Book Review

The Women's Freedom Network Newsletter May/June, 2000, Vol. 7, Number 3. Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire (New York: Random House) Illustrated, 454 pp. $29.95 by Amanda Foreman Reviewed by Ingrid A. Merikoski

T he eighteenth-century political thinker Edmund Burke wrote, "Nobility is a graceful ornament to the civil order. It is the Corinthian capital of polished society." Burke's sentiment may fall on questioning ears in our time, but it was widely accepted in Burke's Britain despite rumblings of republicanism that emanated across the Atlantic from America after 1776. In her highly readable, meticulously researched new book, "Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire," Amanda Foreman paints a portrait of the woman who for a time was the aristocracy's unrivalled leader.

By the standards that govern current academic fashion, the Duchess may seem an unlikely subject for a major biography. As Foreman notes, most political historians "follow a conservative approach and ignore the role of women tout court." Feminist historians tend to focus on "women's occupations" and therefore are less interested in women's influence on the world of high politics in the eighteenth century. Marxist historians, usually allied to feminist historians, study the lives of the many at the expense of the privileged few. Foreman rightly concludes that the theoretical model that pervades women's history the "separate spheres" model that argues that women lived in sealed isolation without autonomy or direction, "denies the experiences of a Duchess of Devonshire as relevant." In this reviewer's experience, current theoretical preoccupation with relevancy is but another sign of the hubris of the modern academy, that places little confidence in readers to sort the wheat from the chaff. Relevancy is usually determined in narrowly defined, politicized terms that do not apply to all periods of history. The heroine of Foreman's story represents much of what was vital, mature and complicated about the eighteenth century. Georgiana did not seek easy answers to the challenges of life, and her story, though complex, testifies to richness of all manner of human experience.

To understand the Duchess, Foreman notes, one must first understand something about the society in which she lived. The late eighteenth century in Britain was a time of immense change. The country's economic and political fortunes, population and literacy rates, were growing rapidly. The British empire was expanding despite the considerable loss of the American colonies. Yet Britain itself remained small enough -- with a population of roughly 10 million -- to be governed by an aristocratic oligarchy.

Officially the aristocracy was controlled by some 200 male peers of the realm, who were vested with enormous political, economic and social power. With rare exceptions, as in the case of the Earls of Mar in Scotland, rules of primogeniture stipulated that eldest sons inherited titles and succeeded to seats in the House of Lords, the upper chamber of the Houses of Parliament. Constitutionally, Britain was a democracy with elections held every five years. Reality was otherwise. Younger sons of peers, their proteges and hangers-on, filled the House of Commons, the lower chamber of Parliament. The right to vote was restricted to property owners, meaning that women (and most commoners) were excluded from the formal political process. This did not hamper the ability of many to influence political life, particularly women like Georgiana, whose noble birth and marriage permitted entree' into the highest social and political circles.

Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire (1757-1806) was born Georgiana Spencer, the eldest child of John and Margaret, later to become First Earl and Countess Spencer of Althrop Park, Northamptonshire. The Spencer family traces its lineage from 1330, and they are cousins to the Dukes of Marlborough and the Churchill's. Lady Georgiana, as she came to be known after her father became Earl, was great-great- great- great-aunt to Lady Diana Spencer, the late Princess of Wales. Like her four-times-great-niece, Lady Georgiana was thrust into public life at an early age when she married William Cavendish, Fifth Duke of Devonshire (1748-1811) in 1774 at sixteen.

This marriage united two of the most prominent families in the land. The Devonshire's vast land holdings brought prodigious wealth. They owned electoral boroughs that put them in control of 23 seats in the House of Commons. Naturally Georgiana's parents approved heartily of the match, despite the fact that this somewhat sheltered girl was ill-prepared for the responsibilities of a grand chatelaine. As the young woman matured, she became increasingly aware that while every man in England fell in love with her, including some say the then Prince of Wales, her husband did not.

Foreman punctuates her entire narrative with extracts from surviving correspondence that personalize her account of the Duchess' life, and these are used effectively to describe periods of loneliness and depression that the Duchess suffered. Although she dutifully provided the Duke with three children including a male heir, Georgiana and her husband found affection elsewhere in keeping with the norms of their class and time. Foreman navigates the Devonshire's private affairs with unsentimental sensitivity to give an ordered account of a highly unusual domestic arrangement. Georgiana had a daughter with the politician Charles Grey, whom Foreman tells us was probably the true love of her life after politics. She became a compulsive gambler, drank and used opiates. During the last twenty years of the Duchess' life, she and the Duke maintained a menage-a-trois with Lady Elizabeth Foster, the Duke's live-in mistress and Georgiana's best friend.

The subplots alone will keep readers riveted, but do not allow them to distract you. This book is a first-rate biography, the product of research started when Foreman was a doctoral student

"Foreman navigates the Devonshire's private affairs with unsentimental sensitivity to give an ordered account of a highly unusual domestic arrangement. Georgiana had a daughter with the politician Charles Grey, whom Foreman tells us was probably the true love of her life after politics."

at Oxford University, which won the prestigious Whitbread Prize for Biography. Foreman understands the extent to which the social life of the aristocracy revolved around political activity in the eighteenth century. She explores Georgiana's life while analyzing the central political rivalry of the day between the Whig's, Britain's opposition party that supported the powers of Parliament, and the Tories, who defended the ultimate powers of the Crown. Georgiana became a pivotal supporter of the Whig Party, of which Charles Grey was a leading member. Foreman writes, "She [Georgiana] devoted herself to the Whig Party, campaigning, scheming, fund-raising and recruiting for it right up to the day she died." Georgiana teamed to use the press to the advantage of her political causes; she sponsored political extravaganzas, campaigned with Fox, and she lobbied Members of Parliament persistently. Georgiana, Foreman contends, should be "credited with being one of the first to refine political messages for mass communication. She was an image-maker who understood the necessity of public relations, and she became adept at the manipulation of political symbols and the dissemination of party propaganda. Her [political] career exemplifies the political access granted to aristocratic women when politics was still a family enterprise." Astonishingly, the Duchess also found time to become a patron of the arts and sciences, pursue a serious interest in chemistry, perform in musical recitals and write novels and poetry.

Throughout her life, the Duchess maintained a self-deprecating manner that underscored the personal charm that captivated virtually all around her. "I know I was handsome ... and have always been fashionable, but I do assure you," Georgiana wrote to her daughter at the end of her life, "our negligence and ommissions have been forgiven and we have been loved, more from our being free from airs than from any other circumstance." Like all good biographers, Foreman captures the spirit of her subject in the pages of her book, and one is moved by it. What the Georgiana readers are left with is a woman "too full of contradiction" to be categorized easily. Georgiana lived at a time when relations between men and women were "robust and multilayered," when "Neither the public and private nor the social and political realms existed as separate entities. They blurred into each other, making divisions often subtle and nuanced. Rather than being an anomaly, Georgiana's political career demonstrates the fluidity which characterized relations between the sexes."

Foreman concludes that those historians who have ignored high politics in the eighteenth century, or indeed have ignored women like the Duchess of Devonshire, misunderstand "one of the most sexually integrated periods in British history." This is true. Amanda Foreman does much to redress this error. In the parlance of another remarkable Englishwoman and near contemporary of the Duchess, Jane Austen, both Amanda Foreman's book and its subject are "excessively diverting."