ON SATURDAY, 1 November 1800, twenty-four-year-old Jane Austen sat down to write a letter to her beloved older sister, Cassandra. While she was visiting relations in Kent, Jane was eager that Cassandra should miss none of the local news and gossip. On Thursday evening, Jane had attended the ball at Basingstoke. She had done her hair specially for the occasion, but ‘there was a Scarcity of Men in general, & a still greater scarcity of any that were good for much’. Still, there were a number of prominent Hampshire families in attendance, including the Dorchesters and the Boltons. The Chutes, whose home, the Vyne, stood in the parish of Sherborne St John where Jane and Cassandra’s brother, James, was vicar, were also there, Eliza Chute recording that she thought the ball ‘a very good one’. It was a conversation with Lord Portsmouth that Jane reported in most detail. ‘Lord Portsmouth surpassed the rest in his attentive recollection of you, enquired more into the length of your absence, and concluded by desiring to be “remembered to you when I wrote next”,’ Jane reported. Lady Portsmouth ‘had got a different dress on, and Lady Bolton is much improved by a wig’.1
As one of the keenest and sharpest observers of her time, there was not much that Jane Austen missed about the foibles of human character, either in her quick-witted letters or the novels that would make her famous. Yet when Jane described Portsmouth, who had lived at Steventon before she was born, but whose early connection with her family must have been discussed over the years, there was not a hint that she found his behaviour odd or disturbing. In fact, Portsmouth ‘surpassed’ the conduct of the other gentlemen who were present. His polite attention and memory of Cassandra were indicative of his good manners and, because he was the head of a key aristocratic family, flattering to Jane.
Three weeks later, on 19 November, Jane attended her first ball at Hurstbourne. This would become an annual event, held on the anniversary of Portsmouth’s marriage to Grace. Jane had a great time. A female friend said she looked ‘very well’ in her aunt’s ‘gown and handkerchief, and my hair was at least tidy, which was all my ambition’. The wine was flowing. ‘I believe I drank too much wine last night at Hurstbourne,’ Jane told Cassandra, for ‘I know not how else to account for the shaking of my hand to day.’ Still giddy with excitement, she said it was ‘a pleasant Evening … There were only twelve dances, of which I danced nine, and was merely prevented from dancing the rest by the want of a partner. – We began at 10, supped at 1, and were at Deane before 5.’ Jane loved to dance and may have been disappointed that there were not more people, and hence dancing partners, present. ‘There were but 50 people in the room; very few families indeed from our side of the Country, and not many more from the other,’ she lamented.2
But in time the popularity of the Hurstbourne anniversary ball caught on. The Portsmouths may have become more practised at their invitations (Jane remarked that her invitation was ‘very curiously worded’, but did not elaborate), and the occasion became a feature in the county’s social calendar that was reported in the newspapers.3 While Lord Portsmouth opened the ball, its popularity had nothing to do with his dancing. Christopher Hunter, a surgeon from nearby Whitchurch who had seen Portsmouth dance, thought it ‘without any idea of measure or time, and the most extraordinary way certainly: though by the concession that was made to his rank it was passed off’.4 Social position might excuse poor rhythm, but a perceived lack of generosity was less easy to forgive. Jane Austen’s great friend, Anne Lefroy, was very critical of her hosts when she attended the Hurstbourne Ball on 19 November 1801. ‘It was not half so pleasant as the one last year’ (the first ball, that had been attended by Jane Austen), Anne told her son. The dancing took place in the saloon, perhaps because the library had been such a cold venue the previous year. There were about a hundred people present (double the number at the first ball), but ‘there was scarcely anything to eat at Supper and the Gentlemen complained that the wine was very bad and very scarce’. This poor show of hospitality could perhaps be explained by Lord Portsmouth, who was ‘either out of health or out of humour and only stood up two Dances’. Portsmouth’s mood was not improved when public curiosity at the event meant that ‘four panes of glass were broke in the windows of the saloon by people who were looking in at the dancers’. Portsmouth threatened to find the culprits and make them pay for the damage. No doubt fed up with how things were going, Portsmouth talked of ‘going to town to prepare for his wife’s lying in’ (or birth of their child). Knowing full well the age of Lady Portsmouth, Anne sardonically remarked to her son, ‘I fancy he will have plenty of time to prepare before such an event takes place.’5 Throwing a party was one thing, but if the host was in a bad mood it reflected on everyone.
No matter the merits of each ball, or the temperament of the host, people kept coming. Anne Lefroy had no hesitation about going to Hurstbourne the following year when her invitation arrived, and only stopped giving positive replies in November 1804 when her husband became too frail to attend.6
The Hurstbourne ball attended by Jane Austen in November 1800 came at the end of a year of social events that marked the introduction of Portsmouth and his new Lady Portsmouth to society. None was more formal than their presentation to George III at St James’s Palace on 14 May 1800. Portsmouth had been presented to the King before, when he had inherited the title of Lord Portsmouth after the death of his father, but this time Grace, not Reverend Garnett, was by his side.7
Although it was not Portsmouth’s first meeting with the King, it was nearly his last. A day later, on the evening of 15 May, as the orchestra played the national anthem, and the audience rose from their seats to pay respect to the King who was attending a play at Drury Lane Theatre, James Hadfield shot his pistol at the royal box. The would-be assassin successfully pleaded insanity (he had sustained head injuries while serving as a soldier), but was confined as a lunatic for the rest of his life. The celebrations for the King’s birthday a few weeks later in June 1800 took on a new significance. A grand ball was the culmination of proceedings, and provided the press with the opportunity to give their readers a detailed description of what all the ladies were wearing. Portsmouth was there, along with Grace, the countess of Portsmouth bedecked in a ‘royal blue silk petticoat … a drapery of rich brocaded gauze … cap royal blue crape, spangled with gold ornaments and flowers; train trimmed with blond; train royal blue, same as petticoat’. Henrietta Dorothea, Portsmouth’s sister, was all in white, with a head dress decorated with pearls and white ostrich feathers.8 Presence at this splendid occasion was a sign of membership of an exclusive club that depended upon wealth and title. Everyone who was anyone was there. The King himself was months away from another bout of mental illness, but for now the nobility were happy to congratulate him upon his escape from a violent madman.
Grace’s dressmaker must have been busy that first twelve months of her marriage. The social engagements of the Portsmouths were regularly featured in newspaper columns listed under the heading ‘The Fashionable World’. Lady Kinnaird’s party at her house in Lower Grosvenor Street on 23 April 1800 was ‘one of the most numerous and fashionable we have witnessed this season’, reported the Oracle and Daily Advertiser. Top of the ‘distinguished’ guest list of some four to five hundred people were Lord and Lady Portsmouth.9 A month later, the couple attended the Duchess Dowager of Chandos’ Ball. The Prince of Wales and Prince William of Gloucester were only prevented from attending because of the assassination attempt on their father the previous evening.10 When a ‘select party’ was chosen to play cards at the Duchess of Bolton’s house in Grosvenor Square in June, the Portsmouths were invited.11
Portsmouth and Grace soon settled into a routine of social engagements that were divided by their winter months in London and summer at Hurstbourne. At Lincoln’s Inn Fields, the couple were ‘at home’ and had a ‘public day’ once a week, generally on a Wednesday evening. ‘Persons of rank and respectability’ were invited to spend time with the Portsmouths, sometimes playing cards, but more often to enjoy music or dancing.12
Back in Hampshire, there were still balls and parties to attend, but also smaller affairs such as dinner parties at the homes of neighbouring families. The Portsmouths became involved in the annual music festival held at Winchester Cathedral, Lord Portsmouth joining other local nobility who gave their sponsorship to the event. In October 1800, they heard the newly composed oratorio The Creation by Joseph Haydn.13 The audience crowded into a ball that followed its performance.
Not all of Portsmouth’s socializing was done with Grace by his side. He belonged to the North Hants Club, a club ‘composed of the Noblemen and Gentlemen of the County’, which met several times a year for dinners in Basingstoke.14 With his father’s title, Portsmouth had inherited the position of High Steward of the Borough of Andover, and this also required attendance at meetings and dinners through the year. He was expected to pay for the cost of the wine at the Bailiff’s feast in Andover, and to return a speech of thanks. He led the Andover corporation in procession through the town to the church, and afterwards to dinner.15
As a landowner with tenants, Portsmouth demonstrated due benevolence to his social inferiors. He called at the homes of his farmers when members of their family were ill, paid an annual subscription towards a soup kitchen for the relief of the poor in Andover, and at Christmas time arranged for food to be distributed to the poor in Hurstbourne parish.16 The ‘most respectable farmers’ in the county asked Portsmouth to be godparents to their children.17 In London, Portsmouth was a governor of the Middlesex Hospital and the Queen Charlotte Lying-In Hospital. He took especial interest in the children of the crowded and often economically deprived parishes that bordered Lincoln’s Inn Fields. In February 1811, newspapers reported how Portsmouth had ‘entertained’ 130 ‘poor children, of both sexes’ from the workhouse of St Giles and St George, with ‘plenty of roast beef’ and ‘plum pudding’. ‘His Lordship sat at the head of the table and carved for them; and after dinner was over he presented each of them with a silver sixpence.’ The occasion was such a success that in April Portsmouth invited one hundred boys and seventy girls from the parishes’ Charity Schools, where he was governor, to his house at Lincoln’s Inn Fields. There the children received ‘a good old English dinner, as well as a glass of pure ale, and a pecuniary donation each’.
Such ostentatious displays of charity were expected of noblemen such as Portsmouth. Few of Portsmouth’s recipients of philanthropy regarded his behaviour as patronizing. Instead, his dinner for school children was described by the press as ‘an excellent example of condescending benevolence’.18 Portsmouth took to this role with ease. He attended meetings of the school and hospitals where he was governor, sometimes acted as chair, and on one occasion spotted an error in their minutes. Fellow governors commented that Portsmouth always acted rationally and with ‘propriety’.19
While Portsmouth might have occasional mood swings, as witnessed by Anne Lefroy, the general impression that he gave was that, now he was married, he was enjoying life more. Before Grace, and living under the shadow of his mother, Portsmouth was ‘more shy and reserved than he was in after times’. In contrast, after his marriage, Portsmouth became ‘more talkative than in his younger days’. Marriage for Portsmouth brought him a new respectability, and it took him out of his shell. He could show the world of what he was capable, and in a way that was not possible with his overbearing mother. His public speeches passed muster; at the Bailiff’s feast he ‘returned thanks in an appropriate speech which was spoken as well as most Gentlemen unaccustomed to public speaking would have done’. No mention was made of a stammer; if this was in any way linked with his confidence, perhaps it was something that he had at least temporarily overcome.20
Bolstered by having a wife, in his early years of marriage Portsmouth engaged in one feat of gallantry that nobody can have anticipated. On 8 May 1801, after visiting his neighbours, Mr and Mrs Solly in York Place, Portman Square, Portsmouth saw a man running up the steps, and a silver salt-spoon fall from his pocket, which he did not pick up. ‘Concluding that he had committed a robbery’, Portsmouth ‘ran after him, seized him by the collar, and drew him back to the house’, where it was found that the man, John Lawrence, had two other silver spoons, also belonging to the Sollys, in his possession. A few weeks later, Lawrence was tried at the Old Bailey, and Portsmouth was questioned as the main prosecution witness. Lawrence, a Jew, had a Jewish physician, Dr Leo, testify to the court that he was insane when he committed the act. But Leo did not convince the court as suspicions were raised about his professional credibility, and it appeared that Lawrence had once before ‘endeavoured to screen his delinquencies’ by this plea. Lawrence was found guilty of grand larceny, and sentenced to be transported for seven years.
While accounts differed about the part that Portsmouth took in apprehending Lawrence (trial reports recorded that a ‘labouring man’ had thrown him to the ground), Portsmouth was long remembered as the man upon whose word a thief had been convicted of a capital offence.21 His encounter with Lawrence coming just a few days after he had received the extortion letter from Seilaz, Portsmouth’s experience at the Old Bailey may have helped to prepare him for his confident performance at King’s Bench two years later.
In private conversation, Sir James Burrough ‘never heard him say a foolish thing: the said Earl’s conversation was neither literary nor profound, nor scientific but he spoke on ordinary subjects with intellect and propriety’. At his public days in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, Portsmouth received ‘his friends with great civility and good humour … he was remarkably attentive to the company, and chatted with them on ordinary topics’.22 The Countess Dowager of Winterton thought Portsmouth always ‘conducted himself with propriety’ and that he ‘passed very well in society’.23 Years of his mother’s training had come into play. A nephew of Reverend Garnett’s said that he never saw Portsmouth behave without regard to the ‘strictest propriety’, and ‘if there was a remark to be made, on this point, it was that he was ever punctilious in matters of form’.24
Good manners had become instinctive for Portsmouth. Reverend Newbolt shared a pew with Portsmouth for three hours during a commemoration event at St Paul’s Cathedral. ‘His lordship conducted himself with the greatest decorum’, and talked with two royal dukes.25 Portsmouth was also invited to evening parties where members of the royal family, and the Dukes of Sussex and Norfolk, were present and behaved appropriately. ‘His Lordship was of weak understanding,’ said one host of such an evening. But, concluded this gentleman, he ‘has met many, passing well in Society, of inferior intellect’.26
This stinging indictment of the upper classes in the early nineteenth century was made during one of the legal trials concerning Portsmouth’s sanity. For when people looked back at the social occasions of Portsmouth’s life they began to assess their significance not only for judging this man’s mind, but also as a critical measure of the condition of their society. As evidence of Portsmouth’s mental health, the statements of those who only saw Portsmouth in society ‘have nothing to do with it,’ argued lawyers, because ‘it is obvious that a man is under restraint in public society’.27 ‘His behaviour in company is controlled by restraint,’ argued Dr Francis Willis. Just six years into his practice as a mad-doctor, yet from a family whose name had long been synonymous with treatment of the insane, Willis was convinced that, ‘if Lord Portsmouth were alone without restraint, he would exhibit his derangement’. ‘I could place you at a table,’ he told the jury of Portsmouth’s Commission of Lunacy, ‘and surround you with a company of lunatics, who would behave with the strictest propriety, and you should not know their state of mind.’28
But if propriety had become the shield behind which the real Lord Portsmouth could hide, then ‘society’ with its rules, expectations, airs, and graces, had participated in his deception. For years people had taken advantage of Portsmouth’s hospitality, and were pleased when he had accepted their invitations. They wanted him as the figurehead for their charitable organizations, and as the name on their children’s baptism registers. Examining Portsmouth’s mind lifted the lid on the social world of which he was a part. In the first decades of the nineteenth century, just as political reformers sought to rid themselves of elite corruption and privilege, and moral reformers looked for a revival of true faith, Portsmouth’s case revealed the full extent of the problems they faced. Beneath all the polish and refinement was a can of worms. Shallowness, hypocrisy, false friendship and generosity epitomized the social life of those whose lives were governed by pleasure and leisure. If Portsmouth was mad, then he came from a rotten core.
Yet were Portsmouth’s contemporaries so blinded by his wealth and his title that they did not recognize madness when they saw it? ‘It is impossible that forty persons in the county of Hants having had complete opportunities of judging could be mistaken’ about Portsmouth when they declared him sane before the Chancellor in 1815, it was stated.29
When Portsmouth faced the legal trials for his sanity, his social acquaintances were asked by lawyers to think again about their encounters with him. Behaviour that had been dismissed as simply eccentric before, such as his style of dancing, was re-examined for indicators of his mental instability. Something as apparently trivial as how Portsmouth played cards was opened to scrutiny. An extremely popular pastime for the upper classes, friends were divided about whether Portsmouth was a good or bad card player. They were agreed that he understood the rules of whist, and his numerical aptitude meant that he could be a very good player at the gambling game of commerce. He was not the only gentleman to regularly lose card games; ‘I have seen others play at whist as bad as Lord P,’ remarked Reverend Newbolt. But was Portsmouth’s poor play a reflection of the limitations of his mind? ‘He seemed to have no plan,’ concluded Newbolt. Without a game plan he was bound to remain only a ‘tolerable player’. Portsmouth was certainly a bad loser. ‘It was generally contrived that his Lordship should win,’ commented another card player, ‘for he was very much put out of his way and very miserable if he did not.’30 Like a spoilt child, Portsmouth could not bear to take part in games unless he was the winner.
Questioning witnesses about Portsmouth’s card playing was scraping the barrel for evidence of a man’s sanity. Surely more weight, it was argued, should be given to the testimony of a witness like Elizabeth Crooke, who had known Portsmouth for nearly forty years when she testified in 1827. A Hampshire neighbour at Kempshott Park, Elizabeth and her husband had been formerly introduced to Portsmouth and Grace at a party held in Hanover Square soon after their marriage. In the country, ‘friendly visits of several days at each other’s houses, and in London, of dinner and evening parties’ followed. Elizabeth had heard Portsmouth ‘generally spoken of as of weak understanding’ before she met him. ‘His Lordship’s manners in society however were polite and gentlemanly, and there was not any irrationality in his behaviour,’ Elizabeth said. She found him ‘by no means so weak a man as he had been represented. Lord Portsmouth was not a man of cultivated mind, but upon general subjects he conversed very rationally; particularly on topics connected with agriculture and the country.’ In sum, ‘he certainly did appear in some respects as not of strong understanding: but it was a fashion to laugh at what Lord Portsmouth did or said’.31 Portsmouth, according to Elizabeth, was not mad, just weak-minded. For all of this society’s faults, then, it could be tolerant of an individual who was mentally backward, just so long as he fitted in by behaving appropriately when in company.
Unable to prove that Portsmouth was insane by examining his conduct ‘in society’, lawyers had to turn to his behaviour away from the public eye. People like Elizabeth Crooke, Sir James Burrough, and the Countess Dowager of Winterton did not really know Portsmouth, it was argued. There were aspects of his character that were so shameful that Grace did all she could to keep them secret. At home, and out and about on his vast Hampshire estate, Portsmouth was engaging in activities that were both shocking and disturbing. The nature of these was revealed.