In the summer months of 1822 Lady Anne Bentinck was once again pregnant. Always a little snappy, the discomfort of being enceinte in such hot weather only exaggerated the problem and she upset one of her servants with her rude and imperious behaviour.
Anne had been out in her carriage and had left her shawl inside the vehicle. Robert Manby, her footman, without being instructed took it upon himself to deliver the shawl to his mistress in her drawing room. Lady Anne was irate: he was a mere servant and had no business to meddle with her belongings without her orders and, with his ears ringing with her stinging admonition, he was told to carry the shawl back to the carriage that instant. Robert Manby, a man of spirit, took offence at her tone. He coolly informed her ladyship that, in his opinion, he had performed his duty properly and if she wished him to neglect his duty in the future he would do so but he flatly refused to take the shawl back to the carriage (perhaps anticipating that the haughty Anne would then command him to fetch it for her after all). Anne was aghast at her servant’s disobedience and totally bewildered by being spoken to in such a way; did he not know his place? She repeated her instruction and, once again, Robert refused to do her bidding. At length Lord Charles was fetched and he tried, in vain, to persuade the footman to replace the shawl in the carriage. With everyone fully at the end of their respective tethers, Robert was ordered to immediately quit the house and his service but he stood firm. He would leave, he told his employers, only upon payment of a month’s wages; it seemed the Bentincks had met their match. Charles, in a pique and fully enraged by his recalcitrant servant’s insolence, manfully took him by the scruff of the neck and threw him out of the door, down the steps and onto the street below.
Knowing that he was now out on his ear without a reference or his outstanding pay, Robert Manby made straight for the local magistrate’s office and lodged a complaint there, saying he had been assaulted by his employer. Lord Charles was duly summoned to attend and answer for his actions, although, due to his rank, he was afforded the courtesy of being heard in a private rather than a public room.
Seated in front of George Rowland Minshull, the sitting magistrate at Bow Street, Lord Charles got a sympathetic hearing, although Minshull offered as his opinion his regret that the Bentincks had not called for a constable rather than forcibly ejecting Manby from their home themselves. With matters as they were, Lord Charles admitted the assault and though the magistrate deferentially thought his heavy-handed approach totally understandable, given the circumstances he had to order him to enter into a recognizance to appear at the next sessions to answer any complaint that Manby might make against him. Robert Manby played one more throw of the dice, suggesting he would overlook the assault in lieu of a month’s wages, but it was now Lord Charles Bentinck’s turn to be imperious and he refused to listen, instead entering into the required recognizance which, luckily for Lord Charles, proved unnecessary. The whole affair paints a fairly accurate picture of the household in which young Charley and his siblings were growing up: one of entitlement and haughty impetuosity. It is a testament to Charley that, in later life, he showed he had not inherited his parents’ attitude to those who they viewed very much as their ‘inferiors’.1
It was in the North Row town house that Anne gave birth for the fifth and final time on 14 November 1822 to a son who was named Frederick William Cavendish Bentinck but who failed to thrive. The infant was buried one week later.
Anne’s husband had been absent from her side for a great deal of time towards the end of her pregnancy, busy on official business and accompanying King George IV on his inaugural visit to Scotland in August, never far from the monarch’s side throughout the trip. Stage-managed by the author Sir Walter Scott and containing a profusion of plaid (thereby overturning the censure on this material that had resulted from the Jacobite rebellions of the eighteenth century), the king was well received by his Caledonian subjects and thoroughly enjoyed his time there. The weather was terrible (it rained on most days) and John Murray, the old 4th Duke of Atholl, scathingly dubbed it ‘one and twenty daft days’, but overall it was a success. The flamboyant king appeared in full highland dress on just the one occasion during the trip, complete with a kilt that was a little too short and a pair of pink tights to hide his pasty white legs.2
The following year Grace Dalrymple Elliott, King George’s old paramour from his handsome youth, died at the modest house in Ville d’Avray near Paris in which she had taken refuge during the last years of her life, years blighted by ill health. Her one remaining descendant was her young granddaughter Georgiana Cavendish Bentinck and the two were extremely fond of one another; Georgiana had often stayed in Paris with her doting grandmother. If Lord Charles was hoping that the faded courtesan would leave a fortune to his eldest daughter he was sadly mistaken, as Grace could barely leave more than her best wishes to her granddaughter. It was as well that the money originally settled on the first Lady Charles Bentinck by her guardian Lord Cholmondeley and by Grace had been protected, for there was precious little else. Grace named the Marchioness of Cholmondeley as the executor of her will, and the good lady patiently attempted to sort out Grace’s affairs, both in England and in Paris. Lord Cholmondeley, with less patience, had to fund Grace’s burial in Paris.3
The ageing Marquess Wellesley married for a second time in October 1825, a marriage that caused further divisions among his siblings and children. His choice of bride was a wealthy American lady, Marianne Patterson née Caton. Marianne, born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1788, was the eldest of four sisters, and with two of her sisters – Elizabeth (Bess) and Louisa – came to England in the early summer of 1816 accompanied by Marianne’s husband Robert Patterson.4 The sisters were instantly the toast of London society and were courted by the Duke of Wellington who was struck by Marianne’s beauty. They would have heard first-hand the gossip surrounding the elopement of Wellington’s niece Lady Anne Abdy and her subsequent remarriage as they moved in the same social circles, fêted everywhere they went. A year later they travelled to Paris as the guests of the duke and it was widely believed that Marianne Patterson and the Duke of Wellington were carrying on an ‘intrigue’ and were in fact lovers. No evidence remains to prove this but they were certainly enamoured of one another, great friends and particularly intimate indeed. The Marquess Wellesley was infuriated by his younger brother’s good fortune, for he also had his eye on the beautiful Mrs Patterson and he was widowed and free to marry. To escape the gossip, and at the instigation of her husband, Marianne returned to Baltimore.
Robert Patterson then died of cholera in Maryland during the ‘fever season’ of 1822 and two years later Marianne, a wealthy widow, sailed back to England for the recovery of her health. During the summer months of 1825 Marianne Patterson and her sister Bess travelled to Dublin to fulfil a promise to their grandfather to discover his Gaelic heritage and ancestry. The Marquess Wellesley, described by Lord Clare at this period of his life as ‘an old ruined battered rake’, had been appointed the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and the sisters dined at his magnificent Palladian mansion just outside the city, the Viceregal Lodge in the Phoenix Park. Others had a different opinion of the marquess: Lord Hatherton had known him since 1812 and believed ‘both in character and in person, he was one of the most remarkable individuals ever seen.’ Standing 5ft 6in high (a Staffordshire gentleman once described him as ‘the tallest man for his inches I ever saw’) and always garbed in tasteful and expensive clothes, he had a bald head with silky fine hair around his ears and the back of his head, grey when Lord Hatherton first knew him but white as snow by the time the marquess wooed the widowed Mrs Patterson.5
Marianne had planned to return to America the following year but the 66-year-old snowy-haired marquess proposed marriage and everything moved so quickly that Marianne found herself married and a marchioness before the year was out. The marquess was an old fool in love but not such a fool that he had neglected to choose wisely, for Marianne brought her fortune as well as her charm and beauty to the union. The Duke of Wellington, still infatuated with Marianne but not free to marry himself, was horrified and tried to prevent the match (after years of seeing his younger brother triumphant it would not have escaped the marquess’s notice that this time it was he who had ended up with the prize and Arthur who had ended up with his nose put out of joint).
The views of Richard’s children towards his new wife were not overly enthusiastic and indeed they had heard little of it from their ever-distant father. Hyacinthe Littleton hinted that Marianne had settled for being a marchioness and Lady Lieutenant of Ireland only because there was no chance of the Duchess of Wellington’s demise any time soon. Certainly Edward Johnston, the marquess’s illegitimate son and, as his father’s private secretary the one child closest to him, was deliberately obtuse to the new marchioness and he made her life a misery (one argument began because she did not bid Mr Johnston ‘goodnight’ before she went to bed and the young man felt slighted; his father agreed with him and took his side). Edward Johnston had married in London just eleven months before his father’s second marriage and perhaps saw his prospects for financial security slipping away if his influence with his newly-married father diminished. He was later found a position, due to the influence of the Duke of Wellington who wished to help Marianne, with the Board of Stamps but remained largely absent from his desk and continued to be by the side of the marquess, much to everyone else’s despair. It was generally believed by everyone except his indulgent father that he siphoned off large quantities of money in return for using his influence over the marquess. By 1833, finally realizing the truth of the matter, Wellesley called a halt to his relationship with his grasping son and banished him from his side.6
Lord Charles Bentinck was now once again placed in the public eye, this time in connection with the courtesan Harriette Wilson. In 1825 her Memoirs featuring Lord Charles, his younger brother Frederick, Sir William Abdy and the Duke of Wellington among others were published in nine instalments between February and August of that year. If he was offered the chance to buy himself from the pages, Lord Charles refrained from doing so and sadly his wife’s reaction to his appearance in Harriette’s Memoirs has not survived. We would imagine it to be loud, scathing and voluble. In the autumn of that year he was in Paris, perhaps to escape the unwanted attention as another book reputedly authored by Harriette was also just published, a semi-fictional work entitled Paris Lions and London Tigers which was a satire featuring thinly-disguised portraits of celebrities of the day and written in the style of a novel. Lord Charles and his brother-in-law Edward Littleton, Baron Hatherton both got a less than flattering namecheck within its pages. The two unfortunate men were introduced to the readers of this novel thus: ‘I remember my Lord Charles Bentinck, and that stupid young man, who married the Marquis of Wellesley’s youngest daughter – I forget his name, but fancy it might be something Littleton.’7
The two men had been in Paris together some years earlier, according to the author, and had fixed on dining at Café Frascati, a gaming salon on the fashionable Rue de Richelieu where many a fortune had been lost and a reputation ruined, only they could not gain admittance without the introduction of a gentleman known to the house. Several well-to-do Englishmen had recently been turned from the establishment’s doors and the pair knew not how to gain admittance. Then they had a brainwave. Harriette was in Paris and so Lord Charles wrote what was described as a ‘very humble [and] pathetic epistle’, imploring her to
forward a character forthwith; forthwith being my Lord’s favourite expression: ‘For the love of Heaven, do, pray, dear, little, pretty Miss Wilson, forward me, forthwith, a couple of written characters, one for my friend, Mr Littleton, the other for myself: such as shall obtain us admittance into that highly respectable establishment.
Harriette claimed that she obliged the two men, penning a letter to the (probably fictional) Marquis de Livré to say that while she had been acquainted with the two gentlemen she had never had a reason to doubt their honesty, having never lost anything, and they were frequently sober, especially in the mornings. There would be no risk to the house, she thought, if the two gentlemen were allowed to sit at the bottom of the table.
Whether or not this account was false, combined with his appearance in Harriette’s Memoirs, it presented an aspect of his personality that he would not wish to become public knowledge and, more importantly, left him open to the ridicule of society and his peers. Additionally, Lord Charles was possibly suffering ill health at the time and any stress caused by the publication of these two books can only have worsened his condition. He died suddenly, at his house on the corner of North Row and Park Lane, on 28 April 1826 of an aneurysm of the heart. He was aged only 45 and Anne was left a widow with four young children, the eldest of whom was approaching her tenth birthday. Charles had been feeling ill for a few days but had gone about his business on the preceding evening as usual and without complaint; he died while dressing himself at half-past seven in the morning, and his children had been running through his rooms just minutes before he fell to the floor. His footman, alerted by a strange noise from the dressing room, found Lord Charles lying prone on the floor and medical attention was swiftly summoned with Sir Henry Halford (a handsome doctor favoured by the Royal family) and Dr Warren arriving post-haste but to no avail, for there was no sign of life remaining.8
It is not known what caused Lord Charles’ aneurysm and it could have been due to a variety of complications ranging from high blood pressure to a congenital condition, but it may also have been caused by syphilis. Syphilitic aortitis is a known cause of aneurysms of the heart in people under the age of 50 who suffer from tertiary syphilis (and this stage of the disease can occur up to three decades after the initial infection and after a period when the disease had lain dormant after the initial symptoms, i.e. the latent phase). Tertiary syphilis is not infectious, nor is it during the latent phase other than in the first couple of years, and it is possible that Lord Charles was suffering from syphilis without anyone knowing a thing about it until shortly before his death; perhaps if this was the case he had become infected in his youth when he served in the army and long before even his first marriage. Beau Brummell, who kept company with Frederick Bentinck at Harriette Wilson’s establishment, was another famous sufferer; he died at Caen in northern France in 1840 at Le Bon Sauveur Asylum due to complications from tertiary syphilis.
That Lord Charles died suddenly and unexpectedly is partly evidenced by the lack of a will. Had he known that his death was near he would undoubtedly have written one but, instead, he died intestate leaving his distraught widow the additional problem of applying for probate and taking control of whatever estate he had owned at his death.
Lady Anne continued to live at 1 North Row during the early years of her widowhood, supported financially by her brother-in-law, the Duke of Portland. The Duke of Wellington was now prime minister, having been asked by King George IV to form a government (he resigned his position as commander-in-chief of the British army upon his appointment). However, the duke’s tenure in office was marked by riots, he found himself an unpopular choice among many and his premiership lasted a mere two years. Being niece to the prime minister was of little use to Lady Anne Bentinck when, two years after the death of her husband, she found herself in front of the magistrates on a similar charge to the one that had years earlier been laid against her husband by their footman, Robert Manby. This time the accuser was Lady Anne’s cook, a termagant-looking woman named Sarah Walker.
Sarah Walker had not held the position for very long; she was merely a substitute for the regular cook who was in the country with the rest of the Bentinck servants, and had been hired at 5s a week to look after the house in London while Lady Anne was on the Continent. One evening in October 1828, with Anne recently returned to London after a short visit to Bath following her continental tour, the two women found themselves under the same roof, a situation that resulted in the cook making a complaint to the Marlborough Street Magistrates Court that her mistress, without the slightest provocation, had chased her up the stairs brandishing a candlestick with which she had mercilessly set about the cook once she caught up with her. The cook alleged that she had been struck on her arm and on her head, with severe wounds inflicted by the heavy candlestick (although she would not show her injuries to the magistrate) before Lady Anne, her arm tiring from wielding her weapon of choice, had resorted to kicking the cook down the stairs, along the passageway and out of the house, much as her husband had previously ejected Robert Manby. She also claimed that Anne had threatened to set fire to her. The next morning the cook called at the house to ask for her clothes to be given to her (as Lady Anne, she said, had almost torn the ones she had on from her back in the fracas the day before), but this was refused.9
It is entirely possible to picture an enraged Lady Anne Bentinck chasing a servant around her town house; it is also plausible that she was rash enough, when angered, to strike a servant in the heat of the moment. However, that she would do so without provocation is hard to believe, even for a woman of her disposition, and not with a weapon that might have caused significant injury or even death. The magistrate determined to get to the bottom of the situation and Lady Anne was summoned to his office to answer the charge.
Her ladyship cut a sympathetic and aristocratic appearance before the magistrate and was described in the ensuing newspaper report in The Times as ‘a lady of elegant person and amiable manners’, which was perhaps stretching the truth just a little too far. She categorically denied ever striking her cook with a candlestick or any other implement that may have been to hand. The cook, Lady Anne told the magistrate, had behaved insolently towards her and had often been found at the bottom of a bottle, to the increasing frustration of her mistress:10
Lady Charles: I assure you this woman was in a dreadful state of intoxication.
Mrs Walker: Oh, you wretch! It is false, I never was drunk in my life.
Finally, on her return on the Sunday evening and with only two servants in the house, the cook and a little footboy, Lady Anne had had enough of her insolent servant and ordered Sarah Walker to immediately quit the house. This peremptory order had been issued in one of the bedrooms in the upper apartments of the house and Lady Anne had taken a candlestick, she said, merely to light the cook’s path to the door of the house, but the tipsy cook refused to budge and dared Lady Anne to lay a finger upon her, saying she would have her mistress taken up for assault. Anne was having none of it and, laying hold of the cook’s shoulder, forced her down the stairs, following behind with the lighted candle. The argument resumed in the hallway; the cook showered her mistress with abusive language and the poor little frightened footboy was ordered to open the front door and turn the cook out. The footboy wasn’t strong enough to complete the task himself and so Lady Anne, as she herself fully acknowledged, gave him a helping hand. She might, she reasoned, have ‘touched’ the cook’s body with her knee but if so that was all the ‘kicking’ that had taken place.
The footboy and the only other person present in the house at the time, Lady Anne’s eldest daughter Anne Hyacinthe aged 12, were waiting outside the magistrate’s office in the carriage (Anne Hyacinthe had accompanied her mother to London; the two were ever close and Lady Anne relied on her eldest daughter for companionship). When asked to produce a witness, Lady Anne, ‘who was reclining against the Magistrates’ table in a careless attitude’ selected her daughter and Anne Hyacinthe was duly called into the building. Because of her extreme youth she was questioned without being required to take the oath and The Times waxed lyrical on the touching scene of the young girl being called in to defend her mother:
The first person questioned on the subject was her ladyship’s daughter, a beautiful and intelligent-looking child, displaying in every look and word an ingenuous simplicity that left no doubt of her veracity. She said, ‘Oh, no indeed, my mamma did not touch cook with the candlestick.’
Miss Bentinck did finally admit that her mamma had frightened the cook with the candlestick. Sarah Walker remonstrated with the girl, saying she was lying for her mother on Lady Anne’s instructions but Anne Hyacinthe was cut from the same cloth as her mamma and, with an air of confidence that belied her years, called for the footboy to be examined, sure he would back her up. Her mother echoed her request and as the footboy was outside he too was called to appear. This proved to be unfortunate for the two Bentincks as the footboy was a rather less reliable witness for Anne. His evidence was that ‘cookey did not say a word in anger to my lady, but that my lady kicked cookey very much indeed.’
Lady Anne knew when to fight and when to retreat; she was, after all, the niece of the greatest military strategist of the age. With a smile, and echoes of the resolution to the complaint made against her husband by Robert Manby, she calmly remarked to the magistrates that she was much to blame in laying her hands on her troublesome cook and should really have sent for a constable but the cook’s extreme insolence to her had made her forget herself momentarily. Sarah Walker could not resist one last taunt towards her former employer:
Mrs Walker: It is no use for me to say what my Lady is, but the Lord, who searches out all secrets, will reward her.
Although it was thought that the cook had indeed been impertinent, her ladyship was convicted of the assault and fined £4 plus costs; a significant sum as the highest penalty for the most aggravated case of assault stood at £5. The magistrate suggested afterwards he had imposed such a high amount as money was no object to Lady Anne and a fine of a few shillings would have been a mere trifle to her. The poor footboy, with his account of Lady Anne kicking ‘cookey’, had undoubtedly sealed his fate within the household and was facing a long walk back home from Marlborough Street rather than riding on the carriage as he had done for the journey there.
Anne had been in London to make arrangements for leaving her London town house in the hands of an agent who was to let it for up to six months. She accordingly departed from London to stay in Brighton where she attended a December ball at the Old Ship Hotel on the seafront (at which Mrs Fitzherbert was a guest) and the house at North Row was taken, fully furnished, by a single gentleman named Macnamara whose family owned Llangoed Castle in Powys, Wales and his footman, William Phillips. Another servant of Anne’s, Bridget Delaney, a young woman aged 28 and like ‘cookey’ only recently hired, was tasked to remain in the house until Mr Macnamara had taken possession and he decided to retain her services during his tenure there.11
Lady Anne checked all her drawers and cabinets before she departed and left some of her valuable jewels behind, securely locked away, or so she thought. These included a gold watch and appendages, alone worth upwards of 100 guineas, several brooches and some topaz and diamond ornaments. She left for Brighton, where her father and his new wife and her brother Richard and his wife Jane were residing. The new Lady Wellesley thought Anne ‘in great beauty’. Richard and Jane Wellesley took Anne to a grand ball (probably Mrs Maria Fitzherbert’s grand fancy dress ball, held at Steine House in Brighton and graced by all the attendant nobility), where she was ‘well noticed and much delighted’.12 If she had been shunned by society following her divorce, with the passing of time and as a widowed lady she once more had an entrance into the ballrooms of high society. The Marquess and Marchioness Wellesley left Brighton in early February after a five-month sojourn and Anne perhaps made a return visit to London with them, for she briefly called by the house and ascertained that her valuables were still under lock and key. However, on her next visit at the beginning of July, she found that her cabinet had been opened and was empty. Bridget Delaney had left two days beforehand.
A constable was sent for, who discovered the wine cellar and other places had also been broken into and, with suspicion inevitably falling upon the recently-departed Bridget, she was traced to her mother Anne’s house at Johnson’s Court near the New Road in Marylebone.13 At first she denied knowing anything at all about the missing items but eventually she threw the blame onto William Phillips, Macnamara’s footman. Phillips, she said, had been the one who had opened the cabinet (the constable thought a false key had been used, although the lid bore signs of force) and he had told her to take everything except the watch, assuring her that Lady Bentinck would never miss them when she returned. All the stolen goods, including some that Lady Anne had not missed such as wearing apparel belonging to her late husband, were found buried in the coal cellar at Anne Delaney’s house and hidden at Bridget’s home in Kendal Mews, except for the gold watch. Various portraits executed over the years by Lady Anne’s own hand of her friends were also found, including one she had painted of Lord Byron, along with some items belonging to Dr Hill of London Street, Fitzroy Square, Bridget’s former employer.14
It appears that William Phillips had indeed been involved in the robbery. Mr Macnamara had left for Wales expecting his footman to follow him and Phillips had spent the night before the constable’s visit at Anne Delaney’s Johnson’s Court home. He turned up again to bid them farewell before setting off on his journey, only to find the constables still there waiting for him and all three were taken for questioning. The evidence against William Phillips was not enough to lead to a conviction but he was closely examined by Macnamara’s brother and his explanation was found to be by no means satisfactory. He was warned by the magistrate that he was now known to the police and he could expect no second chance if he appeared before them again. The two Delaneys, however, who had confessed to their part in the crime, took their place in the dock before a judge and jury and were found guilty; Bridget for the theft and her mother for helping to conceal the stolen items.
Lady Anne was lucky in recovering everything but the gold watch which was never traced, but a mistake in the indictment meant that the capital part of the charge could not stand, luckily for Bridget who might otherwise have found herself swinging on the end of a noose. In a rare act of charity, Anne recommended Bridget to mercy as she had made such an ample confession and the jury extended their mercy to the mother, who had no former convictions. The pair were jailed for twelve months.