On 6 November 1817 the young Princess Charlotte of Wales died following a complicated childbirth during which her son was delivered stillborn. The Prince Regent was distraught and the whole country was plunged into mourning.
On the same day the arguments over the money to be settled on Georgiana and her half-siblings, as well as the problem of where Georgiana should live, were finally decided once and for all. Georgiana had already been returned to the care of the Cholmondeleys and now two sums of £5,000 were settled upon her, one by Lord Cholmondeley and the other by Mrs Elliott (although Grace Dalrymple Elliott was to receive the dividends on her share during her lifetime) and the Duke of Portland settled a substantial sum of money on the children of Lord Charles Bentinck’s second family (the young Anne and any further children to be born to the couple). Lady Cholmondeley was formally appointed as Georgiana’s guardian and in the event of her death before Georgiana was of age or married, her sister, the 21st Baroness Willoughby de Eresby, or her daughter Lady Charlotte Cholmondeley would take over the responsibility.1 After having made such a fuss of keeping her stepdaughter by her side, in the end Anne had made little of giving her up. In a letter to her brother Richard, sent to the Steyne Hotel in Brighton where he had gone for his health, she wrote:
For my part, I must say she has been a source of little comfort to me. I have had so much annoyance and unpleasant things to counterbalance the pleasure of her society that I think I shall not regret her loss as much as I should have done five months ago. I hope all parties will now be pleased tho’ I daresay they will still find some new subject to complain of . . . I rather dread the thought of it [Georgiana’s departure], but one good thing is that I shall not feel a stronger feeling than that of missing her when she is gone, for she is so devoid of affection herself and so difficult a child to what she was originally. Besides, knowing that she has to leave me, I have not allowed myself to attach myself to her . . .2
Hopefully young Georgiana was showered with love and affection by the kindly Lady Cholmondeley. Hopefully Anne was also more maternal towards her own offspring. Her sister Hyacinthe thought so, for she wrote to Gerald Wellesley (who was out in India) telling him Anne was ‘doatingly [sic] fond’ of her young daughter.3 At the time Hyacinthe was writing, Anne was once more pregnant and on the same day the Princess died and the settlement was signed she gave birth for the second time to a fine and healthy boy, William Charles Cavendish Bentinck.4 If the Bentinck household had been aware of the trauma suffered by Princess Charlotte who had been delivered of a stillborn boy a day earlier (and as Lord Charles was close to the king he, at least, had possibly heard the news) and her subsequent death in the early hours of the morning, it must have been a day of trepidation for them. Anne would certainly have been unaware of another birth that took place in a setting far removed from these events but only weeks before them. In the picturesque chocolate-box countryside to the south of the Cumnor Hills in Oxfordshire, a young girl was born to a humble gypsy mother, a girl who would become pivotal in the life of the Cavendish-Bentinck family when their two worlds collided. She was given her mother’s name, Sinnetta.
In London a constitutional crisis loomed: King George III had thirteen children but between them they had managed only the one legitimate child and she had just died. The remaining unwed princes began an unseemly scramble to produce an heir and the Duke of Kent and Strathearn, Prince Edward, won the race. He made a hasty marriage to the late Princess Charlotte’s sister-in-law, the widowed Princess Victoire of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld and in 1819 the Princess Alexandrina Victoria of Kent was born, the heir apparent to the hopes of a nation. Victoire had previously been the wife of the Prince of Leiningen and had two children by him: a son who remained in mainland Europe and a daughter, Princess Feodora, twelve years older than her new baby half-sister.5
For Lord and Lady Charles Bentinck two more children followed in quick succession: a second son named Arthur born in 1819 just over two weeks before the young Princess Alexandrina Victoria, and a daughter Emily born in 1820. Arthur was named for his famed great-uncle and the duke stood as his godfather. The children were born in the Bentincks’ snug, private and pretty little Brompton villa, accessed via its own narrow lane. Known as The Hermitage, it had formerly been occupied by the Italian opera singer and diva Madame Angelica Catalani until Lord Charles had bought it shortly after his second marriage and there the family lived in a form of contentment, even if Anne was a little piqued at not being invited to the kind of society events at which she would have taken centre stage before her elopement. After many years of childless marriage to Sir William she found herself, within five years of her elopement, the mother of four youngsters and so had plenty to occupy herself with in the hustle and bustle of family life.6
Despite the wedding and a clutch of new nieces and nephews, Anne’s sister Hyacinthe still had no high opinion of her brother-in-law, saying of him in a letter to her brother Gerald: ‘He behaves very well to her [Anne], but unfortunately is abominably stupid, which is a great pity for her to live solely with him.’7
Since the Wellesley children had been estranged from their father following their mother’s death and their refusal to give up her papers, in 1819 the Duke of Wellington played mediator and hosted a dinner party at Apsley House where children and father could be reconciled, only to be enraged when the Marquess Wellesley arrived ingloriously at his former home bringing with him Edward John Johnston, now a handsome young man in his early twenties and the spitting image of his father.8 The duke, who had a low opinion of Johnston, was horrified that he had turned up, unannounced and uninvited, to take his place alongside his Wellesley half-siblings and no seat at the table had been prepared for him. Lord Hatherton and his wife were there (Johnston was introduced to Hatherton, but not as Wellesley’s son), as were Richard and Henry (Gerald was in India).
At the end of the evening Lord and Lady Charles Bentinck arrived and were received fondly enough by the marquess who had not visited his daughter since her elopement. The only male representatives of her family who had called on her since her second marriage were her brothers and the ever-kindly Duke of Wellington who had been most pressing in his invitations to her for his dinner party. If the duke had visited his niece, then he would no doubt have seen and played with his young great-niece and nephews. Hopefully the marquess asked after his new Cavendish-Bentinck grandson (Arthur’s birth had been just under three months earlier) and even with the presence of the cuckoo in the nest, in the form of Johnston, the duke’s scheme seemed to have worked.9
Living as a recluse in Windsor Castle, the old, mad King George III had been feeble for many years, blind too towards the end and also hard of hearing; he was largely unaware of the death of his wife, Queen Charlotte, two years earlier. He finally shuffled off this mortal coil in January 1820, six days after the death of his son Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn (father of the young Princess Alexandrina Victoria) and Lord Charles’ patron, friend and employer ascended the throne. The Bentincks had every expectation of good fortune and a boost to their bank balance from this event.
At the Court held at Carlton House, the new king’s grand London ‘town house’, on 12 February, among a select few present including the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Duke of Wellington and Viscount Castlereagh was Lord Charles Bentinck.10 His name sat awkwardly in the list of those present, the majority of whom held a peerage or high political or ecclesiastical office (or both) and his presence in such illustrious company confirmed his status as one of the king’s closest confidantes and allies. It was both a blessing and a curse: he could expect his position within the king’s household to bring him great benefits but he was totally dependent upon his patron’s largesse and good favour; with one ill-judged action he could find himself with neither employment nor prospects. Lord Charles was ‘sworn in’ to King George IV’s Privy Council and later appointed as Treasurer of the Royal Household. As such he appeared in the funeral procession when King George III was buried and also played a part in the new king’s coronation held in midsummer of the following year. With Lord Charles Bentinck’s elevated status the family took up a new residence at Eaton Place in Pimlico.11
Upon hearing that her husband had ascended the throne, Caroline returned from her self-imposed exile in Italy, determined to be crowned as his queen. The new king moved quickly, beginning proceedings in the House of Lords that almost amounted to a state trial against his estranged wife. He wanted a divorce. Riding on a tidal wave of public sympathy, Caroline was ultimately jubilant when the bill was thrown out, despite the accusations of her immorality (it was suggested that she and her Italian servant Bartolomeo Pergami had been living as man and wife), although if Caroline had committed adultery then it was no more than her husband had done many times before. She was successfully represented by Henry Brougham, the same man who had defended Lord Charles Bentinck at his Crim. Con. case back in 1816.
The new king had a great love of costume, theatre and pageantry and he planned an extravagant and costly spectacle for his coronation, one he was determined would never be outdone by any future monarch. The total cost approached a quarter of a million pounds, around twenty times more than his father’s coronation had cost in 1761. Ever a lover of fashion and frippery, George IV personally oversaw the design for the costumes of all the participants in the event, basing them on Tudor fashions; perhaps Lord Charles Bentinck, perpetually at George’s side, played a role in suggesting and approving the outlandish plans? Certainly, as part of the inner circle around the king, he would have been privy to the preparations. Always ready to outshine Napoléon Bonaparte, the man whom he had viewed as his great rival and who had only recently died on St Helena never having regained his liberty (when the new king had been given the news that his bitterest enemy was dead his first thought was that it was his wife, and he replied to the messenger: ‘Is she, by God!’), George was determined that his coronation should be more spectacular than the one in which Bonaparte was crowned emperor in 1804.
The king, worried that his disaffected wife would turn up at the coronation (she did!), had designed outfits representing Tudor pages for a collection of prize fighters whose function would be to prevent her entrance. Although she tried desperately to get into the Abbey, demanding to be crowned alongside her husband and crying, ‘Let me pass, I am your Queen’, Caroline was thwarted in her aims and retired.
One of Lord Charles’ duties on the morning of the Coronation was to distribute medals to the judges in accordance with his position as Treasurer of the Royal Household. He duly turned up at the appointed time with a crimson bag containing silver and gold medals, specially minted for the occasion, solemnly handed them out to the assembled judges and then left. Shortly thereafter he returned, more than a little shamefaced, and admitted he was only supposed to have handed out the silver medals to the judges, the gold ones being intended for some slightly more illustrious recipients. The disgruntled judicial officials reluctantly handed back the gold medals, averting a potential disaster for the hapless Lord Charles Bentinck.
Later in the day, the incident forgotten, he took his place in the grand coronation procession from Westminster Hall which culminated inside Westminster Abbey, the route decorated to convey the old idea of feudal grandeur and chivalry set off by the Gothic architecture of the richlydecorated buildings lining it. Crowds of people jostled for the best view and the scene on that bright summer day did indeed remind them of the days of jousts and tournaments. The procession finally arrived at the Abbey and entered its venerable precincts at a quarter past eleven in the morning. James, Marquess of Graham (the eldest son of the 3rd Duke of Montrose), dressed in a scarlet mantle with a crown embroidered on his left shoulder and attended by an officer from the Jewel House, bore a cushion holding the ruby coronation ring that was to be placed on the king’s finger and the ceremonial and bejewelled state sword (made especially for the coronation) that would be fastened around the king’s girth. Behind him came, side by side, Lord George Thomas Beresford, Comptroller of the royal household and Lord Charles Bentinck as Treasurer of the Household, the latter bearing the crimson bag containing the remaining medals. Behind them, dressed in a tabard, was the Bluemantle Pursuivant of Arms and following him was John Bourke, the 4th Earl of Mayo, bearing the Standard of Hanover.12
It has not been recorded whether Anne managed to get one of the soughtafter seats within the Abbey to watch the grand ceremony. Possibly her husband had managed to secure one for her as he was so blessed with the good favour of his Royal Highness, but if not she would have obtained a ticket to one of the seats in the stands erected outside (although she would have been extremely disgruntled to have had to watch from such a lowly position). Perhaps she also took her two eldest children with her, little Anne and Charley (as her eldest son was known to his family and as we shall henceforth address him to distinguish him from his father) who were then aged 4 and 3, to admire and watch their father play his part with pomp and ceremony?13
Some few places behind Lord Charles Bentinck in the procession was George James, Marquess of Cholmondeley in his state robes and with his coronet held in his hand. As he was the guardian of young Georgiana Cavendish Bentinck, possibly she too was present in the Abbey on the day with the Marchioness of Cholmondeley, watching her papa officiate at her putative grandfather’s coronation. Anne’s father, Marquess Wellesley, was one of the peers who carried the state regalia; the sceptre with the cross was borne by him. The Duke of Wellington was also there in his state robes, attended by a page who carried his field marshal’s baton and, finally, the king himself surrounded by his bishops and Band of Gentlemen Pensioners and in his hot and heavy royal robes, adorned with jewels and under a canopy of cloth of gold that was supported by sixteen Barons of the Cinque Ports. The king’s train was carried by eight eldest sons of peers, among them the Duke of Wellington’s son Arthur Richard Wellesley, Marquess of Douro and the Earl of Rocksavage, the Marquess of Cholmondeley’s son. Perhaps the new king had failed to realize quite how hot the elaborate costumes would be when he designed them, for the year had generally been cold, particularly throughout the spring and early summer, with a flurry of snow even being recorded as falling in London towards the end of May. They were far too heavy for the warm weather on the day of the coronation.
With the perspiring monarch crowned and shouts of ‘God Save the King’ echoing throughout the Abbey, the royal dukes and other peers of the realm advanced to kneel in front of him to do homage and Lord Charles scattered the medals he held in his crimson bag in profusion along the great aisle and among the seats of the peers and peeresses. He had also, during the crowning, presented an ingot of gold weighing one pound to Peter Drummond-Burrell, the 22nd Baron Willoughby de Eresby and the Deputy Lord Great Chamberlain, as a symbolic offering.14
In mid-afternoon the procession began again, leaving the Abbey and retracing its steps along the route where the spectators in the stands had endured the heat of the day rather than lose their seat. The newly-anointed king was steadily wilting in his overblown ceremonial costume, trussed up underneath with elaborate stays to hold in his girth and distressed almost to the point of fainting. ‘Several times he was at the last gasp; he looked more like the victim than the hero of the fête,’ according to Lady Cowper (formerly Emily Lamb, a noted beauty and the sister of Lady Abdy’s putative seducer Fred Lamb). The king had to be discreetly revived with sal volatile (smelling salts), after which he recovered enough to flirt with the plump and middle-aged Marchioness Conyngham, his latest (and last) mistress, to the disapproval of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the notice of the Duke of Wellington who thought he behaved in a highly improper fashion during the ceremony, ‘even in the most important and solemn parts.’15 The society hostess (and Wellington’s great friend) Mrs Harriet Arbuthnot, who was present at the ceremony, recalled the king taking a diamond brooch from his chest and kissing it while looking meaningfully at Lady Conyngham, and in reply she took off her glove and kissed a ring she was wearing. His appearance did not impress Mrs Arbuthnot, who said of her new monarch: ‘Anybody who could have seen his disgusting figure, with a wig the curls of which hung down his back, and quite bending beneath the weight of his robes and his 60 years would have been quite sick.’16
Elizabeth, Lady Conyngham had set her cap at the prince two years earlier; she was thought to be a shrewd and greedy woman but could also be kindhearted and she was still beautiful, if a little voluptuous. She was exactly the kind of woman the prince found most attractive and her hold upon him continued when he ascended to the throne. The Duke of Wellington loathed her. Harriette Wilson, in her capacity as a courtesan, knew all about Lady Conyngham’s past indiscretions as the two women had shared the affections of the handsome John Ponsonby, 1st Viscount Ponsonby, and Harriette had managed to lay her hands on a cache of letters that Elizabeth had written to him. The unscrupulous Harriette would, in due course, use those love-letters to blackmail both the marchioness and the king.
However, for all the censure from those viewing from within the Abbey, most of the spectators outside were delighted by the pomp and ceremony and also by their king who had attracted neither their respect nor their love for some years. During the return to Westminster Hall Lord Charles amused himself by throwing silver medals into the air for the spectating crowds to scrabble over. A sumptuous banquet awaited the party where 336 guests sat down to dine and although it was still daylight a profusion of candles and chandeliers had been lit; an estimated 2,000 lights glimmered above and around the tables. With the sun gleaming in through the windows, the artificial illumination only served to detract from the overall spectacle and caused consternation to those seated below the candles; not only did it increase the heat but large globules of melted wax fell, without distinction, onto the heads of the great and the good. It was noted that ‘the very great heat was nowhere more visible than in the havoc which it made upon the curls of many of the ladies, several of whose heads had lost all traces of the friseur’s skill long before the ceremony of the day was concluded.’17
Following the coronation Lady Conyngham had arranged for the king to make a visit to Ireland, including a private visit to Slane Castle in County Meath, her husband’s ancestral estate on the banks of the River Boyne where he would stay for a few days. However, her plans were thrown into disarray when Caroline of Brunswick died suddenly. Reeling from the refusal to grant her entry to the Abbey and denied the right to call herself a queen, Caroline had unwisely attended a re-enactment of the coronation at a Drury Lane theatre a few days later. Returning home, depressed and unwell, she took to her bed and after nine days and nights of intense pain she died at her residence in Hammersmith, Brandenburg House. The cause of death was recorded by her doctors as an obstruction of the bowels, attended by inflammation.
The king was conflicted by his emotions; he was moved by his wife’s death, although clearly not bereft. Any show of false grief would be seized upon and the king would be mocked, but he still had appearances to consider and he could not simply ignore the event. He decided to go ahead with his jaunt but to spend the first few days on Irish soil in retirement as a mark of respect. Making arrangements for any of Caroline’s jewels that belonged to him to be reclaimed and for her body to be shipped out of the country as quickly as possible (Caroline was buried in her homeland of Brunswick), the king put to sea. His courtiers were horrified to see him merrily disembark from the ship hours later, rolling drunk and enthusiastically shaking hands with a fisherman by the name of Pat Farrell. The Irish people loved him and he was enchanted by them.18
In anticipation of the benefits to come from their patron now holding the highest position in the land, at the end of 1821 the young Bentinck family moved once again, from Eaton Place to another small but elegant town house, 1 North Row, situated on the corner adjoining Park Lane and Norfolk Street (now known as Dunraven Street). An interesting coincidence, one of which Lord Charles was possibly unaware, was that the neighbouring house on that corner, 19 Norfolk Street, was for some years the residence of the eighteenth-century rake and politician Colonel Richard FitzPatrick, an intimate friend of Charles James Fox. Many years earlier, in the mid-1780s and over twenty years before he married Georgiana Seymour, Lord Charles’ first mother-in-law, the courtesan Grace Dalrymple Elliott, had been living at FitzPatrick’s house as his mistress, ‘azurizing’ herself during April of 1784 by dressing in blue to proclaim her allegiance to his political party in the Westminster elections.19
From 1821 Park Lane and the surrounding area underwent refurbishment and improvements (only 100 years earlier it had been a simple trackway running alongside Hyde Park and known as Tyburn Lane). Benjamin Dean Wyatt had been commissioned to carry out work on Apsley House in Piccadilly at the other end of Park Lane, formerly the home of Anne’s father but now owned by her uncle, the Duke of Wellington. Popularly known as Number One, London (due to it being the first house a traveller into London would pass by after entering through the Knightsbridge tollgate), Apsley House was actually 149 Piccadilly. Throughout the 1820s Park Lane was reconstructed with some of the older houses demolished and other existing ones enhanced with balconies and verandas facing Hyde Park to take advantage of the views afforded them. Even Hyde Park itself was given a facelift. Property values soared and Lord Charles Bentinck, so often derided for being something of a simpleton, on this occasion had proved himself astute in moving to the right property at the right time. Lord and Lady Charles Bentinck also maintained a country residence at Tunbridge Wells in Kent.20