WHAT WAS IT like to be the mother of Lord Viscount Lymington, the boy who never grew up? Described for the rest of his life as childish in his behaviour, and thought by some doctors to have a brain that never developed, how did Urania, 2nd countess of Portsmouth, feel towards her oldest son? She was the woman who had married with great expectations. She had risen up the social scale to the dizzy heights of the aristocracy, and had wealth beyond her parents’ wildest dreams. There seemed to be no stopping her. But as each year passed since her son had been born, the reality of his limitations and problems were ever clearer. Deciding how to respond presented her with her greatest personal challenge yet.
For Urania, December 1788 was a good time to take stock. In her mid-forties, in the twenty-five years since she married the 2nd earl, she had taken to the aristocratic lifestyle with aplomb. After ten years of building work, and a multitude of decisions about its design, decoration, and furnishing, the new Hurstbourne Park was completed, and ready to be shown off to guests who attended a gala ball that month. Whether her marriage to the 2nd earl had been a happy one was not a matter that anyone thought appropriate to consider, let alone discuss. The relationship had certainly been fruitful. Urania had borne eight children: four boys and four girls. By December 1788, all eight children were still living, the youngest, William, aged four.
On 18 December, Urania’s oldest child, John Charles, Lord Viscount Lymington, celebrated his twenty-first birthday. As he came of age, and reached his legal majority, Lymington’s formal education ended. Urania had good reason to be worried about her son. Despite her best efforts to find a cure, he still stammered, his eyes gave his face an odd appearance, and after years of private tutoring he remained well behind his brothers in his academic attainments. The law determined that her first-born son inherited the family estate and title: there was nothing that Urania could do to alter this order of succession.
Yet Urania was never a woman to give up, or resign herself to despair. She was a fighter. There were glimpses of her strength of personality throughout her life. Writing to advise her son Newton when his wife, Frances, lay sick in April 1800, for example, Urania said that she hoped Frances would ‘remember that her spirits are better than her strength and that she should Bottle up the one to preserve the other’.1 A strong will would make her better. And who would know better than Urania, whose steely determination shone through the portrait Hoppner painted of her. Commenting a century later about a ‘poor copy’ of this portrait that hung at Eggesford, the 6th earl of Portsmouth said that the original captured Urania’s ‘keen look of intelligence’ and her ‘indomitable will’. Portraying her with ‘the eyes not widely open’ was to give the viewer ‘the impression of a person who has a keen insight’.2 She was all-knowing, but not necessarily understanding. She looks judgemental and critical: she was not a woman to cross. Urania’s actions showed that she had pride and ambition for her family, and she let nothing, even her son’s mental problems, get in the way.
There was much about Lymington’s upbringing that had given Urania hope. He was good at some things. He was quick with figures, and he could retain information. His mind was open to impression, and as a child he could not be easily dismissed as an idiot. There were signs of development, and glimmers of light in his understanding.
This was what Urania needed to have confidence that she could prepare her son for his future life as the 3rd earl of Portsmouth. He could be shaped and moulded to fit. There were two chief parts he needed to play: one involved his property; the second his social role as an aristocrat and bearer of the family title.
With vast estates and several homes to inherit, Lymington needed to have a basic understanding of how his property was managed, and to keep an eye on the income it generated and expenses it incurred. Nobody expected any aristocrat in this period to spend their time being closely involved in the day-to-day decisions of farming or property maintenance. These tasks were always delegated to bailiffs who acted as estate managers, housekeepers, and a raft of agricultural workers and domestic servants. But Lymington needed to know something about the arable farming and the valuable timber business on his estates, and to oversee the accounts of his estates as they were submitted. There was big money involved. It was estimated that in 1799 the Portsmouth estates were worth up to eighteen thousand pounds per year.3
This role did not present Lymington with any difficulty. In fact, later in his life we have evidence that Lymington positively enjoyed talking about the price of corn and hay, and took pride in the quality of his farming land and animals. Although he would be subsequently deprived of much legal control over his estates, his family made sure that he was at least nominally in charge of the ‘home farm’, the one closest to the mansion at Hurstbourne Park. ‘He was something of a Farmer,’ said William Lovett, who saw Lymington in the years immediately following their time at school together. Lymington’s attachment to his land could take on a patriotic spirit. On a trip into Wales in September 1819, Lymington (by then Lord Portsmouth) was so impressed by the sheep farming that he saw in the lands around Brecon that he sent instructions back to Hampshire for the purchase of sixty Dorset ewes and lambs for his land in England. Staying just outside Brecon, Portsmouth commented that ‘it is so very pretty’, and admitted that ‘the land here is very rich but I would not exchange our English Land for any here’.4 For a man who one day would call himself the King of Hampshire, his attachment to his land, and his identification with the place of his birth, began early.
Indeed, having ignited Lymington’s interest in the workings of his estate, the problem could be that he paid too much attention to farming, not too little. The English people spoke with affection at this time about George III as ‘Farmer George’, but nobody expected him to get his hands dirty. The King’s interest in agriculture was largely scholarly, and, when the image of him as a farmer was used widely during his first period of mental illness in 1788–89, it was designed to contrast with his son’s more extravagant tastes and pastimes. King George was thought of as a man of the people, but he did not join them in their work. In contrast, as the 3rd earl of Portsmouth, John Charles’ enthusiasm for farming meant that at harvest time he could not wait to get into the fields with his men. A local physician remembered being astonished on one occasion when he dined at Hurstbourne Park. At the dinner were the 3rd earl’s first wife, and her brothers, Lord Grantley and General Norton. Lord Portsmouth entered the dining room last, and arrived ‘heated and bloated with every appearance of having been hard at work all the morning. After eating voraciously he got up from the table, and saying he was wanted in the field went out.’5 His fellow distinguished diners were left aghast. Here was the 3rd earl of Portsmouth, red-faced, sweaty, and ravenous from a morning’s outside work. His role was meant to be as landowner, and that meant organizing others to supervise the work of his farm. But, by becoming too closely involved, he had crossed the considerable gulf that was meant to be in place between aristocrat and rural labourer. The consequences for his relationship with both his social equals and his inferiors were to be devastating.
Urania did not know just how badly her son would pursue his role. His skills at mathematics meant that she was assured that he would not be fooled by figures. She invited Lymington to join her at meetings that she held with estate workers so that he could gain experience of overseeing accounts. Even during her husband’s lifetime, and following his death when Lymington was earl, the principal gardener at Hurstbourne Park, Harvey Grace, presented his accounts to Urania. Harvey remembered Lymington ‘used to look over the accounts and ask questions, relating to the work done, or charged for and used to add up the amount and sometimes detect little errors’. Once Lymington ‘came to his title he used to be more particular and ask more questions than before’.6 With a head for figures, and an eye for detail, checking estate accounts was well within Lymington’s capabilities. Yet, even when he became the earl of Portsmouth, Urania did not quite trust her son enough to let him take sole charge of the accounts. For the Hurstbourne gardens at least, she remained in control.
There were numerous ‘conduct books’ and periodicals published in this period, which taught parents how to instruct their sons so that they behaved appropriately in society. No doubt Urania had some of these in her library at Hurstbourne. But, as she helped her son prepare for this other aspect of his future role, she is unlikely to have needed to read them. Urania had not been born into the aristocracy, and had personal experience of adjusting to this world when she married the 2nd earl. She knew what conduct and behaviour was most essential for her son to exhibit so that he was socially accepted and, most crucially, did not draw attention to himself.
In the terms of the period, Lymington needed to know how to behave ‘with propriety’. Most importantly, this meant being able to conduct civil or polite conversation with people of his social standing. He needed to exchange pleasantries, and to talk about ‘the common topics of the day’. Such subjects as the weather, the condition of the harvest, horses and hunting were safe sources of conversation to which all people of Lymington’s rank were expected to be able to contribute. Challenging and controversial subjects such as politics or religion were not seen as appropriate for everyday conversation. In due course, Lymington would be expected to offer hospitality and invite his wealthy Hampshire neighbours to dinners and balls. On these occasions, he was required to know how to make his guests feel at ease, as well as show appropriate manners at the meal table, and some knowledge of music and how to dance. Ideally, Lymington was expected to carry off these social requirements with such style that nobody would detect that they were skills that had been acquired. Such accomplishments needed to appear natural in their performance.
Like his father, Lymington was offered a number of honorary county positions because of his aristocratic title. These included being High Steward of the Borough of Andover, the governor of a charity school, sitting on the bench of judges at the quarter sessions and assizes, and being nominated a steward at the horse races held at Winchester. All of these positions required knowledge of how to behave at meetings, how to deliver a speech and vote of thanks, and how to act as a figurehead for each organization or occasion. This meant affording each role a gravitas and authority. Although Lymington was given these positions automatically, by virtue of his social position and family connections, he had to show that he was worthy of the honour.
The rest of Lymington’s life was a test of how well Urania had prepared her son for his part. Time would prove that people who mixed with Lymington in society were as divided about whether he behaved appropriately as they were about whether he was a lunatic. But whatever conclusions they reached, as his mother, Urania could be held accountable. David Williams, a Hampshire surgeon, thought that, ‘when in company’, Lymington, who was then Lord Portsmouth, ‘was from habit and education under a considerable degree of restraint and conducted himself with general propriety’. He had no doubt ‘that this was the effect of restraint exercised upon him and habit acquired during the life time of his Mother: who was a very superior woman’. For Williams, Urania’s skill had been to teach her son ‘restraint’, how to suppress those aspects of himself that others might find inappropriate, and present an alternative version that was socially acceptable. Manners here became a kind of disguise, hiding the less attractive person beneath, and Portsmouth was a type of social puppet, performing a role to order, but with no need for an understanding of what he was doing or why. There were many occasions when Urania’s instructions for her son seemed to have worked. One female visitor who stayed at Hurstbourne for a fortnight in the autumn of 1816 found Portsmouth’s conduct and attention to his guests faultless. He was ‘remarkably polite and well bred,’ she said. If her son showed evidence of good breeding, then Urania could take the credit.7
At times Urania exercised control over her son by limiting his freedoms. Portsmouth’s sister, Henrietta Dorothea, remembered wishing for ‘less restraint’ as a child. But the authority that Urania exercised over Portsmouth was even greater. John Baverstock, who had lived in Hurstbourne for sixty years, worked as a servant for the Portsmouth family, originally for the 2nd earl, and had known Portsmouth from his childhood. He said that, before Portsmouth’s marriage, he was ‘under the jurisdiction of his mother and she was a woman that kept him under: his Lordship could not then go about by himself or do as he pleased: he was not then indulged as he was afterward’. Portsmouth did not marry until he was thirty-one years old, yet until that time he was being kept under the strict (not indulgent) control of his mother. Urania’s reason for such tight supervision was understood. His Lordship ‘showed what he was after his marriage more than he did before, more publicly too,’ said Baverstock. Under his mother’s control, his true colours did not show and he could be shielded from the public eye.8
Lymington’s father, the 2nd earl of Portsmouth, lived until 16 May 1797, but nobody ever commented on the part he played as a parent. Mothers were expected to take chief responsibility for the upbringing of their children, but Lymington was the oldest son and heir, so he should have been of especial interest to his father. Yet, since all of Urania’s surviving correspondence dates from after her husband’s death, we do not know if she talked to him about their children, or if he had particular views about how Lymington should be raised.
We have remarkably little information about the 2nd earl: even the portrait of him painted by Hoppner no longer exists. Few personal letters written by him survive, and his presence at social occasions is rarely mentioned in newspapers of the time. This absence of information, especially in the face of the abundant material and comment about Urania as a mother, suggests that he took a minor role in his oldest son’s life. He may not have been an easy man or a particularly bright one. Of more than a hundred witnesses who would later be examined in the church courts about the 3rd earl’s sanity, just one, a park keeper at Hurstbourne for nearly forty-one years, was asked to compare the 3rd earl with his father. The 3rd earl ‘is not a man of equal capacity with his late father. He was bad enough, but the present Earl is worse,’ he said. Capacity for what was left tantalizingly undefined.9
Without a strong male head of the family, Urania became the matriarch, overseeing the upbringing of her children and taking on some of the responsibility for estate management that would normally be reserved for her husband. She was so accustomed to being an authority figure that the death of her husband made very little difference to her own or her children’s lives. When Lymington became Lord Portsmouth, she should have retired into a dowager position, and let him assume control. But, as a further indication that all was not normal in this family’s configuration, she just carried on, issuing instructions to the household servants and overseeing the estate’s management.
She was not alone, and there was one man whom she trusted above all others to give her advice. Reverend John Garnett, although not a blood relative of the Portsmouths’, nevertheless became one of their closest friends. Descended from a family of clergymen, including his father who was a Church of Ireland bishop, Garnett was a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and was ordained on 27 June 1779. Over his career in the church, he held a range of posts including the curacy at Hurstbourne Priors, Over Wallop, and the valuable living at Cliddesden and Farleigh Wallop, which was in the hands of the Portsmouths. He rose from being a Prebend and then Dean at Winchester Cathedral to being appointed a Chaplain in Ordinary to George III, and finally Dean of Exeter Cathedral. He seems to have never married or had any children, his will making special mention of a faithful servant and housekeeper, and leaving the bulk of his estate to his sister’s children. The Portsmouth family saw Garnett as one of their own, and he spent much time living with them at Hurstbourne. Under the 3rd earl, he was described as ‘the confidential friend and chaplain of Lord Portsmouth’s family’, and, as a ‘most deserving man’, he inspired the 2nd earl to write several times to William Pitt petitioning him for church positions. Garnett was held with such esteem that when he died a memorial to him was erected in pride of place within the Portsmouth family church at Farleigh Wallop. On a wall to the right of the altar, the plaque was to their ‘generous friend’, who had a ‘manly and Christian Death: Attentive even in his last moments more to the good of others than his own sufferings’. His was the only non-family memorial to be erected.10
This apparently self-sacrificing individual was privy to all of the Portsmouth family’s secrets, and unlike other friends seems never to have betrayed their trust. He was an understanding and sympathetic soundboard for Urania, and helped her through difficult times. Newton’s letters make it clear that Garnett visited all three of her boys to check on their wellbeing while they were at school.11 For the next twenty years, Garnett was present at the key moments in the 3rd earl’s life, and at many of the family’s points of crisis. He became a substitute father-figure for Portsmouth, especially after the 2nd earl’s death. With no family of his own, Garnett may have valued his role in the Portsmouth one. But as locus parentis, as we shall see, he would attract the resentment and dislike of the 3rd earl.
Once Lymington had reached his majority in December 1788, decisions had to be made about the family’s property. The 2nd earl was still in good health, but nobody could be confident that upon his death his son had a safe pair of hands to keep the family’s fortune. Lawyers were brought in, including the family’s solicitor, John Hanson. Over the next fourteen months, a legal settlement was negotiated, and finally agreed upon in February 1790. One of the signatories was Reverend Garnett. The settlement created a new entail, making Lymington an heir for his lifetime, and stating that, if he died without a male heir, the Portsmouth estate should be inherited by Newton, his younger brother. Family estates like the Portsmouths’ normally descended through the male line so this document is noteworthy for stating the obvious. Lymington’s mental state meant that his family thought they could leave nothing to chance: without a legal settlement, they could not rely upon him to follow the usual pattern. The stakes were too high to risk allowing him any freedom to settle the estates as he might otherwise wish. His hands were now tied.12
Being a mother is never easy, and raising a son like Lymington, who seemed to be exhibiting a range of mental problems, was particularly challenging. As any mother knows, winning universal approval for the way you bring up your children is well nigh impossible. But, because of the man he would become, more people paid attention to how Lord Portsmouth had been brought up than would have been usual. If all had gone smoothly, there would have been no need to look to his past for explanations.
There was only one witness in the legal trials that were to be brought against Lord Portsmouth who was prepared to suggest that Urania was partly to blame for her son’s problems. That was Reverend Robert Wright, whose parish of Itchen Abbas was near to Hurstbourne, and who had known Portsmouth since 1794. Wright was a visiting magistrate to lunatic asylums, and claimed that he had ‘made the character of the mind his study’. In his opinion, Portsmouth had a weak, but sound mind. Wright had seen Portsmouth over the years at a number of social functions in Hampshire and London, and thought him sharp in money matters, quick at figures, and an excellent judge of a horse.
‘If Lord Portsmouth had not been kept in the background, but instructed in the management of his “secular” concerns’, Wright did ‘not know any man, who would have been more alive to the proper application of his income, and regulation of his expenditure: and he would have been capable of so doing.’ Ironically, it was Portsmouth’s weak mind that made him particularly capable of this role. ‘The limited understanding of Lord Portsmouth led him to bestow his whole attention to an object,’ observed Wright. The way that Portsmouth’s mind functioned, which was to become fixated on particular tasks, and to mechanically apply procedure, could have meant that he managed his estates better than other noblemen. But Wright believed that Portsmouth was ‘never fairly dealt with’ by his family. With instruction, he could have controlled his estates. However, while Portsmouth’s mother was alive, he was ‘kept in the background’. Wright believed that Portsmouth was treated in this way ‘because the old Lady Portsmouth looked upon his Lordship as inferior in understanding to his brother’.13
According to Wright, keeping Portsmouth ‘in the background’, teaching him the basics but expecting nothing more, and showing favouritism towards Newton, were ways that Urania responded to her oldest son’s ‘inferior’ understanding. Given the frustrations she must have felt and the problems she confronted with Portsmouth, perhaps it was not surprising if Urania found it easier to be a mother to Newton. But did this mean that she failed to identify and develop her son’s full potential? Was the effect of her control to stifle and even further limit her son’s development? Knowingly or not, Wright raised the question of whether Portsmouth was destined for the trials of his sanity from his birth, or whether there was something about his upbringing that had pushed him in this direction. Even if Portsmouth had been born in some way mentally defective, had Urania made his condition worse? These questions were never developed or fully answered in the law courts. But the notion that Portsmouth might have been a different man if he had been treated in other ways as a child and young man was raised by Wright, and might well have been more widely discussed outside the courtroom environment. The strong personality of ‘old Lady Portsmouth’ and her central role in the upbringing of her son during his formative years is unlikely to have been forgotten.
If Urania found Newton a more rewarding child to raise, she still did not find it easy to show her affection for him. She found fault with his schoolboy letters and could inspire awe from him even when he was a grown man. The 6th countess of Portsmouth remembered how Newton, ‘always spoke with the most profound reverence of “my mother”’. Newton may not have feared his mother as his older brother did, but, like all his brothers and sisters, when he was young he still had a formal relationship with his mother. She was, after all, described as ‘one of the most sensible women’.14 Urania did not let emotion cloud her judgement, even for those she favoured.
Newton was Urania’s first child to make her a grandmother: he had four children with his first wife, Frances. Urania’s letters to Newton show that being a grandmother brought back her memories of motherhood, and gave her a chance to think over the decisions she had made when her children were young. Responding to news from Newton that his son Harry was well again in January 1811, Urania admitted that ‘I have cast more anxious thoughts for Him, than I own I ever did for you’. Urania wrote in this letter that, by the time Newton was thirteen years old (and Lymington eighteen), she knew ‘you was to Bustle in this Life, and thought I was most Friendly to let you see, that Bustle early’.15 In other words, she had decided that in his life ahead Newton would have to take responsibilities and learn to stand on his own two feet (perhaps because of her fears about Lymington’s inadequacies), and she needed to toughen him up and let him experience ‘that Bustle’ while he was still young. At the same time that she was keeping a close watch over Lymington, she was letting Newton go.
Urania’s letter to Newton defended her decision to let him experience the ‘bustle’ of life, but, if she had regrets about how she mothered him, she never altered her view of how she treated her oldest son. She believed that his weakness meant that it was imperative that she should take command. Indeed, she gave Portsmouth instructions even beyond the grave. Urania made a list of specific bequests for after her death. She left her two daughters, Henrietta Dorothea and Urania Annabella, a number of personal items, including mourning rings containing the hair of their father and dead brothers and sisters. There was no bequest for Newton. But John Charles, as earl of Portsmouth, was left a number of items, which Urania specified were for ‘his life and after his death to go as Heirlooms’ with the Hurstbourne estate. She gave him ‘all the diamonds given to her Marriage with her late Husband’, and listed each piece of jewellery. The Old and New Testaments, and a Book of Common Prayer that ‘were in the Bookcase at Hurstbourne Park’, and had belonged to Bridget, the 1st countess of Portsmouth, were given to him. Finally, Urania gave her son a number of pieces of ‘Shell Work’, all of which were kept in glass cases. These items presumably included the shell house that had been given to Urania by her brother, Henry Arthur Fellowes, following his travels abroad.
To be included in her final wishes, this shell work must have held special meanings and memories for Urania. As Urania wanted, they became part of the family treasures that were passed down through the generations, and were valuable enough to be rescued from the fire at Hurstbourne at the end of the nineteenth century. But, while they were in the 3rd earl’s ownership, Urania wanted to ensure that her son kept them safely. After itemizing the shell work, she gave the order that it was ‘to be placed in the South Dressing Room of Hurstbourne Mansion presently occupied by the Countess of Portsmouth’. So little did she trust her son, and so habitual and absolute had her control over him become, that Urania even directed the room at Hurstbourne where her bequest was to be displayed. Never mind that it was his house, his wife’s dressing room, and now his shell work.16
Portsmouth was kept waiting for his mother’s love. His emotional response to her was one of fear. ‘He was afraid of her,’ said a cook and housekeeper, ‘he was very well behaved before his Mother’, but ‘as soon as she was gone he would abuse her in a shocking manner’.17 After his father died, and as the 3rd earl of Portsmouth, his resentment at his mother’s treatment grew. He was an adult, but his mother was still treating him as a child. Standing firm alongside his mother, Reverend Garnett was the type of male authority figure that Lord Portsmouth had never experienced in his father. Now this non-family member was helping his mother to control him, and interfering with his life. It was easier for Portsmouth to voice his discontent at his treatment towards Garnett than in front of his mother. But letting off steam by cursing his mother when she was out of the room was not enough for a man who had had his fill of being told what to do. Some might wonder whether Urania was doing the right thing by keeping her oldest son ‘under’ and ‘in the background’. However, the consequences of allowing Portsmouth greater freedom would be seen in dramatic light within the space of the next few years.