February 23, 2021 • 29 mins
Georgiana Fane (1801-1874) was an English heiress, most famously known for being featured in a portrait as a peasant girl (painted by Sir Thomas Lawrence). She also gained a reputation for her harassing pursuits of the Duke of Wellington.
From what once was a secretive love affair, Georgiana’s later threats and angry letters turned out to be more than the Duke bargained for.
Executive Producers: Maria Trimarchi and Holly Frey
Producer & Editor: Casby Bias
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Criminalia, a production of Shonda Land Audio in
partnership with I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the
second season of Criminalia. This season, we are exploring the
lives and motivations of some of the most notorious stalkers
throughout history. I'm Maria Tremarqui and I'm Holly Fry and
(00:25):
today we are going to meet a woman named Lady
Georgiana Fame. She was an English heiress who is known
for basically two things. One for a portrait that was
painted of her when she was about five years old
and dressed as a peasant girl, and two for stalking
Arthur Wellesley, who is better known as the Duke of
(00:46):
Wellington and a hero of Waterloo. So the Duke was
once quoted as saying, the only thing I'm afraid of
his fear. And that's a worthy quote for a general
If that sentiment sounds familiar, though, um there's a more
aim is modern iteration of it, echoed by our President
Franklin D. Roosevelt in his inaugural address, and he said,
(01:08):
the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
And frankly, I think Thorow Wrose something like that as well.
This is a statement that kind of gets floated around
a bit. Yeah. Well, and I think people quoted all
the time without even thinking about attribution one way or another.
I think so too, absolutely. Um but okay, so going
back to Wellington for a second, after meeting Georgiana, he
might have reconsidered what he was afraid of, because there
(01:31):
is quite a story here, right, So for some context
on who she was. Georgiana Faine was born Lady Cecily
Jane Georgiana Fayne in eighteen o one, and at the time,
nineteenth century England was going through a period of rapid
economic development due to the Industrial Revolution sometimes it's also
(01:52):
called the First Industrial Revolution. As part of the upper
class or aristocracy, Georgiana's family held powerful position and that
gave them a lot of authority over others. That gave
them better living conditions and better facilities over just the
rest of the population. Right and and many of them,
perhaps not really surprisingly did not work. Instead, they often
(02:14):
made investments to create profits for themselves. Um. Some were
landowners who hired lower class workers to work for them.
But even for the aristocracy, it wasn't all money in
games for everyone. This was also a time where women
could not vote, no matter who they were or what
part of society they came from. There were certainly no
(02:35):
women in parliament, and the ideal woman of the time was,
and we quote, the angel in the house and her
role as a wife should be to support her husband. Yeah. Yeah,
it's not not a ton of agency for most women
a lot of a lot of times, even women who
(02:55):
were very educated. The idea was that their education would
allow to entertain their husband's play the piano from your husband, right,
not so much about actually having creative fulfillment or or career. Yes,
exactly right. So Georgiana, as we said, grew up in
(03:17):
a very moneyed aristocratic family. Her father, John Fayne, also
known as Lord Westmoreland, was a British Tory politician who
served in most of the cabinets of the period. John
Fame was married twice. His first marriage was an elopement
because the bride's wealthy father forbid the match. That was
to Sarah and child, and they had a son and
(03:37):
four daughters, and they seemed to have lived, at least
on the outside, uh, from the outside perspective, pretty happily
until Sarah unfortunately died of an undisclosed condition, and she
was only twenty nine at the time. Yeah, so John
John married again, um, and his marriage took place in
eighteen hundred and he and his wife Jane had three
sons and two daughters before they separated, and their eldest
(04:00):
wild with Georgiana. So I want to talk about this
portrait that she's famous for, Yes, the five year old.
It is fascinating and it is, as we said, of
a very young Georgiana. It is said that her mother
was very likely the driving force behind it all. So
you want to think of this kind of like she
(04:21):
was the stage mother, except it was for portraiture rather
than pushing her into a commercial. And this is kind
of a good example of the kind of decadent life
in high society that Georgiana was raised in. Though this famous,
famous portrait was painted in eighteen o six while the
artist Sir Thomas Lawrence was also busy working on two
portraits of her father. The why not combined the hours, right,
(04:44):
just keep it in the family. So this portrait, you
can see it easily online if you google Georgiana. You
can see she's very young. Um, she appears barefoot, she's
dressed in tattered clothing, and she's she's against kind of
a rugged backdrop, and the unusual landscape and choice of
clothes were said to reflect the new spirit of the
Romantic era. And and that's the era that peaked between
(05:07):
about eighteen hundred and like, let's call it eighteen fifty,
so it's the prime of her life. She's born in
eighteen oh one, right, so this is what she knews
and Romanticism it was a literary and artistic movement, and
you might be familiar with some of the writers of
the period, including William Wordsworth and Lord Byron. It was
a time when the emphasis was on individualism and emotion,
(05:30):
and when intellectuals and artists were challenging society. So naturally
it was the time for a five year old heiress
to address in rags. So if that sounds like kind
of a weird classism flip of appropriating imagery of poverty
and strife to appear enlightened, you are correct. That's exactly
(05:51):
what it was. It was also really common for portraits
to feature the subject as a well known figure from
mythology or fables, and this sort of served as a
to project them as having the qualities of various noble
heroes and gods. Again to give people who really probably
had not experienced a lot of strife that would lead
(06:11):
to personal growth in their life, but to give them
an association of enlightenment and goodness. You mean, it's not
easy to become enlightened. You just need a portrait. You
just need a pretty painting of yourself dressed in a
kind of a tattered dress, pattered rags, enlightened Moses. So
I meaned, do a little side note on our portraiture
(06:32):
and talk a little bit about the artist. So the artist,
as Holly sid was Sir Thomas Lawrence, and he was
self taught. He was a child prodigy who gained prominence
in England as a master portraitist. He became so well
known that he was actually um a touch point for
just about all members of the British upper class at
this time. For example, he painted well known portrait of
(06:55):
Lady Caroline Lamb, who we've talked about previously. His painting
of the young Georgiana is still considered a prime example
of Romantic portraiture and the trend of placing subjects in
scenarios and rules much different from their actual lives. Yes,
Sir Thomas Lawrence is interesting because if you just start
to look at the portraits he painted, he's basically done
(07:18):
imagery of every famous person from history that was in
high society in England at the time. He kind of
becomes one of those historical nexus points because he knew
everyone that you might talk to you that was connected
to everyone else. So now that we are done with
our indulgence in our art history lesson, this is a
(07:38):
really good time for a break because when we return,
we're going to talk about who the Duke of Wellington was.
Welcome back to Criminalia. Let's talk about the victim, the
(08:00):
Duke and how he met Lady Fayne. So until his
early twenties, Arthur, as the Duke of Wellington was known then,
showed no apparent aptitude for anything academic or otherwise. Arthur.
One of the things that came up in research was
it the only thing that he really showed any promise
in was violin playing. But that also wasn't something that
(08:23):
he pursued to the point that it would become a
profession or a level of mastery. He was, by all accounts,
a fairly unhappy and lonely boy. People considered him kind
of lazy and awkward, and in fact, he displayed none
of the talents that would manifest later in his life.
He was just a late bloomer, absolutely right. I mean
(08:43):
think about it, like, he's a thirteen year old boy.
He sometimes plays a violin. You know, he don't see
him growing up to be a general. Maybe you like
he will lead people into successful battles. And his mom. So,
his mom actually grew increasingly concerned about his laziness, and
she is known to have stated on more than one
occasion and will quote this, I don't know what I
(09:06):
shall do with my awkward son Arthur. So oh mom like,
uh so it sounds like his mother never also would
have guessed that Arthur would grow up to be the
Duke of Wellington, the general who defeated Napoleon at the
Battle of Waterloo. But um that victory that he had
as an adult helped shape modern Europe. But no one
(09:29):
would have expected such influential achievements from the young Arthur.
And during his life he was called yes Arthur, but
as he grew up, he was also referred to with
a variety of other rather colorful monikers. We don't even
have all of them listed. This is just a matter why.
So he was sometimes called the Iron Duke, the less
(09:51):
flattering old Nosy, the bow, the Eagle, the world's conquer
he wanted that one on a shirt that's big yeah.
And Maria's favorite of the ones she found the beef,
the beef. I'm gonna go have drinks with the beef later.
(10:13):
How could you not love him? Right? So that last
one is more amusing than true. We don't know for
sure that anyone casually would have referred to him as
the Beef. We know that chefs argue about whether or
not it was named after him, the Beef Wellington, But
I don't think you really called him beef. Listen, Beef,
come on, beef. We will not get into the fact
(10:36):
that he is often also confused with the composer Duke Ellington,
not the same person at all, but for our purposes
we're just gonna prefer to call him the Duke. So
we know that the Duke of Wellington became a national
hero when he defeated Napoleon and that ended the Napoleonic Wars.
Waterloo was actually the last battle for both of those men.
(10:58):
The Duke's military chiefments even prior to that famed conflict
earned him knighthood in eighteen o five. So um for
time frame reference here, Georgiano was still just a really
little kid when he was getting that honor. In his
lengthy military career, he won something like thirty two to
sixty major battles. The sources tend to disagree on which
(11:22):
number of that is true, but they don't disagree on this.
He was never defeated, and after Napoleon was exiled in
eighteen fourteen, the Duke served was the ambassador to France,
and that is where he was given his duke title.
So the Duke was also something of a ladies man,
both romantically and just as good company. He was like
(11:44):
a gent that women like to hang out with. He
was said to have had a we quote vigorous sexual
appetite outside of his marriage for many decades, and in particular,
he really liked smart women who are also easy on
the eye. No one now or then is surprised that
the British lampooned him for it, because it doesn't sound
(12:05):
like he was terribly careful about it. I think he
was candid. I've never got that failing that he had.
He had many affairs. It was Georgiana, Lady Georgiana Faint,
who was his most persistent female admirer. The two first
met in Paris actually, and they danced at a ball
after his victory at Waterloo, and this was in eighteen fifteen,
(12:29):
so that would put her at fourteen and him at
forty six maybe seven. Um. During her twenties and thirties,
their relationship did become romantic in nature. And this would
be a romantic relationship that went on to haunt him
for literally the rest of his life. Um. Having a
little foreshadowing here, right, right, So just not to take
(12:52):
away from the fact that he was, you know, a roving,
roving gent when he met Joanna when she was still
a teenager. That was not a romantic involvement. It was
it might have been for her an imprinting experience, but
he wasn't. He wasn't like skeeving on a teenager at
that point. He waited till she was twenty, right, which
(13:15):
has its own weird stuff. There's. Yeah. So the Duke
of Wellington did become fond of his young aristocratic admirer,
and despite his marriage, as Maria said, their friendship developed
into romance and the two began to exchange letters. Suggestive
letters from Wellington to Georgiana still exists today that confirmed
(13:39):
that the two did have a sexual relationship in the
eighteen twenties. So the Duke's wife. The Duke's wife was
named Kitty, and she passed away in eighteen thirty. And
when that happened, Georgiana and several other good handful of
other high society women really stepped up their game in
regard to their interest in the Duke, all doting on
(14:00):
him and hoping to become his new wife. And so
when Georgiana was rebuffed by him, she refused to accept
this rejection, and instead of walking away and moving on
with her life, she instead harassed him. And like I
said earlier, actually until the day he died. It's interesting
to note, right, like we should remember when we talk
(14:23):
about how coveted he was as a widower, Like, remember,
this is a hero of the country, he's a war hero,
had a way with women, so like it's not surprising
that immediately everyone was like, I would like to become
the next Mrs Wellington, thank you. And it is it
(14:45):
is said in Georgiana's case that like her mother, she
had what was often called and we quote, a lively disposition,
but she was also described throughout her life as being
really quite highly strung and we quote again, possibly to
the ping of neurosis. She was often described as being
chronically ill because of this, and it was believed that
(15:05):
her disposition was quote almost entirely nervous. So you could
see where someone with that disposition might fixate on someone
who danced with them when they were fourteen. Yeah, So, okay,
we're gonna take a quick sponsor break, and when we return,
we will talk about how Georgiana's letters started to turn
(15:26):
a little more hateful. Welcome back to Criminalia. Let's talk
next about how the duke begged Georgiana's mother to help him.
(15:49):
So it might be easy to imagine Georgiana as a
lonely girl who became fixated on the only man who
ever paid attention to her, and that would fall right
in line with a lot of the fig story you
might see about stalkers on TV or in the movies.
But when it comes to Georgiana, it doesn't actually hold
true at all. No, it was not as though she
(16:10):
was not receiving attention from other men, and in fact,
marriage proposals from other men. Henry John Temple, also known
as Lord Palmerston, for instance, proposed to Georgiana twice, but
she turned him down twice. We we do not We
do not know for sure why, aside of course, from
(16:31):
her obsession with the Duke. But there is another spanner
in the works because we know that Henry was also
having an affair with her married half sister, the Countess
of Jersey at the time. Obviously there's a lot of
intrigue going on, so you could draw your own conclusions.
The course of true love never did run smooth, if
we was borrow from Shakespeare, and seems especially the case
(16:56):
in this particular social circle. It does, it really knows,
seemed to work well for these this group. Um So,
by the mid eighteen thirties, Georgiana had begun to make
life big, big misery for the Duke. He had grown
uncomfortable with the tone of her letters, and they were
becoming increasingly persistent about their relationship. She also frequently waited
(17:21):
for him to come out of church service, and wasn't
above making a scene about how all she wanted from
him was the kindness she believed he refused to give her.
The more the Duke turned away from her, the more
Georgiana's affections began to turn into hate, and she began
to bombard him with bitter and abusive letters and her correspondence,
(17:42):
which interestingly enough, was all written in the third person.
I agree that I thought that that was odd, continued, Uh,
it was. And it wasn't just about unwanted letters though.
So Georgiana was just sending letters, but she was doing
a lot of things in them that we're very troubling.
She threatened that she was going to sue the Duke
(18:04):
for breach of contract because she believed that he had
promised in his letters that he was going to marry her,
and then, of course he did not do so. She
also threatened to publish the love letters that he had
written to her, which, by the moral standards at the time,
would have been an absolute national scandal. To have a
war hero's of famous war heroes letters to the various
(18:26):
women that he had romantic entanglements with would have been
just Many pearls would have been clutched, and many main
jing couches would have been called for smelling thoughts bring
them please um. The Duke, though, actually was no stranger
to threats regarding his romantic affairs. For instance, in eight
(18:49):
he had another affair and it came back to haunt him,
and he received a letter from a man named John
Joseph Stockdale. And John Joseph Stockdale was a publisher who
was offering to refrain from releasing the racy memoirs of
one of the Duke's mistresses, a woman named Harriet Wilson,
and he said he would do it in exchange for money.
(19:09):
So we might just consider that Mr Stockdale was trying
to blackmail the Duke at his point. But the Duke,
it's rumored, replied, um, and his quote is published, and
be damned. So we did come across a minority among
historians who don't believe that he wrote such a thing
at all. But um, there is the side that who
believes that he did. And I like to think that
(19:31):
the Iron Duke did write that. Yeah, he may have
thought his reputation was above tarnish at that point, But
we are lucky enough that one of the Duke's letters
still exist today. This letter was written in October of
eighteen fifty one, so make note that at this point
the Duke was eighty two years old, and that letter
(19:52):
was discovered in two thousand two at Fullback Hall, which
was the Fame families home for more than four hundred years.
But this let it was not to Georgiana. It was
in fact to her mother, begging her to please put
an end to her daughter's obsession and the unwelcome correspondence
that she kept sending the Duke. Wow. This letter opened
(20:12):
with my dear Madam, and then it went on for
four pages, but it starts with I have long had
it in contemplation to appeal to your ladyship and to
request your ladyship's interference with your daughter. Lady Georgiana fame
to prevail upon her ladyship to cease to molest me
with daily vituperative letters. Wow. So he He also addressed
(20:40):
the alleged breach of contract in regard to marriage and
quote said you have been misinformed. There is nothing of
the nature of a misunderstanding. He described Georgiana's actions as
extraordinary and went on to say that she we quote
betrayed such lack of had faith that it was impossible
(21:01):
for him to continue any acquaintance. But see there was
the problem of the letters that she was sending, which
we've talked a lot about, but there was another problem here.
She had begun showing his romantic letters to other people, right,
which he had written years before. At this point, let's go,
you know, forty years, so not long after contacting Georgian
(21:27):
his mother. I think it puts it in about thirty thirty, right,
because it was in the twenties, and this was the
fifties when he this is the fifth about thirty years,
so not long after contacting Georgian his mother, which was
on September fourteenth, eighteen fifty two, the Duke actually died.
He was eighty three at the time, and this followed
an incident where he had a stroke. And he should
(21:48):
be remembered for more than the two things we talked about. Right.
We'd imagined that he was the general who won at
Waterloo and that he was a notorious womanizer, but he
was a lot of other things. As we said, long
before Waterloo, he was being honored for his achievements. Also
later in his career, the Duke went on to become
the leader of the Tory Party and during his time
(22:08):
as Prime Minister, which ran from eight to eighteen thirty
and then again in eighteen thirty four, he not only
shepherded an important, although controversial act that allowed Catholic emancipation
in Britain, he was also the one who planted the
seed that slowly moved the country toward democracy. In two
thousand two, he was actually ranked number fifteen in the
(22:30):
BBC's poll of the one Greatest Britons. There are two
things about him actually that I found when I was
doing my research that actually really had nothing to do
with being stalked, had to do with him and what
he was like in his life. And one of these
instances was about how he really liked to just go
to the pub and drink with his friends and laugh
(22:51):
and tell jokes and be rowdy until life early in
the morning. And the second piece about him that I
thought was really interesting was that he had a penchant
for wearing white trousers with a cocked hat, and that
was kind of his his style. And I just thought
you could see him coming down the street like you
knew the Duke of Rollington was there, between his laugh
(23:12):
and his pants style. I love it. So that's the
end of the Duke's life. But let's talk a little
bit more about Georgiana because she did live for twenty
two years after the Duke died, and she lived with
her mother, the Countess, for the entire time, and she
never actually married. When her mother passed away in March
(23:34):
of eighteen fifty seven, Georgiana lived on as the sole
mistress of their home Brenton for another twelve years or
so UM. When she died in December of eighteen seventy four,
the value of her assets came to be just under
eighteen million pounds at today's value. It's always a little
rough to estimate between the nineteenth century and the twenty
(23:56):
fe century, but let's be able to say about eighteen
million pounds um. But the estate she left her estate
to her nephew, the Honorable Spencer Ponsonby. It was heavily indebted,
but it was his. So I don't want to forget
about the portrait, because there's still the portrait. At the
end of her life, she had it and she willed
(24:17):
it to the National Collection. And while it's not on
display currently, it is in existence, and I believe does
go on display from time to time. It's also famous
enough that princes of it have been on display in
other museums and the prints are considered very valuable as well. Yes, yes,
and like I said earlier, you can pull it up
so easily. All the museums have it online. You know,
(24:39):
we can't go to museums right now, so just look
to praise the museums that have put their collections online.
It's the best. You have a pretend visits. Pretend you
can have a pretend visit while you drink this drink
that Hollidy is about to tell us about, so today's chaser.
The context for it is that I was thinking about
(25:01):
what a very young woman might think would seem cultured
and cool to an older man, and I like it
and would also kind of appeal to her own taste.
And it's a very very simple drink, but would kind
of represent what she thought was a really romantic, sexy
(25:21):
kind of drink. Um. It is called suggestive letters. It's
the simplest thing to put together. It's literally just an
ounce of passion fruit liqueur oh, which you can put
in a flute or a coupe. I feel like a
flute works for this because next you're just going to
top it off with like four to five ounces of champagne.
(25:43):
You can give it a quick stir, you can let
it kind of mixes you drink, so you get to
the sweetest part at the end. But to me, I
could just imagine her making this and thinking she was
the fanciest lady. I'm gonna super impress this dude. I
think it's funny that there's a drink for her that
you get to the sweetest part at the end, you
actually get to the most hateful break actual. But see,
(26:05):
I have a theory about her based entirely on just
my own conjecture, which is that she turned down all
of these men she never married, even long after the
Duke was deceased and clearly not going to be an
option years. I think in her head she was writing
what she thought was going to be her part in history,
(26:27):
and that people would see her as this icon of devotion,
like they would be like she waited for him her
whole life and beyond, she loved him so much, Like
I think in her head that's how the story was
going to play out, and so yeah, to her, that
would have been like the coda. Perhaps recognizing it was
(26:50):
not going to happen, she made herself sort of a
love martyr in her own mind, strictly my theory to
tag each of our episodes, and that's Love Martyr. Love
Martyr would also be a good name for a drink,
but since that's the made up part in my head, um,
(27:11):
and we do know there were suggestive letters, that's why
I picked that. So I will say this. It is
a very delightful and refreshing little sipper. You know, you
can have a couple and it. It does sort of
taste like that wonderful sensation of falling in love because
it's bubbly and it's sweet, but it's soft and yummy.
It's good. Champagne is a great thing to experiment with.
(27:32):
If you like it, mix a little bit of anything
else with it, you get really interesting things. I'd like
to mix a little fireball with champagne. You get something
I never even thought about. That his whole show, and
that's what blows my right, not any of the other
crazy concoction. You can put whiskey and champagne together and
(27:56):
get a whole new thing. Um, but fireball, Oh my right, fireball.
I have also seen people do like a New Year's
Eve champagne cocktail with gold Schlagger, which is a similar flavor. Um.
And it also has that fancy bonus of having gold
flakes in it. Gold right, Yeah, got a bottle of
(28:16):
champagne and some passion fruit liqueur. You're all set. You
can become lady, so I guess you can fancy yourself.
I love Martyr, Please don't be more he martyr. Thank
you again, though, for spending this time with us. We
love sharing these stories with you, and are wacky cocktails
(28:38):
connected to them? I love that Maria still looks slightly
shocked thinking about whiskey and champagne together, like two things
that I've never mixed. I love whiskey, fireball Know. Criminalia
(29:03):
is a production of Shonda land Audio in partnership with
I heart Radio. For more podcasts from Shonda land Audio,
please visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Welcome to Criminalia, a production of Shonda Land Audio in
partnership with I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the
second season of Criminalia. This season, we are exploring the
lives and motivations of some of the most notorious stalkers
throughout history. I'm Maria Tremarqui and I'm Holly Fry and
(00:25):
today we are going to meet a woman named Lady
Georgiana Fame. She was an English heiress who is known
for basically two things. One for a portrait that was
painted of her when she was about five years old
and dressed as a peasant girl, and two for stalking
Arthur Wellesley, who is better known as the Duke of
(00:46):
Wellington and a hero of Waterloo. So the Duke was
once quoted as saying, the only thing I'm afraid of
his fear. And that's a worthy quote for a general
If that sentiment sounds familiar, though, um there's a more
aim is modern iteration of it, echoed by our President
Franklin D. Roosevelt in his inaugural address, and he said,
(01:08):
the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
And frankly, I think Thorow Wrose something like that as well.
This is a statement that kind of gets floated around
a bit. Yeah. Well, and I think people quoted all
the time without even thinking about attribution one way or another.
I think so too, absolutely. Um but okay, so going
back to Wellington for a second, after meeting Georgiana, he
might have reconsidered what he was afraid of, because there
(01:31):
is quite a story here, right, So for some context
on who she was. Georgiana Faine was born Lady Cecily
Jane Georgiana Fayne in eighteen o one, and at the time,
nineteenth century England was going through a period of rapid
economic development due to the Industrial Revolution sometimes it's also
(01:52):
called the First Industrial Revolution. As part of the upper
class or aristocracy, Georgiana's family held powerful position and that
gave them a lot of authority over others. That gave
them better living conditions and better facilities over just the
rest of the population. Right and and many of them,
perhaps not really surprisingly did not work. Instead, they often
(02:14):
made investments to create profits for themselves. Um. Some were
landowners who hired lower class workers to work for them.
But even for the aristocracy, it wasn't all money in
games for everyone. This was also a time where women
could not vote, no matter who they were or what
part of society they came from. There were certainly no
(02:35):
women in parliament, and the ideal woman of the time was,
and we quote, the angel in the house and her
role as a wife should be to support her husband. Yeah. Yeah,
it's not not a ton of agency for most women
a lot of a lot of times, even women who
(02:55):
were very educated. The idea was that their education would
allow to entertain their husband's play the piano from your husband, right,
not so much about actually having creative fulfillment or or career. Yes,
exactly right. So Georgiana, as we said, grew up in
(03:17):
a very moneyed aristocratic family. Her father, John Fayne, also
known as Lord Westmoreland, was a British Tory politician who
served in most of the cabinets of the period. John
Fame was married twice. His first marriage was an elopement
because the bride's wealthy father forbid the match. That was
to Sarah and child, and they had a son and
(03:37):
four daughters, and they seemed to have lived, at least
on the outside, uh, from the outside perspective, pretty happily
until Sarah unfortunately died of an undisclosed condition, and she
was only twenty nine at the time. Yeah, so John
John married again, um, and his marriage took place in
eighteen hundred and he and his wife Jane had three
sons and two daughters before they separated, and their eldest
(04:00):
wild with Georgiana. So I want to talk about this
portrait that she's famous for, Yes, the five year old.
It is fascinating and it is, as we said, of
a very young Georgiana. It is said that her mother
was very likely the driving force behind it all. So
you want to think of this kind of like she
(04:21):
was the stage mother, except it was for portraiture rather
than pushing her into a commercial. And this is kind
of a good example of the kind of decadent life
in high society that Georgiana was raised in. Though this famous,
famous portrait was painted in eighteen o six while the
artist Sir Thomas Lawrence was also busy working on two
portraits of her father. The why not combined the hours, right,
(04:44):
just keep it in the family. So this portrait, you
can see it easily online if you google Georgiana. You
can see she's very young. Um, she appears barefoot, she's
dressed in tattered clothing, and she's she's against kind of
a rugged backdrop, and the unusual landscape and choice of
clothes were said to reflect the new spirit of the
Romantic era. And and that's the era that peaked between
(05:07):
about eighteen hundred and like, let's call it eighteen fifty,
so it's the prime of her life. She's born in
eighteen oh one, right, so this is what she knews
and Romanticism it was a literary and artistic movement, and
you might be familiar with some of the writers of
the period, including William Wordsworth and Lord Byron. It was
a time when the emphasis was on individualism and emotion,
(05:30):
and when intellectuals and artists were challenging society. So naturally
it was the time for a five year old heiress
to address in rags. So if that sounds like kind
of a weird classism flip of appropriating imagery of poverty
and strife to appear enlightened, you are correct. That's exactly
(05:51):
what it was. It was also really common for portraits
to feature the subject as a well known figure from
mythology or fables, and this sort of served as a
to project them as having the qualities of various noble
heroes and gods. Again to give people who really probably
had not experienced a lot of strife that would lead
(06:11):
to personal growth in their life, but to give them
an association of enlightenment and goodness. You mean, it's not
easy to become enlightened. You just need a portrait. You
just need a pretty painting of yourself dressed in a
kind of a tattered dress, pattered rags, enlightened Moses. So
I meaned, do a little side note on our portraiture
(06:32):
and talk a little bit about the artist. So the artist,
as Holly sid was Sir Thomas Lawrence, and he was
self taught. He was a child prodigy who gained prominence
in England as a master portraitist. He became so well
known that he was actually um a touch point for
just about all members of the British upper class at
this time. For example, he painted well known portrait of
(06:55):
Lady Caroline Lamb, who we've talked about previously. His painting
of the young Georgiana is still considered a prime example
of Romantic portraiture and the trend of placing subjects in
scenarios and rules much different from their actual lives. Yes,
Sir Thomas Lawrence is interesting because if you just start
to look at the portraits he painted, he's basically done
(07:18):
imagery of every famous person from history that was in
high society in England at the time. He kind of
becomes one of those historical nexus points because he knew
everyone that you might talk to you that was connected
to everyone else. So now that we are done with
our indulgence in our art history lesson, this is a
(07:38):
really good time for a break because when we return,
we're going to talk about who the Duke of Wellington was.
Welcome back to Criminalia. Let's talk about the victim, the
(08:00):
Duke and how he met Lady Fayne. So until his
early twenties, Arthur, as the Duke of Wellington was known then,
showed no apparent aptitude for anything academic or otherwise. Arthur.
One of the things that came up in research was
it the only thing that he really showed any promise
in was violin playing. But that also wasn't something that
(08:23):
he pursued to the point that it would become a
profession or a level of mastery. He was, by all accounts,
a fairly unhappy and lonely boy. People considered him kind
of lazy and awkward, and in fact, he displayed none
of the talents that would manifest later in his life.
He was just a late bloomer, absolutely right. I mean
(08:43):
think about it, like, he's a thirteen year old boy.
He sometimes plays a violin. You know, he don't see
him growing up to be a general. Maybe you like
he will lead people into successful battles. And his mom. So,
his mom actually grew increasingly concerned about his laziness, and
she is known to have stated on more than one
occasion and will quote this, I don't know what I
(09:06):
shall do with my awkward son Arthur. So oh mom like,
uh so it sounds like his mother never also would
have guessed that Arthur would grow up to be the
Duke of Wellington, the general who defeated Napoleon at the
Battle of Waterloo. But um that victory that he had
as an adult helped shape modern Europe. But no one
(09:29):
would have expected such influential achievements from the young Arthur.
And during his life he was called yes Arthur, but
as he grew up, he was also referred to with
a variety of other rather colorful monikers. We don't even
have all of them listed. This is just a matter why.
So he was sometimes called the Iron Duke, the less
(09:51):
flattering old Nosy, the bow, the Eagle, the world's conquer
he wanted that one on a shirt that's big yeah.
And Maria's favorite of the ones she found the beef,
the beef. I'm gonna go have drinks with the beef later.
(10:13):
How could you not love him? Right? So that last
one is more amusing than true. We don't know for
sure that anyone casually would have referred to him as
the Beef. We know that chefs argue about whether or
not it was named after him, the Beef Wellington, But
I don't think you really called him beef. Listen, Beef,
come on, beef. We will not get into the fact
(10:36):
that he is often also confused with the composer Duke Ellington,
not the same person at all, but for our purposes
we're just gonna prefer to call him the Duke. So
we know that the Duke of Wellington became a national
hero when he defeated Napoleon and that ended the Napoleonic Wars.
Waterloo was actually the last battle for both of those men.
(10:58):
The Duke's military chiefments even prior to that famed conflict
earned him knighthood in eighteen o five. So um for
time frame reference here, Georgiano was still just a really
little kid when he was getting that honor. In his
lengthy military career, he won something like thirty two to
sixty major battles. The sources tend to disagree on which
(11:22):
number of that is true, but they don't disagree on this.
He was never defeated, and after Napoleon was exiled in
eighteen fourteen, the Duke served was the ambassador to France,
and that is where he was given his duke title.
So the Duke was also something of a ladies man,
both romantically and just as good company. He was like
(11:44):
a gent that women like to hang out with. He
was said to have had a we quote vigorous sexual
appetite outside of his marriage for many decades, and in particular,
he really liked smart women who are also easy on
the eye. No one now or then is surprised that
the British lampooned him for it, because it doesn't sound
(12:05):
like he was terribly careful about it. I think he
was candid. I've never got that failing that he had.
He had many affairs. It was Georgiana, Lady Georgiana Faint,
who was his most persistent female admirer. The two first
met in Paris actually, and they danced at a ball
after his victory at Waterloo, and this was in eighteen fifteen,
(12:29):
so that would put her at fourteen and him at
forty six maybe seven. Um. During her twenties and thirties,
their relationship did become romantic in nature. And this would
be a romantic relationship that went on to haunt him
for literally the rest of his life. Um. Having a
little foreshadowing here, right, right, So just not to take
(12:52):
away from the fact that he was, you know, a roving,
roving gent when he met Joanna when she was still
a teenager. That was not a romantic involvement. It was
it might have been for her an imprinting experience, but
he wasn't. He wasn't like skeeving on a teenager at
that point. He waited till she was twenty, right, which
(13:15):
has its own weird stuff. There's. Yeah. So the Duke
of Wellington did become fond of his young aristocratic admirer,
and despite his marriage, as Maria said, their friendship developed
into romance and the two began to exchange letters. Suggestive
letters from Wellington to Georgiana still exists today that confirmed
(13:39):
that the two did have a sexual relationship in the
eighteen twenties. So the Duke's wife. The Duke's wife was
named Kitty, and she passed away in eighteen thirty. And
when that happened, Georgiana and several other good handful of
other high society women really stepped up their game in
regard to their interest in the Duke, all doting on
(14:00):
him and hoping to become his new wife. And so
when Georgiana was rebuffed by him, she refused to accept
this rejection, and instead of walking away and moving on
with her life, she instead harassed him. And like I
said earlier, actually until the day he died. It's interesting
to note, right, like we should remember when we talk
(14:23):
about how coveted he was as a widower, Like, remember,
this is a hero of the country, he's a war hero,
had a way with women, so like it's not surprising
that immediately everyone was like, I would like to become
the next Mrs Wellington, thank you. And it is it
(14:45):
is said in Georgiana's case that like her mother, she
had what was often called and we quote, a lively disposition,
but she was also described throughout her life as being
really quite highly strung and we quote again, possibly to
the ping of neurosis. She was often described as being
chronically ill because of this, and it was believed that
(15:05):
her disposition was quote almost entirely nervous. So you could
see where someone with that disposition might fixate on someone
who danced with them when they were fourteen. Yeah, So, okay,
we're gonna take a quick sponsor break, and when we return,
we will talk about how Georgiana's letters started to turn
(15:26):
a little more hateful. Welcome back to Criminalia. Let's talk
next about how the duke begged Georgiana's mother to help him.
(15:49):
So it might be easy to imagine Georgiana as a
lonely girl who became fixated on the only man who
ever paid attention to her, and that would fall right
in line with a lot of the fig story you
might see about stalkers on TV or in the movies.
But when it comes to Georgiana, it doesn't actually hold
true at all. No, it was not as though she
(16:10):
was not receiving attention from other men, and in fact,
marriage proposals from other men. Henry John Temple, also known
as Lord Palmerston, for instance, proposed to Georgiana twice, but
she turned him down twice. We we do not We
do not know for sure why, aside of course, from
(16:31):
her obsession with the Duke. But there is another spanner
in the works because we know that Henry was also
having an affair with her married half sister, the Countess
of Jersey at the time. Obviously there's a lot of
intrigue going on, so you could draw your own conclusions.
The course of true love never did run smooth, if
we was borrow from Shakespeare, and seems especially the case
(16:56):
in this particular social circle. It does, it really knows,
seemed to work well for these this group. Um So,
by the mid eighteen thirties, Georgiana had begun to make
life big, big misery for the Duke. He had grown
uncomfortable with the tone of her letters, and they were
becoming increasingly persistent about their relationship. She also frequently waited
(17:21):
for him to come out of church service, and wasn't
above making a scene about how all she wanted from
him was the kindness she believed he refused to give her.
The more the Duke turned away from her, the more
Georgiana's affections began to turn into hate, and she began
to bombard him with bitter and abusive letters and her correspondence,
(17:42):
which interestingly enough, was all written in the third person.
I agree that I thought that that was odd, continued, Uh,
it was. And it wasn't just about unwanted letters though.
So Georgiana was just sending letters, but she was doing
a lot of things in them that we're very troubling.
She threatened that she was going to sue the Duke
(18:04):
for breach of contract because she believed that he had
promised in his letters that he was going to marry her,
and then, of course he did not do so. She
also threatened to publish the love letters that he had
written to her, which, by the moral standards at the time,
would have been an absolute national scandal. To have a
war hero's of famous war heroes letters to the various
(18:26):
women that he had romantic entanglements with would have been
just Many pearls would have been clutched, and many main
jing couches would have been called for smelling thoughts bring
them please um. The Duke, though, actually was no stranger
to threats regarding his romantic affairs. For instance, in eight
(18:49):
he had another affair and it came back to haunt him,
and he received a letter from a man named John
Joseph Stockdale. And John Joseph Stockdale was a publisher who
was offering to refrain from releasing the racy memoirs of
one of the Duke's mistresses, a woman named Harriet Wilson,
and he said he would do it in exchange for money.
(19:09):
So we might just consider that Mr Stockdale was trying
to blackmail the Duke at his point. But the Duke,
it's rumored, replied, um, and his quote is published, and
be damned. So we did come across a minority among
historians who don't believe that he wrote such a thing
at all. But um, there is the side that who
believes that he did. And I like to think that
(19:31):
the Iron Duke did write that. Yeah, he may have
thought his reputation was above tarnish at that point, But
we are lucky enough that one of the Duke's letters
still exist today. This letter was written in October of
eighteen fifty one, so make note that at this point
the Duke was eighty two years old, and that letter
(19:52):
was discovered in two thousand two at Fullback Hall, which
was the Fame families home for more than four hundred years.
But this let it was not to Georgiana. It was
in fact to her mother, begging her to please put
an end to her daughter's obsession and the unwelcome correspondence
that she kept sending the Duke. Wow. This letter opened
(20:12):
with my dear Madam, and then it went on for
four pages, but it starts with I have long had
it in contemplation to appeal to your ladyship and to
request your ladyship's interference with your daughter. Lady Georgiana fame
to prevail upon her ladyship to cease to molest me
with daily vituperative letters. Wow. So he He also addressed
(20:40):
the alleged breach of contract in regard to marriage and
quote said you have been misinformed. There is nothing of
the nature of a misunderstanding. He described Georgiana's actions as
extraordinary and went on to say that she we quote
betrayed such lack of had faith that it was impossible
(21:01):
for him to continue any acquaintance. But see there was
the problem of the letters that she was sending, which
we've talked a lot about, but there was another problem here.
She had begun showing his romantic letters to other people, right,
which he had written years before. At this point, let's go,
you know, forty years, so not long after contacting Georgian
(21:27):
his mother. I think it puts it in about thirty thirty, right,
because it was in the twenties, and this was the
fifties when he this is the fifth about thirty years,
so not long after contacting Georgian his mother, which was
on September fourteenth, eighteen fifty two, the Duke actually died.
He was eighty three at the time, and this followed
an incident where he had a stroke. And he should
(21:48):
be remembered for more than the two things we talked about. Right.
We'd imagined that he was the general who won at
Waterloo and that he was a notorious womanizer, but he
was a lot of other things. As we said, long
before Waterloo, he was being honored for his achievements. Also
later in his career, the Duke went on to become
the leader of the Tory Party and during his time
(22:08):
as Prime Minister, which ran from eight to eighteen thirty
and then again in eighteen thirty four, he not only
shepherded an important, although controversial act that allowed Catholic emancipation
in Britain, he was also the one who planted the
seed that slowly moved the country toward democracy. In two
thousand two, he was actually ranked number fifteen in the
(22:30):
BBC's poll of the one Greatest Britons. There are two
things about him actually that I found when I was
doing my research that actually really had nothing to do
with being stalked, had to do with him and what
he was like in his life. And one of these
instances was about how he really liked to just go
to the pub and drink with his friends and laugh
(22:51):
and tell jokes and be rowdy until life early in
the morning. And the second piece about him that I
thought was really interesting was that he had a penchant
for wearing white trousers with a cocked hat, and that
was kind of his his style. And I just thought
you could see him coming down the street like you
knew the Duke of Rollington was there, between his laugh
(23:12):
and his pants style. I love it. So that's the
end of the Duke's life. But let's talk a little
bit more about Georgiana because she did live for twenty
two years after the Duke died, and she lived with
her mother, the Countess, for the entire time, and she
never actually married. When her mother passed away in March
(23:34):
of eighteen fifty seven, Georgiana lived on as the sole
mistress of their home Brenton for another twelve years or
so UM. When she died in December of eighteen seventy four,
the value of her assets came to be just under
eighteen million pounds at today's value. It's always a little
rough to estimate between the nineteenth century and the twenty
(23:56):
fe century, but let's be able to say about eighteen
million pounds um. But the estate she left her estate
to her nephew, the Honorable Spencer Ponsonby. It was heavily indebted,
but it was his. So I don't want to forget
about the portrait, because there's still the portrait. At the
end of her life, she had it and she willed
(24:17):
it to the National Collection. And while it's not on
display currently, it is in existence, and I believe does
go on display from time to time. It's also famous
enough that princes of it have been on display in
other museums and the prints are considered very valuable as well. Yes, yes,
and like I said earlier, you can pull it up
so easily. All the museums have it online. You know,
(24:39):
we can't go to museums right now, so just look
to praise the museums that have put their collections online.
It's the best. You have a pretend visits. Pretend you
can have a pretend visit while you drink this drink
that Hollidy is about to tell us about, so today's chaser.
The context for it is that I was thinking about
(25:01):
what a very young woman might think would seem cultured
and cool to an older man, and I like it
and would also kind of appeal to her own taste.
And it's a very very simple drink, but would kind
of represent what she thought was a really romantic, sexy
(25:21):
kind of drink. Um. It is called suggestive letters. It's
the simplest thing to put together. It's literally just an
ounce of passion fruit liqueur oh, which you can put
in a flute or a coupe. I feel like a
flute works for this because next you're just going to
top it off with like four to five ounces of champagne.
(25:43):
You can give it a quick stir, you can let
it kind of mixes you drink, so you get to
the sweetest part at the end. But to me, I
could just imagine her making this and thinking she was
the fanciest lady. I'm gonna super impress this dude. I
think it's funny that there's a drink for her that
you get to the sweetest part at the end, you
actually get to the most hateful break actual. But see,
(26:05):
I have a theory about her based entirely on just
my own conjecture, which is that she turned down all
of these men she never married, even long after the
Duke was deceased and clearly not going to be an
option years. I think in her head she was writing
what she thought was going to be her part in history,
(26:27):
and that people would see her as this icon of devotion,
like they would be like she waited for him her
whole life and beyond, she loved him so much, Like
I think in her head that's how the story was
going to play out, and so yeah, to her, that
would have been like the coda. Perhaps recognizing it was
(26:50):
not going to happen, she made herself sort of a
love martyr in her own mind, strictly my theory to
tag each of our episodes, and that's Love Martyr. Love
Martyr would also be a good name for a drink,
but since that's the made up part in my head, um,
(27:11):
and we do know there were suggestive letters, that's why
I picked that. So I will say this. It is
a very delightful and refreshing little sipper. You know, you
can have a couple and it. It does sort of
taste like that wonderful sensation of falling in love because
it's bubbly and it's sweet, but it's soft and yummy.
It's good. Champagne is a great thing to experiment with.
(27:32):
If you like it, mix a little bit of anything
else with it, you get really interesting things. I'd like
to mix a little fireball with champagne. You get something
I never even thought about. That his whole show, and
that's what blows my right, not any of the other
crazy concoction. You can put whiskey and champagne together and
(27:56):
get a whole new thing. Um, but fireball, Oh my right, fireball.
I have also seen people do like a New Year's
Eve champagne cocktail with gold Schlagger, which is a similar flavor. Um.
And it also has that fancy bonus of having gold
flakes in it. Gold right, Yeah, got a bottle of
(28:16):
champagne and some passion fruit liqueur. You're all set. You
can become lady, so I guess you can fancy yourself.
I love Martyr, Please don't be more he martyr. Thank
you again, though, for spending this time with us. We
love sharing these stories with you, and are wacky cocktails
(28:38):
connected to them? I love that Maria still looks slightly
shocked thinking about whiskey and champagne together, like two things
that I've never mixed. I love whiskey, fireball Know. Criminalia
(29:03):
is a production of Shonda land Audio in partnership with
I heart Radio. For more podcasts from Shonda land Audio,
please visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Maria Trimarchi
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