Georgiana Cavendish

English politician and writer

• Born: June 7, 1757
• Birthplace: Wimbeldon, Surrey, England
• Died: March 30, 1806
• Place of death: London, England

Cavendish overcame a restrictive private life to become a respected politician who was determined to support the Whig cause despite her obligations to support her husband. Her visible and active presence highlight women’s significant contributions to eighteenth century politics. She also wrote two novels.

Early Life

Georgiana Cavendish was born an aristocrat, being the eldest child of John, created the First Earl Spencer when his daughter was only eight, and Margaret, daughter of the Right Honourable Stephen Poyntz. As a daughter, her education concentrated upon her duty to make a suitable dynastic match, offering only a smattering of basics such as history, geography, and languages, coupled with the specifically feminine aspects of etiquette, deportment, music, and drawing. Georgiana was expected to be a pleasing and refined addition to any family rather than an educated companion and helpmate in a partnership of equals.

Georgiana and her sister Harriette, inseparable throughout their lives, were noted for their striking good looks, acclaimed charm, style, and sophistication. Coupled with their status within a strict hierarchy of rank, there was no doubt that they were very desirable “commodities” in the marriage market. At sixteen years old and before she had properly been launched as a debutante upon exclusive society as a way of promoting her eligibility, Georgiana caught the eye of the fifth duke of Devonshire, William Cavendish.

The Devonshires were one of the wealthiest families in the country, owning vast tracts of profitable land and six of the most magnificent estates and houses in England and Ireland. Georgiana was an obvious and acceptable choice for the duke and his family: The social status of her family, the Spencers, almost matched that of the Devonshires, and Georgiana was beautiful, popular, and young and thus ideal for bearing the next generation. However, no matter how illustrious the match, it was not a happy one. Georgiana was impulsive and demonstrative and the duke, though well respected, was famous for his reserve and awkwardness in public. A difference in age of ten years did little to smooth over the troubles in what was essentially a union of opposites.

Life’s Work

Married at age sixteen, Georgiana Cavendish was defined by her marriage in all aspects. There had not been a duchess of Devonshire for twenty years, and Cavendish’s new position catapulted her into the limelight of the overlapping social and political spheres of the fashionable elite. Because of her rank, charismatic youth, and good looks, Cavendish swiftly became the undisputed leader of the fashionable world. Her clothes, accessories, and even movements were slavishly followed by public and press alike. Her social success went some way to compensate for what appeared to be the duke of Devonshire’s complete indifference to his lively wife. She published Emma: Or, The Unfortunate Attachment—A Sentimental Novel in 1773, an insider’s look at the institution of arranged dynastic marriages, and published The Sylph in 1779, an epistolary novel clearly based on her own experiences with fashionable society.

Within a few months, though, she was a heavy drinker and addicted to both drugs and gambling. Her debts, even by eighteenth century standards, were astronomical, and they nearly crippled the vast wealth of the Devonshires. It was not until after her son became the sixth duke that the financial mess was finally resolved. Cavendish’s personal life was further complicated by a series of miscarriages when her foremost social duty was to produce a male heir and by sharing her friendship, her home, and her husband with her friend Lady Elizabeth Foster, an arrangement—a ménage à trois—that could have become volatile.

Cavendish’s role as politician came through fulfilling her role as wife to her politically important husband and through replacing her downward spiral of self-destruction with a determined sense of purpose. The Devonshires were major leaders of the opposition Whig Party, but peers, by law, were barred from actively campaigning for their own interests. It was therefore the role and responsibility of the wives to represent their husbands politically.

Cavendish’s numerous obligations were split between town and country. When in London during the season that spanned the time Parliament was in session, she would host dinners and balls as a method of ensuring support and loyalty to the Whig Party, and she became an active patron of the arts as well. When in the country, she was expected to be involved in charity work, the dispensation of patronage, and presiding over “public days,” those times when the Chatsworth estate was open to all the tenants and respectable passersby. Vast quantities of food and drink were available at the expense of the duke.

Cavendish was a successful ambassador for the Whig Party because of her personal touch. Her ability to mix and talk, with apparent sincerity, with all social classes made her extremely popular and very successful as a rallying focus for the party as a whole, earning her the epithet “head of opposition public.”

What began as obligation for Cavendish became for her a staunch advocacy of the Whig causes: supporting a limited monarchy, personal liberty, and religious freedom. She extended what was initially an ambassadorial role on behalf of her husband’s interests into a role of political activist for the Whig Party. She caused a sensation and a scandal when she campaigned for the statesman Charles James Fox during the Westminster elections of 1784. Fox recognized Cavendish as an astute propagandist with a flair for engaging with the public and an eye for the political potency of the symbolic: For example, she used her riding habit to represent a military uniform when forces were gathering against a French invasion in 1778, and she adopted the three feathers of the prince of Wales as decoration, demonstrating alliance during the Regency Crisis of 1788-1789. By successfully campaigning for Fox, Cavendish set a precedent while canvassing for a male nonrelative and being associated with a party in her own right; she exceeded the political ambitions of her husband.

In London, Devonshire House became the formal and informal headquarters of the Whig Party, and Cavendish moved beyond being a symbolic patriot to becoming a premier political hostess, confidante, and negotiator, using her connections and advantageous social position to bring together all that would further the interests and secure the future of the Whigs. It is a measure of her success that Cavendish was singled out by the opposition press to be vilified as nothing more than a common prostitute for making such a public “display” of herself when campaigning on behalf of the Whigs, which was swiftly becoming identified as her party.

Significance

Georgiana Cavendish Chapone a vast amount of publicity, especially critical publicity. She was criticized because of her association with Fox and the Regency Crisis; she overstepped the boundary of female propriety by being too forward and public; and she was disgraced—facing two years’ banishment abroad—because she had an affair with Earl Grey. Cavendish’s later political activities as negotiator and facilitator occur at a more discreet level, behind the scenes.

Her correspondence reveals the extent of her political participation, and it shows just how much of a role she carved out for herself. Her letters also demonstrate the precarious nature of the public realm for women. Her involvement in eighteenth century politics ran counter to the prescribed social roles for women of the time, as the public and private spheres were gendered and marked out for both women and men. Cavendish’s life is an example of, rather than an exception to, the mutually dependent and all-encompassing worlds of the social and the political.

Bibliography

Cavendish, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. Emma: Or, The Unfortunate Attachment—A Sentimental Novel. Edited by Jonathan David Gross. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004. Cavendish first published her novel anonymously in 1773, almost prophetically from an aristocratic female viewpoint about the internal and external dynamics of an arranged dynastic marriage.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. The Sylph. York, England: Henry Parker, 2001. First published in 1779, this is a fascinating epistolary novel that draws upon Cavendish’s own unhappy experiences of the fashionable world that transforms a gauche young girl into a sophisticated woman of the world. Introduction by Amanda Foreman.

Chapman, Caroline. The Duke of Devonshire and His Two Duchesses. London: John Murray, 2002. Despite the title, this work is more a vindication of Lady Elizabeth Foster but is an insight into the dynamics of the ménage à trois.

Foreman, Amanda. Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. London: HarperCollins, 1998. An excellent, well-balanced biography that charts, chronologically, Cavendish’s development from birth to young wife to the foremost female politician of her day.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. “Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire and the Whig Party.” In Roles, Representations, and Responsibilities, edited by Hannah Barker and Elaine Chalus. London: Longman, 1997. This chapter examines Cavendish’s political career, which is broken into two parts: the high public profile of campaigning at the end of the eighteenth century and the more discreet profile at the beginning of the nineteenth century, illustrating that her presence in the political arena was both individual and illustrative.