal Family and her daughters are grown, so the Queen has no obligation to her.

Author Faith L. Justice recently guest blogged about Hypatia, and now a new film about her is in limited release called Agora directed by Alejandro Amendabar. Slate magazine recently reviewed the film.

Painted Lady of Passion: The Life of Georgiana, Duchess of Bedford

Ah, everyone loves a Duke, don't they? Or want to marry one. Romance novels are littered with rich, handsome Dukes, and the heroines who are vying for their hand and noble estate in marriage. A Dukedom is the highest peerage in a long list of titles of the aristocracy, and the most rare. Dukes belong to a long list of rarities, like white truffles, flawless diamonds, and Hermes Kelly bags. There are generally only 26 non-royal dukes at any one time. To be given a dukedom means that one has performed some extraordinary service to the crown (the Duke of Marlborough and his victory at Blenheim, the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo), or one is the bastard son of a King (the Duke of Richmond, the Duke of St. Albans). The last non-royal dukedom was created for the Duke of Wellington in the 19th century.

Dukes were, for the most part rich, and they had fabulous estates. Think of Blenheim Palace, Floors Castles in Scotland (where Prince Andrew proposed to Fergie), and Goodwood House (home of the Duke of Richmond, Gordon and Lennox). Some English Dukes owned huge tracts of land in London, like the Duke of Devonshire (who still owns huge parts of Mayfair, including the land that the American Embassy sits on). Becoming a Duchess meant that one would live one's life on display, being addressed as 'Your Grace,' it was as close to being royalty asone could get without marrying a prince. It took a strong stomach, and loads of strength to be married to an English Duke. But every woman worth her salt wanted to be a Duchess.

So one can imagine the match-making mamas salivating whenever an heir to a Dukedom or a Duke himself was available on the marriage-mart. And there was no more ambitious mama in the 18th century than Jane, Duchess of Gordon. After all, plain Jane Maxwell as she once was, the daughter of a lowly baronet, had managed to snag the wealthy and handsome Alexander, Duke of Gordon for herself. And despite the bitter pill of her marriage, Jane was determined that her five daughters would manage to snare Dukes themselves.

If there was such a thing as a school for Duchesses, Jane, Duchess of Gordon ran it. She raised all five of her daughters to be witty, charming, able to flatter without being swarmy, intelligent (but not bluestockings) and unafraid to say whatever they thought. Her daughters were able to converse with the lowliest peasant on the estate as well as with princes. None of them were snobs, they treated everyone exactly the same. In short, she raised them as mirror images of her.

In the end, 3 out of 5 daughters managed to marry Dukes. After dangling her eldest Charlotte in front of the Prime Minister, William Pitt, who didn't take the bait, Jane managed to marry her off to the Duke of Richmond and Lennox. Her second daughter Susan was soon married off to the Duke of Manchester. Out of the other two daughters, one married the Marquis of Cornwallis, and the other a plain baronet, but it was the youngest and prettiest daughter, Georgiana (born June 23, 1781) or Georgy, who managed to snare the affections of the 6th Duke of Bedford, who owned vast tracks of Convent Garden, Russell and Bedford square in London, as well as the magnificent Woburn Abbey.

But before Georgiana ended up his radar, her mother tried to snag his older brother, Francis, the 5th Duke of Bedford for Georgina (her political rival Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire was also trying to snag him for her daughter). Despite the fact that the Russell family were unrepentant Whigs and the Gordons were staunch Tories, Jane wasn't about to let a little thing like political differences getting in the way of marital ambition. Francis was a bit of a libertine, now in his thirties, most of his mistresses had been older women. Georgiana seemed to be winning over his heart but he inconveniently died of peritonitis in 1802 before the engagement could be announced. Still, Jane dressed Georgy in mourning clothes and told everyone who could listen that the two were engaged. However, the new Duke wasn't willing to acknowledge Jane's claim to an engagement.

Smarting from the embarassment, Jane took Georgy off to France where she tried to marry Georgy off to Napoleon's step-son, Eugene de Beauharnais. Napoleon, however, had more ambitious plans for his step-son. Still, Jane remained an ardent admirer of Napoleon for the rest of her life. But Jane's luck was about to change. The new Duke of Bedford, who had been widowed two years before, arrived in Paris. Georgy expressed sympathy for his dual loss of wife and brother in such a short amount of time. The Duke was soon won over by her vivacious personality, and beauty, which was so different from his own. He was a shy, quiet man, who liked fishing, hunting, the country and books. He'd been a Whig MP until he inherited the Dukedom from his brother, and was a strong supporter of Charles James Fox (the Duke and Georgy even named one of their sons Charles James Fox Russell).

The couple were soon engaged, and they were married in 1803. Although the Duke and Duchess learned to love each other deeply, the marriage wasn't a love match. The Duke had married his first wife, Georgiana Byng, at the age of 19. They were passionately in love, but Georgiana suffered from ill-health after giving birth to three sons, and the couple soon grew apart. She wrote apologetic letters to him, feeling that she was letting him down. Georgy's personality complimented the Duke's. He adored her, deferred to her, and allowed her to dominate their marital life.

In 1806, Georgy and the Duke moved to Ireland, where the Duke was posted as Lord Lieutenant. They were a huge hit, the Duke was sympathetic towards the idea of Catholic emancipation, and Georgy proved to be a just as astute a political hostess as her mother with her warmth, charm and energy. However, the Duke's political ideas about reform were not welcome in London, and he resigned as Lord Lieutenant after a year, much to the dismay of the Irish people. Disillusioned, it was the end of his political ambitions (his third son by his first wife later became Prime Minister).

Over the next twenty years, Georgy busied herself with giving birth to a large family (she eventually had 12 children, 10 who lived to adulthood), managing their estates, including Endsleigh House (now a hotel) which they built in 1812 as a more of a family home, compared to the grandeur of Woburn Abbey. The couple entertained often and lavishly. Like her mother, Georgiana introduced Scottish reels and music at her parties, there were amateur theatricals and charades, as well as the usual country pursuits. Invitations to Woburn were much sought after. Only good friends were ever invited down to Endsleigh. The couple also bought a house near their good friends Lord and Lady Holland in Kensington. Like her mother, and many other Scandalous Women, Georgy preferred the company of men to women, although she was close to her sisters, and Lady Holland.

Georgiana's relationship with her step-children was the only mar on her happiness. The Duke's heir, Francis, spent most of his time complaining about the amount of money they spent, accusing the Duchess of ruining the Duke (although the Duke's tastes were just as expensive as his wife's). But it was her relationship with his middle son, William, that caused the most pain. Georgy and William had a cordial relationship until he married, and his new wife decided that she hated Georgy, considering her to be flamboyant, and lacking in morals. Of course, William took his wife's side, while his father defended his wife. The feud at one point was so bad, that William and his wife Elizabeth tried to get people to take sides against the Duchess. It was even reported in the newspapers.

After twenty years of marriage, the Duchess met the love of her life, Edwin Landseer (1802-1873), an artist twenty years her junior. They met in 1823, when the Duke engaged Landseer to paint a portrait of the Duchess. Georgy had been depressed after the recent death of her father (Jane had died in 1812). The affair lasted for over thirty years until Georgy's death. The attraction between the two was immediate, they both had a mutual interest in art. Landseer taught Georgy to etch, and he sketched her frequently, the pictures shockingly intimate. Her last child, Lady Rachel Russell (born when she was 45), was more than likely Landseer's child. Landseer was a brilliant artist, especially of animals. He'd been a child prodigy, and later became the favorite artist of Queen Victoria.

The Duchess and her lover spent several months of the year together in Scotland. Georgiana rented a love nest called Doune, where they could be alone, without causing too much suspicion. Of course, they weren't really alone, because the children also were there. Georgiana was a devoted mother, who breastfed all her children, her rooms at Endsleigh House were close to the nursery so that she could keep an eye on them. The Duke became friendly with Landseer, whatever made Georgiana happy, made him happy. He had his own flirtations with Lady Holland, among others, but Georgiana was always his first priority. Still, the gossip was rife about the relationship between the Duchess and her much younger lover.

While the Duke was very mellow and tolerant, giving Georgiana stability and position, Landseer gave her passion and excitement. There was no thought of divorce or seperation between the Duke and his Duchess. Georgiana had seen what had happened to her mother, when Jane and the Duke of Gordon finally seperated. Jane had complained bitterly about how little money the Duke gave her per annum. She had also seen what had happened to her sister, Susan, Duchess of Manchester who ran off with the gamekeeper (shades of D.H. Lawrence). Susan had lost her children and her position in society. As long as Georgiana and Landseer were discreet, there would be no divorce.

Thanks to Georgy introducing Landseer to the Scottish highlands, his work changed. The backgrounds to his paintings, which had been a particular weakness of his, became rich and atmospheric. For Georgy, who was facing middle-age, his love for her changed her from a woman whose life was almost over, to the passionate vibrant woman she'd been in her youth. The Duke, who was 15 years older than his wife, had suffered a debilitating stroke before she met Landseer, and Georgy had nursed him diligently. Despite her lover, Georgy was still attentive to the Duke, and both men worshipped and adored her. However, Landseer at times was jealous of her relationship with the Duke, so he needed a bit more quality time. Although neither man was probably particularly happy about the whole thing, neither did they want to lose this woman that they both loved.

Georgina's love affair was scandalous for many reasons. Not only was her lover younger, but he was also of a different class, an artistic genius, and unmarried. When the Duke died in 1839, Landseer even proposed to Georgy but she turned him down. Her biographer, Rachel Trethewey believes that it was because she knew that Landseer was mentally unstable. He'd had two serious head injuries, and as he grew older, his condition got worse. He was also very interested in the occult, which worried Georgy. After Georgy's death, he began to drink and to rely on painkillers such as laundanum. Georgy had been everything to him, mother, lover, muse. Although he was much sought after by women in society, he never married. He died insane at the age of 71.

After the Duke's death, Georgy began to spend more time abroad in Nice or in Ireland, where her daughter Louisa and her husband, the Duke of Abercorn lived. Unlike her mother, Georgy encouraged her children to marry for love and not dynastic alliances, despite the fact that her own marriage had been so happy. She is buried in Nice.

In 2008, romance novelist Virginia Henly published a novel called The Decadent Duke, about Georgy, Francis, 5th Duke of Bedford, and John, 6th Duke of Bedford. Although I have enjoyed novels by this author before, I cannot recommend this novel. Not only does she get the name of John's first wife wrong, his personality is changed into Mr. Darcy, the typical brooding, alpha male Duke. There's also an incredible amount of unnecessary information dumping that slows down the novel.


Rachel Trethewey's 2002 biography of Georgiana, Mistress of the Arts: The Passionate Life of Georgina, Duchess of Bedford, is worth ordering from Amazon.co.uk. She gives the reader a remarkable portrait of the woman who should be as well known as the other Duchess named Georgiana.

Scandalous Movie Review: The Duchess

Last Friday night I went to see The Duchess with one of my closest friends to cap off a pretty up and down week. I thought "hey a movie with pretty costumes, yeah!" Unfortunately there is only one word to describe this movie and that is adequate.

The plot in a nutshell involves a vibrant beauty, Lady Georgiana Spencer, who marries an older man, William Cavendish, the 5th Duke of Devonshire and goes to live with him in his beautiful London mansion, Devonshire House. But she quickly learns that her husband prefers his dogs to her. She becomes a celebrity of her time and ends up trapped in an unhappy triangle with her husband and his live-in mistress. She falls passionately in love with an ambitious young politician, Charles Grey (later 2nd Earl Grey and Prime Minister, you know the one the tea is named after) and the affair causes a bitter conflict with her husband and threatens to erupt into a scandal.

Keira Knightley suffers beautifully as Georgiana but she is not given much more to do than to look hurt, and to be a clotheshorse. While she wears the costumes well, I was always conscious of how painfully thin she is, especially compared to the paintings of the real Georgiana. To her credit, she shows a hint of the charisma of the real Georgiana, and an appealing naiveté in the earlier scenes. However, at times one longs for an actress of Kate Winslet’s stature to take on Georgiana’s complex personality, a devoted mother, yet one who spent many hours gambling feverishly, a woman who could write a book at 21 satirizing the society that she lived in, yet couldn’t tear herself away from the fast element of the ton.

Ralph Fiennes managed to capture the essence of a man for whom duty and appearances were all. He acts with his entire body where as Knightley seems to act mostly with her jaw line. However, the writers have included a scene between the Duke and Duchess that I found inexplicable and hard to deal with. There is a brilliant moment towards the end of the film where husband and wife try to reach out to each other if only briefly. Hayley Atwell, as Lady Bess, is not really given much to hang her character on. Did Bess love the Duke, was she calculating, or did she have genuine affection for Georgiana? You couldn’t tell from the script or the acting.

There is no sense in the film of the jealousy that Bess must have felt towards Georgiana. Amanda Foreman writes that there was a sort of Single White Female attraction between the two women. While Bess loved Georgiana, she also wanted to be her, to be as popular, to set trends, to be universally loved. She even gave birth to a son before Georgiana did. Wouldn’t that have been a fabulous scene in the film? Bess made attempts to have the Duke place her in precedence to his wife, but the Duke refused, putting her in her place, which is the exact opposite of what occurs in the movie, when Georgiana angrily tells the Duke to get rid of Bess. There is one telling scene between the two women, where Bess and Georgiana talk about sex, that almost turns Sapphic but any hint of that is quickly abandoned. You do get the sense in the film at least that perhaps Bess was more skilled in the boudoir than Georgiana. Dominic Cooper as Charles Grey continues to prove that he is much better suited to contemporary films than he is to period pieces.

A movie of less than 2 hours can never hope to do justice to the complexities of the relationship between Georgiana, her husband, and Lady Bess Foster, nor does this movie even try. The film spends entirely too much time emphasizing the parallels between Georgiana and her however many greats niece, Lady Diana Spencer, future Princess of Wales. Hmm, let's see, both married older men who were emotionally distant, and who preferred the company of another woman, leaving the beautiful wife to flee into the arms of an adoring lover. However, Prince Charles never moved Camilla into Kensington or Buckingham Palace, forcing Diana to share living space with her rival. Nor were Camilla and Diana ever best friends the way Georgiana and Bess were. Georgiana also had fewer choices in life than Diana did.

The movie muddles up even the basic facts of the triangle. When Georgiana met Lady Bess in Bath in 1782, she had been married for about eight years, and had yet to have her first child. She had married the Duke just after her 17th birthday in 1774. It was considered a great match, uniting two great families, Spencer and the Cavendish. The fact that Georgiana had met the Duke only a handful of times didn’t matter. Her parents were quite keen on the match, and more than anything Georgiana wanted to please her parents. The Duke was 26, but while Georgiana came from a loving affectionate family, the Duke’s family was less so. Georgiana had the mistaken belief that the Duke had a similar temperament to her father, who was somewhat shy and awkward in public, but loving in private. Unfortunately she completely misjudged his character.

What the movie does get right is that Georgiana was hoping that taking the waters at Bath would help her to conceive. At the time that they met, Lady Elizabeth Foster and her sister, both separated from their husbands, were living in genteel poverty in Bath. She was daughter of the 4th Earl of Bristol, also known as the Earl Bishop because he had been a clergyman before he inherited the title (his elder brother Augustus John Hervey, 3rd Earl of Bristol was married to Elizabeth Chudleigh). The Hervey family has a history of eccentricity and pure looniness, the first Earl of Bristol's son Lord Hervey had a long affair with Stephen Fox Strangeways (Lady Victoria Hervey, sister of the current Marquess is Britain’s answer to Paris Hilton. Her late brother, the 7th Marquess, was a drug addict who went bankrupt.) When she was seventeen, Bess had married an Irish MP, John Foster. The marriage quickly went south, with infidelities on both sides. Soon the two women were bosom buddies, and Bess and the Duke were sharing long rides out in the countryside. Bess was hired initially as a governess to the Duke's illegitimate daughter Charlotte Williams, who she spent almost two years abroad with.

No one knows for sure when Lady Bess and the Duke became lovers. And Georgiana apparently didn't find out until it was revealed that Bess and the Duke had had a child together, Caroline St. Jules (who later married George Lamb, the brother-in-law of Lady Caroline Lamb). Bess seemed to fill a need in both the Duke and the Duchess. She gave Georgiana the affection and attention that she craved, and she seemed to be able to stroke the Duke's ego the way that Georgiana was incapable of doing. She was the linchpin that allowed the marriage to work between the Duke and Duchess. Instead in the movie, we never see the relationship develop between Bess and the Duke. Georgiana comes home one day and hears them in bed. When she asks Bess why, Bess explains her actions away by telling her that the Duke promised to help her gain access to her children (which for some reason the writers have given her three sons instead of two, perhaps to emphasize Georgiana's inadequacies more?). In reality, Bess's estranged husband kept her children away from her for 14 years.

The other problem with the movie is that the trio seemed to exist in a kind of bubble. The rest of Georgiana's, apart from her mother, doesn't exist in the film, nor does the Duke's. And how can they make a movie without the Prince of Wales? As a political hostess and Whig supporter, Georgiana was very close friends with the Prince of Wales, as was Charles James Fox. The Prince was an ardent Whig, primarily because his father George III loathed and despised the Whigs. Instead, the audience is introduced to Charles James Fox, and Richard Brinsley Sheridan who function as sort of lackeys to Georgiana, you know in between writing plays and governing.

There is hardly any mention of what was going on in the outside world apart from a brief mention of the Whigs supporting the Americans in the Revolution and a fleeting reference to the revolution in France. Georgiana's life as a political hostess was completely truncated; she makes one minor little speech introducing Charles Grey in the film. During her lifetime, Georgiana helped to campaign for the Whig candidates, up and down the country.

Nor does the audience get more than a glimpse of her gambling which was a serious addiction for her. During her lifetime, she was constantly fighting off her creditors, at certain points she owed over 100,000 pounds. She was also possibly anorexic or bulemic and addicted to opiates to deal with the hollowness of her life. She was also an author, who published her only novel at the age of twenty-one, as well as a poetess.

In the movie, Lord Charles Grey is depicted as her contemporary, when in reality he was 7 years her junior. When they met, she had finally given birth to two daughters, Little G and Harriet, always called Harryo, but the pressure to give birth to a son was overwhelming. Grey basically chased her, and she was flattered by his attentions. He wasn't her first affair, she'd already possibly been intimate with her good friend Charles James Fox, and she was very close to the Duke of Dorset, one of the great womanizers of the age (a man who had also had an affair with Bess). When the Duke tells Georgiana that she must end her relationship with Charles Grey because of the scandal, I had to laugh. As if living openly in a ménage a trois was not scandal enough?

What the movie does get right is the heartbreaking moment when Georgiana has to give up her child by Grey. For the one thing that Georgiana loved more than anything was her children. She was an unusual mother for the time because she insisted on breast-feeding all her children. She was such a remarkable mother, that one of her daughters writing her a letter when she was an adult and a mother herself, remarked on what an absolutely wonderful mother she was. The movie mentions almost as an afterthought that the Duke, Georgiana and Bess lived together for 25 years before the Duchess’s death in 1806. Three years after her death, Bess got her wish and became the new Duchess.

For audience members who know nothing of the real story, I'm sure this lackluster treatment will suffice. For those of us who have read Amanda Foreman's masterful biography, one longs for what might have been if the book had been given the same lavish treatment and care that John Adams and Queen Elizabeth I had been given in recent miniseries.

I can only give this film a C+