Courtship was the supreme adventure for an agreeable young lady with a genteel fortune. Perhaps for the only time in her life, a woman was the absolute centre of attention, and often the protagonist of a thrilling drama.1
Amanda Vickery
Leaving your family to marry and live with your husband and his family was an anticipated aspect of every young woman’s journey into independent adulthood. Historically it was much rarer for a young woman to remain single than it was for her to marry – indeed this was true until the early twentieth century, when war reduced the number of eligible young men.
Some young women married as young as 16 years old and most women would have been considered spinsters by the age of 21. Indeed, I am sure most of us can recall the scene from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice when Lady Catherine de Burgh is horrified to learn that the 20-year-old Elizabeth Bennet’s sisters are all ‘out in society’ whilst she remains unmarried:
‘Are any of your younger sisters out Miss Bennet?’
‘Yes, ma’am, all.’
‘All! –What, all five out at once? Very odd! –And you only the second. –The younger ones out before the elder are married! –Your younger sisters must be very young?’
‘Yes, my youngest is not sixteen. Perhaps she is full young to be much in company. But really, ma’am, I think it would be very hard upon younger sisters, that they should not have their share of society and amusement, because the elder may not have the means or inclination to marry early. The last born has as good a right to the pleasures of youth as the first. –And to be kept back on such a motive! –I think it would not be very likely to promote sisterly affection or delicacy of mind.’
‘Upon my word,’ said her ladyship, ‘you give your opinion very decidedly for so young a person. Pray, what is your age?’
‘With three younger sisters grown up,’ replied Elizabeth, smiling, ‘your ladyship can hardly expect me to own it.’2
This was highly unusual for the time; as detailed in the previous chapter, the eldest daughter would have had a ‘coming out’ into society, which made her eligible for marriage and allowed her to be involved in social occasions. It was only when the elder daughter was married, or a significant amount of time had passed, that a younger sister could also be brought into society, unless they were very similar in age and then they might be brought out together or in consecutive years. It was rather a balancing act – one didn’t want to have too many daughters ‘out’ in society at once for fear of flooding the marriage market, but also, younger sisters could not remain at home after the age of about 16 or 17 as they might miss the opportunity to marry at all.
Once out in society it was important to meet a suitable gentleman and to behave in such a way that attracted him and yet remained appropriate. A ‘conduct book’ was often used as a tool to educate young women on how to behave in society, how to choose a husband, act as the perfect wife and how to raise children; in short providing women with a written guide on how to live in the way deemed correct by society. As you may expect, many of these books were actually written by men and so were a tool for the subordination of women, but they could also provide instructive material for young women too, especially those who had lost a mother or did not have the benefit of a governess or tutor. The books would allow a young woman to study some of the expectations of society and to ensure they were not ridiculed or mocked for their lack of knowledge in ‘how things were done’ when they actually entered a social environment.
Conduct books date as far back as the printing press has been able to mass-produce books, although their influence decreased with each subsequent century. In the nineteenth century, the novel as a tool of teaching proper conduct replaced many of the traditional conduct books for young women. The less rigid and more engaging content allowed for an enjoyable way to read about correct conduct, and as many novels during this period were written by women, the style and manner of instruction was less about restricting young women and more about informing them of the role they would have and what capabilities and opportunities were open to them. Some men in this period felt that the novel was therefore a dangerous tool, capable of allowing women to broaden their roles and place in society, and so they promoted the novel as inappropriate reading material for women. This however increased the ‘forbidden fruit’ aspect of the novel, inadvertently increasing its appeal.
Jane Austen wrote to her sister in 1805 about a conduct book she had read, An Enquiry into the Duties of the Female Sex by Thomas Gisborne, a Church of England clergyman who was a poet and writer on matters religious and moral. She, rather surprisingly, enjoyed the book saying, ‘I am glad you recommended ‘Gisborne,’ for having begun, I am pleased with it, and I had quite determined not to read it.’3 She does not in this letter state why she had determined not to read it, although we can assume that due to her strong character she did not believe in conduct literature and probably thought of it as a tool to bind women to the rule of men; don’t forget her scathing reference to conduct books in Pride and Prejudice when she references Mr Collins having written ‘Sermons to Young Women.’
Jane Austen’s novels of course taught women what was proper conduct and what was not; see the differences in character between Elizabeth Bennet and the younger Bennet sisters in Pride and Prejudice, or the difference between Marianne and Elinor Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility. These novels were written not only with a darkly sarcastic criticism on society and women’s roles at the time, but also to instruct women as to the proper way to behave in society and how to attract the right type of husband.
Amanda Vickery challenges the usual image of a woman shackled to house and husband. She claims that for many women, getting married allowed them a certain amount of freedom from childish constraints and also gave them their own small world to manage, such as the household, the servants, the decoration of one’s home, the management of the consumption of the household, both material and practical, and the bearing and raising of children. She also writes that, whilst most women prepared for this role with governesses, copying their mothers, and through the reading of conduct literature, it did not simply bend them to the will of their husbands. ‘Even as conduct literature advocated female softness and obedience in one chapter, in another it minutely tutored privileged women on the exercise of power.’4
Whilst women in this period were undoubtedly subordinate to men, they also did exercise some power in their lives, especially when it came to their marriage, and so whilst it was imperative that they made a good marriage in terms of advancing their family’s status, they also sought a marriage which would allow them a busy and fulfilling role. They were not ignorant of their situation in which they were under the rule of a husband, but neither were they keen to completely throw themselves into feminist rebellion and cast off the state of marriage.
Lady Elizabeth Howard, daughter of the 5th Earl of Carlisle was only 19 years old when she married her husband John Henry Manners, 5th Duke of Rutland, who himself was only just 21 years of age. He had recently reached his majority and succeeded to the title of the Duke of Rutland. His father, Charles Manners, 4th Duke of Rutland, had died in 1787 when John Henry was just 9 years old.
The marriage of the 4th Duke, Charles, and his wife, Lady Mary Isabella, suffered in the last years of the duke’s life as he moved the family to Ireland in 1784 to take up the role of Lord Lieutenant. He had been sent to Ireland with an annual income of £20,000 but had been told that around £15,000 of that would go on expenses, not leaving much to support his family or his estates back home in England. When Charles inherited the title and estates as the 4th Duke of Rutland, he had also inherited a large sum of debts and rather than take actions to reduce them, he ‘spent any available funds on art, gambling and lavish entertaining’. His wife Mary Isabella, eventually fed up with living in such a way, decided to return to Belvoir Castle with the children, leaving Charles in Ireland where ‘his gluttony was a beast too big to lay and his heavy consumption of claret led to the alcohol poisoning that killed him in 1787, aged only 34’.5
By the time of the 4th Duke’s death in 1787 the estate was left in considerable debt, not to mention the fact he had left his wife with a family of six children, the youngest of which was still only 4 years old. Joseph Hill, the family lawyer, had battled for the last few years of the 4th Duke’s life to try and manage the debts, limiting the amount of money the family were able to spend (£500 a year which would be £65,000 in today’s money), and selling timber and other resources to help with improvements to the estate as well as debt management.
In the intervening years between the 4th Duke’s death and John Henry’s maturity in 1799, Mary Isabella and her brother the Duke of Beaufort were joint trustees for the estate, Mary Isabella settling herself in London and sending the male children off to school. At Belvoir Castle, Joseph Hill, estate manager, and Sir John Thoroton the family chaplain and advisor, worked together to get the estate out of debt and back on to an even footing. It was still a vastly expensive estate (as all country houses continue to be to this day) but the immediate risk appeared to be over by the time John Henry inherited as the 5th Duke.
Knowing that he would inherit everything, he left Cambridge and returned to the Castle to become acquainted with it and begin to learn the ropes of life as a duke. In his recent book Resolution: Two Brothers. A Nation in Crisis. A World at War the present duke, David Manners, writes that in 1798 John Henry travelled to Ireland to take up the post of head of the Leicestershire Militia,
In Ireland, John Henry found himself serving under none other than Charles, Earl Cornwallis, now Viceroy of Ireland – to Mary Isabella’s delight, who remarked that Cornwallis ‘was an elevé and a great friend of Lord Granby’s and from that a great friend of your father’s’. It was one of her rare references to her late husband. But she added a warning – with its own veiled reference to the 4th Duke – that John Henry should not allow the ‘kind and hospitable welcome I know you will find in Dublin induce you to drink too much’.6
It seems that John Henry did not pick up any habits in Ireland that were too detrimental in nature and he returned in 1799 to continue learning about the estate and to take up the mantle of Duke of Rutland on the day of his twenty-first birthday. His next job was to secure himself a wealthy and well-connected wife. He chose the young, beautiful, 19-year-old Elizabeth Howard of Castle Howard in Yorkshire.
Whilst we know that both Elizabeth and John Henry were keen to marry and had great affection for each other, John Henry’s decision to marry so quickly, especially as a newly wealthy bachelor, may have been slightly influenced by the attraction of a dowry to help boost the family coffers. Archival information suggests that Elizabeth’s dowry was determined by her parents’ marriage settlement which allowed for a maximum of £15,000 per portion for each younger son or daughter. We do not know if Elizabeth did receive this much but it was probably around this amount, especially as it had been specially recorded and arranged in advance. Nevertheless, it was an attractive match and one which would have been highly spoken of in social circles, indeed even Queen Charlotte mentions it in a letter to her son George, Prince of Wales on 24 April 1799 when she says ‘The Duke of Rutland’s wedding was very quiet at the Carlisle’s House. The young couple are gone to Cheveley.’7
The marriage itself was mentioned in papers across the country:
Monday morning, by special licence, at the Earl of Carlisle’s house in Grosvenor Place, his Grace the Duke of Rutland to Lady Elizabeth Howard; the ceremony was performed by the Reverend Dr. Manners Sutton, Bishop of Norwich, who was send for express to town on the occasion; the bride maids were Lady Cawdor, and Lady Julia Howard; the newly married pair, after the ceremony, set off for Cheveley Park, Cambridgeshire.8
From Cambridgeshire, the young duke ventured up to Leicestershire with his new bride, keen to establish Belvoir Castle as their principal seat. David Manners writes, that the duke’s coming of age and marriage ‘was celebrated by a huge party at Belvoir, with illuminations in every window and fireworks sparkling and shooting into the sky from the roof’.9
Once the party was over and the dust began to settle from the whirlwind of engagement and marriage, Elizabeth was able to see what she had married, or more specifically, the estates she had married into. Whilst blissfully in love with her husband – she called him ‘my dearest best Rutland’ when writing to him – she was not impressed at all with the ‘Castle’ that she saw before her and probably instantly decided that she and her husband would spend many of the subsequent years turning the Castle into a home worthy of a nineteenth-century duke and duchess. Luckily the duke was more than happy to let his new wife take the reins on the improvements to their home.
There is little information to tell us what Mary Close was doing between 1807 and 1811 after her trip to London and Wales with her aunt and uncle. It is possible that she simply lived at home at Elm Park, visited friends and family in the area and continued to learn from her mother all the skills she would need once she became a wife and was in control of her own household. In 1811, she notes that ‘my father, mother, two sisters and myself went to London’10 and whilst she does not note the date that they arrived in London, she does note that they left in June and so we can assume that they were in London for at least a couple of months for her to refer to their leaving as a month rather than a date or week.
At the same time, Mary notes in her journal ‘I had 2 offers of marriage which my father refused.’11 This is possibly one of the most frustrating entries in Mary’s journals as they refer to an event which would have been quite exciting at the time for a young woman. To have two offers of marriage at any time would have been a great compliment to the 23-year-old, but for her father to turn them down must have meant they were either very unsuitable matches in terms of financial or social standing, or the gentlemen themselves were lacking in their manners and personalities. Considering the marriage that Mary subsequently made to a baronet of Northamptonshire with estates and money, it is most likely that breeding and financial matters were both partly the reason for the refusals. Frustratingly we may never know.
However, for Mary it seems to have been a relatively simple decision to marry Justinian Isham less than a year later and seemingly with no resistance from her father. Her diaries make no mention of other men she met during her time in Bath and London, but her first meeting with ‘Col. Isham [sic]’ is clearly written in her diary on 26 October 1811, ‘I dined at the Primates Palace near Armagh and first met Col. Isham.’12 Less than six months later on 12 May 1812 they were married at St Paul’s Church Dublin. Whilst there is no indication from the Close family that an urgent marriage was required (indeed if her father had turned down two offers already, it was clear he wanted to wait for the right man), Mary does note in her diary that Justinian left Elm Park in January to return to Lamport Hall just three months after meeting Mary, presumably to ask his parents’ permission to wed and then returned to Dublin on 8 May to prepare for his imminent wedding.
The Isham family are one of the oldest families in Northamptonshire, with their name recorded prior to the Norman Conquest as tenants of the land at the nearby village of Isham, from where they take the family name. The family lived at Pytchley Hall in Northamptonshire for many centuries, growing in wealth and importance until John Isham bought Lamport Hall in 1560 and established his own branch of the family there. A knighthood followed by a baronetcy firmly planted the family within the elite of Northamptonshire society, so they were clearly a wealthy and influential family for Mary to marry into.
Whilst Justinian’s family did not travel with him to attend the wedding, it is clear that his parents were happy about the match. In a letter sent to Mary from Lady Susan Isham, Justinian’s mother, we can see her being welcomed into the family:
14 May 1812
I beg to offer you my dear Mrs Isham the most hearty wishes of Sir Justinian myself and family, for all that happiness which we cannot but expect from the event in which we rejoice, most glad we shall be to have an early opportunity of congratulating our son in person and embracing you whom we are prepared to love. That God may bless you both with health & undevided [sic] comfort, is the prayer of.
My dear daughter
Your faithful affectionate
Susan Isham13
At the same time Lady Susan Isham also sent a similar letter to her son’s new mother-in-law again mentioning how pleased she was with the match:
14 May 1812
My dear madam,
My heart prompts me to be the first to express to you and Mr Close the joy and satisfaction which Sir Justinian and I most sensibly feel on the union of our beloved son with Miss Close from whom we justly hope he will derive the happiness of his life, and, whilst we rejoice that he has fortunately gained the affection of your amiable daughter, we venture to trust she will find in him that worth and contact which is likely to constitute hers and render him [illeg.] a member of her family, as he has ever been to us a good son, accepting dear madam I present to Mr C our most fervent wishes for the health and happiness of our new daughter; and with Sir Justinian’s best respects to you both I am truly
My dear madam,
Your most faithful humble servant
Susana Isham14
Whilst no letters survive documenting if Mary or her parents replied to their new family, it is clear from the correspondence and language used by Susan Isham that the match was a happy one on all sides.
Indeed, for the Isham family it was a silver lining in the pockets of their heavily depleted coffers. Mary Close had received a marriage settlement sum of £5,000 upon her marriage to Justinian15 – a sum which would come in handy for them when Justinian ascended to the baronetcy in 1818. Upon his death, his father, Sir Justinian, 7th Baronet, would divide the family fortune between his direct family and several benevolent causes. This left the new baronet with less money than originally anticipated. Whether Justinian knew this would be the case and pursued a wife who came with a fortune we may never know, however judging by how happy their marriage was, we can assume that affection was involved also.
Sometimes, finding the perfect husband was a trial of errors. From 1802-1805 Harriet found herself in a love triangle with her cousin Duncannon (John William Ponsonby, 4th Earl of Bessborough, known throughout his youth as Viscount Duncannon, or simply Duncannon was the eldest son of Harriet’s aunt, Lady Bessborough, and Harriet’s first cousin) and another young woman, Lady Elizabeth Villiers. Harriet had believed from a young age that there was an understanding between her and Duncannon that they would marry when they were both of a suitable age. To find herself suddenly second in a rivalry with another woman was therefore a grave disappointment, as well as being emotionally confusing for the 18-year-old woman who was just coming out into society.
This letter from Harriet to her sister Georgiana on 17 November 1803 reveals how this affair with Duncannon affected her. It is a long letter, but must be repeated almost in full to show the true extent of Harriet’s feelings:
I trust implicitly to all your promises of secrecy, indeed you will see how much from every circumstance it must be important to me that you should not, even to Lord M., repeat what I am going to say to you. My dearest G., you must advise me; I will therefore try as clearly as I can, to put you au fait.
You will be surprised, after all you have been hearing of Lady Eliz. Villiers, to hear that Duncannon is the cause of all this worry and uncertainty to me. I must begin by telling you that on our journey from Castle Howard, the quarrel that we had there, was of necessity made up, and we were, as you have so often seen us, friends with a vengeance […].
I then first thought seriously about it; his manner to me was such as really hardly to admit of a doubt. When we returned my grandmama and Miss Trimmer dined with us at Roehampton and the latter on my return to London, gave me a most furious lecture that my coquetry was dreadful and that, without caring for my cousin, I had made him in love with me, merely to enjoy the triumph of having supplanted the Lady E. Is not this, dear G., an unkind method of giving advice, and do you wonder at its alarming me?
The next day (as I must often act foolishly and always in extremes) I begun one of our tacit quarrels, and for 10 days at least, we did not utter. He was, for a few days, really wretched and neither spoke nor looked at any body, till suddenly he went off to the Jerseys, saw her twice every day and, even when we made up, was very cold to me. […]
Soon after this, my aunt knowing he was always with her, wrote him a letter, which he answered as if he was dying for her – Lady E. – but agreeing to leave off seeing her. Instead of depressing his spirits this seemed to take a load off his mind. […] One night at supper soon after this, he told me all at once that he made a serious promise to his mother, only to break it, and meant to marry Lady E., immediately. This I immediately saw was partly to make himself a hero de roman, and partly to try my sentiments. Angry at this ingenious contrivance, I told him I thought him very weak and foolish. He fired up. (Do not laugh) I told him I never wished to speak to him again, he assented and for 6 weeks, we again by a word did not break this agreement. This was very foolish but very decisive; he really was miserable the whole time. It rather amused me as my aunt thought his sorrow was caused by Lady E., and often consulted me about it, but it touched me much more, and it is the only time that I have ever felt the slightest penchant for him, but the constant and steady melancholy for a length of time in this weather-cock cousin … [the end of this letter is missing.]16
This is an interesting letter for a number of reasons. Firstly, it really gives us an insight into the personality and character of Harriet; she seems to be quick to anger and lash out at those close to her, something which was not encouraged in a young lady’s behaviour. It is also interesting as this is the longest note in her letters up to this date, which really gives us information on how Harriet is feeling about the whole affair. Despite her attempts at a jovial and aloof manner, the length at which she writes about this event as well as her forceful attempts to say that this was the ‘only time’ she had felt something for him, suggest a defensiveness, meaning the incident may have affected her more deeply than she wanted to tell her sister. However, it is her next letter to her sister which really shows her emotional turmoil,
The tedious 6 days before it is possible that I should receive your answer to my last letter are indeed enough to tempt one to some tragical [sic] deed, and I know not how I shall go through them with patience.
Since I sent you my letter I have been in one continual state of anxiety, regretting one moment that I wrote it at all, and the next that I wrote it as it was – I dared not read it over and am afraid I did not make you understand what I wished, as I wished. […]
With regard to my cousin [Duncannon] – I believe that at present he is, or fancies himself, in love with me. (I must speak sans detour [without digressing], or you might dread another 11 pages.) Whatever other faults he may have, I believe him to be perfectly free from deceit, and he could have no motive for saying he was, if he did not at least think so himself; but you know my opinion of his boyishness [he was 22] inconstancy and, alas, fickleness of every sort, and it would scarcely create in me surprise, if I was to hear of his making desperate love to Lady E. tomorrow; at least it would create both surprise and sorrow in me to find that a human being could carry those faults to so great an excess. But if I heard it was Duncannon I should absolve the poor human mind and think of him as I always have done.
My poor sister, to what endless and confused epistles do I doom you.17
The difference between the two letters is very informative. Harriet has gone from the teasing teenager to a more contemplative young woman who is clearly starting to think more seriously about Duncannon as her husband. Again, we do not have Georgiana’s response but we do have Harriet’s reply where she speaks about the great relief she feels at having her sister’s advice. From Harriet’s letter, we can assume that Georgiana’s reply included advice to pull back, not be too quick to anger and have the decorum of a young lady of her stature.
In the same letter where she expresses thanks for her sister’s advice, Harriet also states, ‘An older and steadier man, the whole of this would be very different with.’18 This is probably one of the most important things Harriet says in her letters because it gives us a good insight into how she is maturing as an adult. She does not throw herself at Duncannon in a public display of her love for him. Instead she is mature enough to recognise that it is he who is acting immaturely and to know that should she be in this courting position with an older man, he would be treating her with more respect and clarity. This is interesting when we consider that the next time she was romantically involved with a man, it was with her future husband Granville who was twelve years older than her.
From then, the Duncannon saga seems to continue with clear evidence that he teased Harriet with his non-committal hints at his affection for her, contrasting to his behaviour towards Elizabeth Villiers. There is one instance where Caroline Ponsonby, Harriet’s cousin, speaks to him, asking him if he is in love with someone other than Elizabeth Villiers and even though she tries repeatedly to get a definite answer out of him, he simply looks at Harriet each time, hinting that he loves her, but not saying it outright, which, when you consider his obvious infatuation with Elizabeth Villiers seems both odd and rather unfair.
This came during a particularly unsuccessful ‘season’ for Harriet who was presented at court and attended several balls as a debutante but unfortunately did not catch the eye of a single suitor. It didn’t help that Harriet was thought to be particularly plain looking. She apparently had ‘little eyes’ and was inclined to be ‘fat;’19 she was self-deprecating in a way that would be considered overly defensive and negative today, but which at the time was apparently received with humour and made her more endearing to her contemporaries. In her book about the Duchess of Devonshire, Amanda Foreman states that although Harriet was not admired for her beauty during her coming out in London, ‘she was not shy like Little G and her witty conversation made a strong impression on visitors to Devonshire House’. She also states that ‘In his memoirs, Colonel Grenville described her as having “a great deal of genius, humour, strong feelings, enthusiasm, delicacy, refinement, good taste, naiveté which just misses being affectation, and a bonhomie which extends to all around her”.’20
Foreman goes on to say that in anticipation of her daughter’s apparent self-consciousness, Georgiana ensured that she was always involved in the parties and balls that she attended. The newspaper The Morning Post reported on an event in April:
Her Grace introduced French cotillions, which were lead off by Lady Harriet Cavendish, Lord Viscount Ossulton, and Mr and Mrs Johnstone. In these dances, all those who comprehended them joined the set…. The grace and activity displayed by Lady Harriet Cavendish was unusually admired…. The Goddess of youth and Beauty seemed united in this lovely offspring of gentle Devon.21
Unfortunately, despite Georgiana Duchess’s best efforts, Harriet did not form any significant relationships with the eligible men of London, and as the seasons rolled by and Harriet’s sister gave birth to another daughter and then a son, Harriet’s love affair with Duncannon grew in expectation amongst family and was even occasionally noted within the society papers. There is a very amusing note in a letter she writes to Georgiana in December 1803 where she offers to send Duncannon some cocoa nuts as he is clearly lacking some,
will you tell Duncannon from me that I am anxious to know whether would not like me to send him some cocoa nuts, as I fear the extreme WEAKNESS of his constitution will not be able to go on prosperously without them. Pray do not forget this message as it is, to use a favourite expression of Mr Foster’s, an exquisite gibe.22
Harriet was clearly getting frustrated at Duncannon’s lack of decision making but also his bandying the two women round him. Nevertheless, this was not a situation which would have a quick resolution.
Harriet’s letters during 1804 and 1805 are few and far between. This could be either because she was busying herself to avoid thinking about Duncannon, or the letters have been lost or destroyed in subsequent years. We do however, thanks to George Leveson Gower and Iris Palmer, have a letter from Lady Bessborough, Duncannon’s mother, which tells us how the affair was concluded. She wrote to her lover Granville (yes, Harriet’s future husband), in September of 1805 saying,
The year was almost come around again and the time approaching when Duncannon and Harriet, who have been quarrelling the whole twelve-month through, were to decide whether they liked each other well enough to marry. Ca [the Duke of Devonshire] and my sister, as well as Lord B., were anxious for it; and to me, had they liked each other, it would have delighted me…. They seemed to like each other and my sis told me H. owned to her she should like it, but he must promise to cure himself compleately [sic] of flirting, for she could not bear it; and Mrs P. and Lady Maria Fane must be given up. I asked him about the latter one; he only laughed and said, ‘what nonsense!’ He added that the liked his cousin extremely, but was not over anxious to marry at present and above all would not bear rules to be prescribed to him ‘by any woman living’.23
This letter shows how much the adults in the family were keen for Harriet and Duncannon to marry but also again highlights the inconsistency and immaturity of Duncannon. Lady Bessborough goes on to say in her letter to Granville, that she had received a letter from Duncannon that morning stating that he had proposed to Lady Maria Fane and she had accepted. There is no recorded information to tell us why he chose this particular lady and why he acted so quickly after telling his mother that he did not want to marry straight away. Perhaps being told by Harriet that he was to never speak to Maria Fane again should they wed made him realise how much affection he actually felt for her. In either case, Duncannon seems to have been able to keep to his word once committed and he and Lady Maria Fane married in November 1805 and had a very successful marriage.
There is no record of Harriet’s feelings following this to indicate surprise or disappointment, although in letters to her sister in October she notes that she had been in social situations with both Duncannon and his fiancée Lady Maria and had enjoyed their company and said to her sister that Lady Maria had ‘said 2 or 3 little things that marked a wish to prove to me that there could never be, on either side, the least obstacle to our being very good friends’.24 The saga was finally over for Harriet.
Previous historians, such as Amanda Foreman, have tended to gloss over the Duncannon affair, assuming that it was a childish dalliance and nothing serious, however from around October 1802 to November 1805, the affair dominates her letters to Georgiana. Therefore, this was clearly a large part of her life and in particular the year of her coming out when she was expected to catch the eye of a gentleman and marry. The affair with Duncannon is also a key event in shaping Harriet’s character; as a result of this she becomes more cautious and balanced when considering future potential marriage partners. Had she not been spurned by Duncannon, she may not have considered Granville and his gentle, mature influence in the same way.
By this time Harriet’s lack of marriage, not to mention her involvement with the Duncannon affair, had led to various rumours developing and in a letter to her sister in October she mentioned that she had received a letter from her grandmother, Dowager Lady Spencer, asking her if she had a ‘sighing and dying sort of passion, a concealed, sentimental affection for somebody’. When Harriet asked her grandmother who had been spreading the rumours, Lady Spencer claimed to have heard the rumour ‘30 times from a great many different people’ and, as Harriet put it in her letter, ‘that it was a person for whose dear sake I refused everybody and several eligible offers’.25 Clearly, Harriet’s lack of engagement to any of the men around her who were deemed eligible meant that rumours were beginning to surface. This shows the feelings of the time – if a young woman of 20 is surrounded by eligible young men but refuses to agree to marry any of them, she must then be concealing a secret lover. This was not the case and despite Harriet being able to attract several flirtations, none of them blossomed into a full romance and commitment. That may be because her strong opinions and beliefs were too much for some men, or (more likely) it may have been because she simply did not like any of the men she met enough to marry them. After all, she was a strong, intelligent and confident woman who was determined not to marry a ‘silly’ man, especially following the disaster of the Duncannon affair.
Life was changed forever for Harriet when, on 30 March 1806, her mother, the Duchess of Devonshire died, aged just 48. She had suffered for years with nervous complaints, headaches and eye problems which caused her to periodically withdraw from society and on this occasion, she was not to recover. Yet again there is a lack of written feeling from Harriet, who wrote six letters to her sister throughout January but then no more until July, which is probably because during this time the family were all together in their grief. Even after this time, when the families went back to their respective homes and Harriet’s correspondence recommences, there is little reference to her mother. The only thing she says is that she hopes to make her mother proud. Harriet didn’t write a diary and with all her family around her, had no need to send a letter to anyone, however it appears that she didn’t write anything down during this period to help her with her grief. We can only assume that her reluctance to talk about her mother in future letters is borne from a grief so great she does not speak of it. Whilst a refusal to speak about her grief in letters is understandable, it does limit our knowledge of her emotional wellbeing at this time, although it does show a stark similarity to the coping mechanism she adopted as a child when her mother was in exile in France, of retreating into herself and being reserved with her emotions.
In the three years following her mother’s death, Harriet tried to come to terms with her new position and spent most of her time avoiding any time alone with Lady Elizabeth Foster who, as Leveson Gower puts it, ‘instead of ceding to Harriet her proper place as mistress of the house, […] usurps the position and shows even greater want of tact by plaguing Harriet to go out into society with her.’26 In a letter to Georgiana on 20 November 1806, Harriet says ‘Lady E. F. is very disagreeable in doing the honours instead of me; which for every reason in the world is painful to me.’27 Her position as the only unmarried daughter forced her to be entirely dependent upon her father and, in a situation where Lady Elizabeth was not present, the running of the household would have been Harriet’s responsibility and would have allowed her to occupy herself with something other than reading, walking and socialising. However, because of Lady Elizabeth’s continued living at Devonshire House, something that was looked down upon by many people in society as being ‘unseemly’, Harriet was robbed of this position and yet was also trapped, as to leave Devonshire House and live with family either at Spencer House or at Althorp would have caused great scandal. Her aunt, Lady Bessborough, her sister Georgiana and her grandmother the Dowager Lady Spencer were all aware of this and worked tirelessly to protect Harriet and give her excuses to be away from Devonshire House as often as was polite.
In the same letter of 20 November, Harriet says, ‘I do not know whether I have said enough to you of my aunt’s very great kindness [….] She has lost no opportunity of expressing how much she wished to be a comfort to me, and has been a great one.’ However, as helpful as Lady Bessborough was intending to be, she was struggling herself – her sister, the Duchess, had been her best friend and closest confidante and it is evident from Harriet’s letters that Lady Bessborough found herself struggling with grief and as such was scarcely in company for the remainder of 1806.
Lady Bessborough’s absence in society did however create an opportunity; Lord Granville Lady B’s long time lover, spent more time in Harriet’s company, which allowed them to get to know one another more. Lady Bessborough, embroiled in an unhappy and abusive marriage conducted an affair with Granville for almost two decades, having two illegitimate children with him. She described him in later years as the love of her life. In the same letter to Georgiana, Harriet describes an evening spent with Granville:
She [Lady B] returned to Roehampton yesterday morning and did not accept an invitation to dinner at Holland House […] Lord Granville came from Holland House late. We played 2 games at chess, which lasted till supper was over. He is in one of his most gracious moods and certainly improves upon the pleasantness of our evenings.28
There are many different ways of looking at this situation, and how Harriet and Granville came to spend more time together. One, Lady Bessborough actively encouraged the union as she knew that Granville would eventually marry and she thought that by keeping him in the family she would have better access to him and their children. Two, she did suffer with her health and the loss of her sister around this time and so by withdrawing from society she unknowingly opened the door for the courtship. Or three, she may have opposed the match, but knowing that she could not hold Granville forever, she simply maintained a neutral position. We know that Lady Bessborough combined enthusiasm and encouragement for the match with an almost childish habit of snapping at Harriet in relation to it and so we could assume that it was a combination of all these possibilities.
Despite her Aunt’s confusing responses, Harriet seems to have become more receptive to Lord Granville and spent more time paying attention to him than she would have done three years earlier. He had been a figure in her life since she was a little girl and as the lover of her aunt, Lady Bessborough, she may have seen him more as an ‘uncle’ figure up to then. It is important to know that Granville would not have been a second or third-rate choice for Harriet in terms of considering a prospective husband. He was ‘a member of parliament for Staffordshire, prominent in society and half-brother of the Marquess of Stafford (later the 1st Duke of Sutherland’29 He had also been a significant part of the bon-tons, the elite of genteel society in eighteenth-century London which had included both of Harriet’s parents. The only drawback was his lack of significant wealth or country estate of his own.30 ‘He was by Regency standards beautiful’ states Betty Askwith, ‘even if today we might find his oval face rather characterless and fleshy’. She also goes on to say, ‘all the women in his life, not only his mistresses, but his wife, his mother, his sisters, his daughters, adored him’.31 Lady Holland the great journal writer of the times, wrote the following about him: ‘He is a man of mild popular manners, without much force of intellect, but sufficiently endowed to distinguish himself in politics. His family are accused of worldly wisdom and have an uncommon share of that undefineable useful quality, only to be rendered by the French word tacte.’32 He was clearly highly thought of and, being twelve years older than Harriet was a better, more mature match for her. With her aunt Bessborough out of the way, Harriet was free to get to know Granville more as a man and not merely as a peripheral adult in her circle. Add this to the fact that she is now 21, and we see a more mature young woman who is ready to pay attention to the older, more serious gentleman, than be taken in merely by a pretty face. We see this in the fact that their courtship lasted almost three years.
Those three years were a combination of perpetual happiness when in the company of her sister at Castle Howard, and anger and sadness when in the company of her father and Lady Elizabeth Foster at Devonshire House. In London, Harriet spent time with her Grandmother Spencer, avoiding Lady Elizabeth Foster, and her friends who were by now almost all married. She notes in a letter to her grandmother that three of her closest friends, Corise Bennet, Lady Duncannon and Caroline Lamb, are all heavily pregnant and that she is ‘quite worn out by discussions and comparisons on the subject, which is the only one they ever by any chance think upon or talk about’ although she does ‘hope it will all come to a happy conclusion very shortly’.33 It must have been difficult for Harriet who by this time was approaching her twenty-second birthday and was forced to watch her friends and acquaintances marry and start families. By this time Georgiana was pregnant with baby number six and whilst Harriet loved being an aunt and spending time with her nieces and nephews, she must have been keen to have children of her own.
By 1809, Granville was actively courting Harriet,34 which came at an opportune time as the Duke of Devonshire was planning his second marriage to his mistress Lady Elizabeth Foster. Faced with the future of being under the rule of Lady Elizabeth, who would then become the Duchess of Devonshire and therefore more able to control Harriet and her prospects, a marriage to Granville was a convenient and positive solution to her problem, however as George Leveson Gower notes, ‘it says much for her integrity that she did not allow her father’s dreaded marriage to Lady Elizabeth, which took place on 19 October, to influence her decision’.35 Instead she took most of autumn and into winter to consider the option of marrying him, clearly wanting to make sure she made the right decision. She contacted her former governess and family companion Selina Trimmer who she must have viewed as a sensible and impartial judge of the situation, ‘I cannot tell you what an incalculable blessing your friendship is to me and the consolation it is to be able to place the most entire confidence in you.’36 She was clearly at war with herself – her heart told her that she loved Granville, but her head, the stubborn, fiercely independent, witty and intelligent side of her questioned whether it was sensible to accept a husband who had been so conveniently laid at her feet by her aunt, ‘ought I, my dearest Selina, ever to think of a man, over whom she has had such claims or such influence as this!’37
It seems that Granville may have also been warring with the same emotions, a sense of loyalty to Lady Bessborough but an attraction to Harriet, as Harriet notes in subsequent letters to Selina that he appears very interested in her and attentive but does not commit himself in any way. This behaviour is one that frustrates Harriet, but she sees it as evidence of her aunt’s meddling rather than an inconsistency in Granville’s character,
This conduct does not belong to a character to which I could wish to trust the happiness of my life. He professes great impatience for my return to Chiswick – my conduct there will not be difficult if Lady B does not make it so by jealousies and tracasseries (sic) […] I do not understand Lord Granville’s inconsistence but I never resent nor lament it and only wish to prove by the quiet and steadiness of my own manner that both my feelings and conduct are independent of the changes in his.38
This letter shows how much Harriet has grown up and matured from the younger woman who flew between rage and affection in the Duncannon affair. Whilst she is still considering her choice at this time, she is also considering how she appears to Granville and wants to show him that she is consistent and a mature young woman who would prove an excellent wife.
For Lady Bessborough, whilst she knew that she would be unable to keep him to herself forever, there is evidence to suggest that his break with her and subsequent marriage to Harriet caused her great heartbreak; in 1812 she wrote:
I must put down what I dare tell nobody. I have heard or spoken that language [of love] and for 17 years of it lov’d almost to idolatry the only man from whom I could have wish’d to hear of it, the man who has probably lov’d me the least of all those who have profess’d to do so – tho’ once I thought otherwise.39
In the space of three years she lost two very close allies and confidantes in her sister and her lover; not to mention that in the last months of Harriet and Granville’s courtship, Harriet became so suspicious of her aunt that afterwards she would not see her unless it was unavoidable; she was clearly concerned that her aunt would meddle in her marriage.
It took another month for Granville to actually propose to Harriet but when he did she happily accepted. She did however write to both her brother and Selina to tell them the news and to ask for their approval; it seems that even at this stage she is still keen to ensure that she is doing the right thing and not to leap headfirst in to a marriage she may later regret.
Letter to Hart from Chiswick, Thurs 16th November 1809:
My best and Dearest Hartington,
I feel such confidence in your affection that I am certain the knowledge of my happiness will add to yours and if anything can increase mine, it is that conviction. Lord Granville’s character and attachment give me a security in looking forward to writing my fate with his that I could not have believed I should ever feel at such a moment as this.
He proposed to me the night before last, but from some communication he thought it necessary to make first to part of his own family, I have been bound to secrecy till today.
Are you coming, my own adored brother and do you approve and are you happy?
Ever most affectionately yours, H. Cavendish40
Letter to Miss Trimmer, (presumably on the same date as it is not dated):
My Dearest Selina,
I send you the enclosed bracelet as a little remembrance from me. On Sunday [Dec 24 1809] I shall have the right to the initials I have engraved upon it.
I do assure you, my dearest Selina, that at this most important and interesting moment I often think of all your past conduct to me, with affection and gratitude not to be expressed.
God bless you my dearest friend.
Ever yours most affectionately, Harriet Cavendish41
Whilst everyone appeared to be happy at the match, it was slightly overshadowed by the behaviour of Harriet’s father, the Duke of Devonshire. Amanda Foreman claims the Duke may have had a preference for his illegitimate daughter by Lady Elizabeth Foster over his own legitimate daughters, particularly Harriet. She claims that upon Harriet’s marriage to Granville they received a £10,000 settlement sum which was significantly smaller than the £30,000 received by Caroline St Jules (his illegitimate daughter from Elizabeth Foster) upon her marriage to George Lamb just a few months before Harriet’s own wedding. No doubt Harriet and Granville would have used a large dowry amount to set up their home as neither one of them owned their own estate, and so there must have been some disappointment. When the duke died just two years later in 1811 and Hartington became the 6th Duke, he raised Harriet’s marriage portion to £30,000 as one of his first actions.42
The couple honeymooned at Woolmers, a country house in Hertfordshire owned by Lord Stafford, where Granville wrote to his former mistress, Lady Bessborough, about how much he loved his new wife,
27 December 1809
Every hour I passed with Harriet convinced me more and more of the justice and liberality of her way of thinking, and of her claim on me for unlimited confidence. She is indeed a perfect angel.43
At last this ‘perfect angel’ was free of the oddities of life in the Devonshire household, and was embarking upon a new adventure. Not having a country house of their own, following their marriage, Harriet and Granville spent the first years of their marriage at either their London home or at the estates of his sisters. She was clearly infatuated with him, writing to her sister ‘my attention was taken up this morning with G’s profile at chess. I never saw him in such beauty, [….] He is really more adorable than ever and his kindness and sweetness make every hour passed with him sweeter than the one before.’44 For the first two years of their marriage they lived between their London home and the two estates of Granville’s sisters. Whilst this was not ideal for Harriet, it did at least allow her to start a family and get to know her husband’s family before Granville’s political work interrupted.
For Elizabeth Manners, the new Duchess of Rutland, her move from Castle Howard in Yorkshire to Belvoir Castle in Rutland was instantaneous upon her marriage as her husband had already succeeded to the title of Duke of Rutland and had settled on the idea of Belvoir being their principal seat. His mother, the dowager duchess preferred to remain in London, renting a house in Sackville Street from the 1 October 1799 for a period of six years and so lived independently, meaning the young couple had the extensive country estate to themselves, although Elizabeth was soon to learn this was less enjoyable and more of a burden than she had anticipated.
The ‘principal seat’ that greeted Elizabeth was a squat, two-storey neoclassical country house which sat upon a great promontory, looking out over the valley below. The landscape from the wide valley floor, climbing gently at first and then steeply up through the gardens of the estate, suggested the need for a vast fortress atop the hill which would command the skyline and not hide amongst it as the current house did. Elizabeth could barely understand it being called a castle. On top of the disappointing exterior, the interior of the castle was in dire need of repair, restoration and improvement, especially if it were to become the main seat of the duke and duchess, a young couple who would want to host parties and have visitors to stay. ‘She had expected better, so her kind rich husband allowed her to raze it to the ground and build on the old foundations a real castle, a neo-Norman, neo-gothic, neo-everything.’45 This work began almost immediately and will be discussed in more detail in the following chapter, however it is important to understand why Elizabeth and the other women in this book took more of a leading hand in the work that they did upon their estates.
Contrary to popular belief that elite country house owners did not work, most male country house owners were actually involved in many different roles and positions across English politics and local affairs. Many were members of the House of Lords or House of Commons, were Lord Lieutenants of the Counties they lived in, or sometimes further away, were active militiamen and many other roles besides, some of which were associated with the various different family estates. This meant they often spent time away from their country estates, leaving their wives in their place.
Elizabeth quickly had to reconcile herself with remaining at the underwhelming Belvoir Castle whilst her husband was absent. Just eight months after their marriage, and their first Christmas together in 1799, the duchess was at Belvoir and the duke was in London attending to public duties. Not only did she miss the duke, she was four months pregnant with her first child and hosting a seasonal party. We do not know how many people were visiting Belvoir at this time, although letters written between the couple on Christmas Day and Boxing Day show the Duke requesting that he be ‘remembered to her party,’ which suggests a significant number of guests.
In her book about Capability Brown, Duchess Emma of Belvoir Castle states that,
The 5th Duke had inherited his passion for hunting from his grandfather and great-grandfather and, during the early years of his marriage, he seems to have been either in London attending his political and regimental public duties or at his hunting box (a property used specifically for hunting parties), in Wilsford in Lincolnshire. […] Elizabeth wrote to him a year after their wedding, in 1800: ‘I do not envy the way in which you pass your mornings, I hope you are almost tired of living without me, I shall have no means of getting to Wilsford … but you must give up hunting on Tuesday or Wednesday and come over to see me else I shall say you like hunting better than me.’46
The separation from John Henry could be one of the major reasons, apart from a desire to live in a nicer home, for beginning the development works on Belvoir Castle, to provide distraction and employment for her.
Not all newly married couples had the freedom to pick which home they wanted to live in during the early years of their marriage. If the bride was lucky, her husband would have already inherited his estates and was the head of the family, as with Elizabeth and John Henry. If not, she had to live alongside her new in-laws, and usually under their rule until such a time as her husband inherited. Georgiana Morpeth, Harriet’s elder sister, lived at Castle Howard under the reign of her stern father in law, Frederick Howard, the 5th Earl of Carlisle, for twenty-four years before her husband George succeeded as Earl.
Mary and Justinian Isham were a classic case of young, newly married couple without an estate to move to. Justinian had been assigned to captain in the Northamptonshire militia in Ireland when he met Mary and retained this role after their marriage. Also, his father the 7th baronet, was still alive and managing the estate at Lamport, which meant they did not need to rush to Lamport Hall as soon as they were married. They continued to use Elm Park as their main residence and travelled both with Justinian’s regiment and to London. In April 1813 Justinian went to Belfast with the Northamptonshire Regiment and Mary visited with her mother and sisters. In May, they visited Scotland and Edinburgh with the Northamptonshire Regiment, this time Mary accompanying Justinian, presumably because it was further away and she did not want to be separated from him for such a long time.
The first opportunity Mary had to visit her new family and the house that would eventually become her home came in June of 1813 when, as she noted in her diary ‘Col Isham & I went to Lamport Hall to visit his Father & Mother, Sir Justinian & Lady Isham.’ There is no indication of how long they stayed, however the visit may have been a lengthy one as Mary did not note any more journeys until December of that year when she says they ‘went to London’. By this time Mary may have had a good reason for wanting to be settled in a house in London; she was pregnant with their first child.
Mariette Isham as she was known was born on 4 February 1814 in London. In June of 1814 Justinian and Mary, along with little Mariette, journeyed north to Northamptonshire and Lamport Hall so that their daughter could meet her grandparents and be admired. There are no surviving letters or diary entries at this time to hint at whether there was any disappointment at a daughter having been born rather than a son and heir, however the Isham family was known for producing large numbers of children, Sir Justinian being the eldest of thirteen children and his grandfather, Rev. Euseby Isham, being the third of fourteen children, so it’s most likely that they were contented with a daughter and happily anticipated the future arrival of a son.
However, the next few years were to prove unhappy and challenging ones for Mary Isham. In September of 1814 they returned to Elm Park in Armagh, the first time Mary’s family met little Mariette who was now 8 months old. Sadly though, just six months later – and a month after Mariette turned 1 – Mary’s mother died at Elm Park, aged 57:
DEATHS. On the 1st March, at Elm Park, near Armagh. Mrs Close, wife of the Rev. Samuel Close. This lady had attained the middle age of life, and in all relative situations had manifested those amiable qualities which gained her the high respect and esteem of everyone who had the happiness of her acquaintance, and who will long lament the loss they have sustained by her death. To her Husband and her Children her loss is irreparable; but they have the consolation of reflecting that as her life was spent in the exercise of every virtue, so it terminated in the full possession of Christian hope and confidence.47
Dublin Evening Post – Saturday 18 March 1815
The notice does not state how she died but its mournful mention of her husband and children give us some indication of how devastated the family was and so we can assume that it was quite a sudden death, either by natural causes or a brief illness. Mary, ever the succinct diarist, wrote in her journal,
March 1, 1815 | My dear & lamented Mother died at Elmpark [sic] aged 57. Buried in the vault in Tynan Church48
Despite a lack of emotional outpouring in her diary, it is clear that Mary was very close to her mother, having been raised and educated by her. Knowing what a formidable and capable woman Mary would grow to become during her marriage and time at Lamport Hall, we can infer that she learned many of these characteristics from her youth alongside her mother and father at Elm Park.
On 7 November 1816, Mary gave birth to a son, Justinian Vere, at Elm Park, an event which would have filled the house with happiness and celebration; however, it proved to be a small period of light and happiness which was followed by the death of her father less than a year later. In late September 1817, after a battle with Typhus fever, Mary’s Father Rev. Samuel Close died at Elm Park.
Sep [sic] 1817 | My dearest lamented Father died at Elmpark [sic] aged 68, buried in the vault in Tynan Church49
His obituary in a local paper shows the influence and respect felt by the community,
On Tuesday 16th of typhus fever the Rev’d Samuel Close of Elm Park County of Armagh. This death of this pious and truly benevolent divine is unequivocally mourned as a public loss to society. Providence had favoured him with a heard which felt for the miseries of the indigent, and had amply endowed him with the means of relieving their anguish. During the late distressing times he was the refuge of the unhappy. His charity more than commensurate to his immense wealth was actively employed in works of benevolence, and to his multitude owe their existence, who but for his timely aid must have perished of want.50
He would pass this charitable nature on to his daughter who would spend her life involved in charitable causes as well as looking after the poor on their Northamptonshire estates. On the death of her father, Mary’s brother Colonel Maxwell Close, who at the time was not married, inherited the estate and the family fortune as well as responsibility for at least four of his younger siblings who were still living at home. Mary and Maxwell were very close and so she would have been welcome to remain at Elm Park alongside her family, although seeing her family change so quickly must have given Mary a desire to have her own home and settle down. In April 1818, just a few months later, Sir Justinian Isham, 7th Baronet of Lamport Hall, died and Mary’s husband succeeded to the baronetcy as 8th Baronet. Suddenly they found themselves on the way to a new home and a new life as an independent family.
For some aristocratic couples, the lure of a large estate was distinctly absent. As the youngest child of a large family whose father had married twice and had seven other children, Granville had no estate or titles to inherit on his father’s death. He did inherit some coalmines in Staffordshire and so did have to attend and manage those on a regular basis. He was also a member of Her Majesty’s Privy Council and a member of the House of Commons representing Litchfield from 1795–99 and Staffordshire for the following sixteen years. He was also British Ambassador to Russia from 1804–05 and so his political work kept him occupied and gave them a steady income.
Throughout their marriage Harriet and Granville moved many times; between properties in London, in the English countryside and, during the years that Granville served as British Ambassador, first in the Netherlands and then in Paris. Whilst married couples were necessarily separated for extended periods of time throughout the year depending on the role of the husband, there were other roles which allowed husband and wife to travel together. When Granville was appointed as the English Ambassador in 1824 Harriet and their children went with him to The Hague in Brussels, living not far from the consulate at the Embassy and acting as the perfect society hostess.
When we consider then, the circumstances of these women – how, depending on the varying roles that their husbands had, they would have either spent much time at their country estate alone, or would have accompanied their husband in a synchronised role, it is not surprising that they became so heavily involved in projects such as architectural changes, restoration, interior design, farming and estate management, to supplement the traditional roles of society hostess and mother and to keep themselves occupied.