Privilege and Scandal: The Remarkable Life of Harriet Spencer, Sister of Georgiana by Gleeson Janet

Author:Gleeson, Janet [Gleeson, Janet]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2007-06-05T06:00:00+00:00

Tho’ Sheridan with treacherous art

Should strive t’ensnare my foolish heart,

Tho’ William Lamb in prose and verse

His growing passion should rehearse,

Tho’ Rob Adair with tearful eyes

Should whisper forth his amorous sighs

And Hamilton caresses proffer

From thinking I accept his offer,

Tho’ Sol himself my faith should prove…

The verse prefaces a letter in which Harriet continues: “Pray remember that all these lovers of mine are very good for poetick fiction but do not exist in sober prose.” Nevertheless she adds: “Pray in the next list of lovers you write me add the Prince de Poix, il y a de quoi se vanter de cette conquete là,*39 his praises of me (to my face) are so extravagantly ridiculous that if they did not distress they would amuse me.”10

Certainly Harriet had learned from her previous affairs. She was unfailingly discreet in public; private meetings took place without her husband’s knowledge, with close friends such as Lady Holland†6 and Georgiana providing alibis. Intimate correspondence was sent secretly through friends and trusted messengers and Bessborough remained unaware of the constant flow of letters. “I walked to Cavendish Square this morning with your letter. They were just going out of town but to return tomorrow and I was promised an answer when she came back so hope next post to send one,”11 wrote Harriet’s friend Lady Elizabeth Monck to Granville of a typical arrangement.

When Granville did openly visit Harriet, her companion Lady Anne Hatton provided a convenient cover. Anne was an attractive and flirtatious Irish widow—or, as Lady Holland put it in her journal: “frolicsome…bewitched, very pretty, very foolish, and very debauched.” Harriet trustingly encouraged Anne’s affection for Granville, often claiming her friend was as fond of Granville as she was herself, presumably in order to disguise the reason for Granville’s visits. Perhaps she would have been less happy to encourage their closeness had she known of the openly inviting letters, sometimes in Devonshire House patois, that Anne wrote to him. “[I] know not how to fill up the whole day without seeing you—I hope in God you will not stay longer than you at first thought,”12 Anne wrote on one occasion, and on another: “I wonder you can suspect me of feeling that passion for any one on this side of the water, you are all in life to me [and you] know it.”13

The semblance of marital harmony was shored up by extraneous distraction. Harriet and Bessborough were living through momentous events, against which family intrigues and financial distress sometimes paled into insignificance. In October, when Harriet returned to Roehampton, she breakfasted with her brother, who “amused me very much”14 by relating details of Nelson’s victory at the Battle of the Nile, which had taken place on August 1. Nelson had captured eight ships of the line, and the French Admiral’s ship L’Orient had been blown up in the action, along with her commander and most of her crew. Confirmation of this decisive victory had taken nearly two months to reach England and caused a surge of patriotism throughout the nation.

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