September 13, 2022 • 28 mins
After Georgiana Cavendish gave her husband an heir, she was free to pursue extramarital lovers. But her affair with Charles Grey would leave her forced to give birth in France while a revolution raged, terrified, and writing letters in her own blood.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Noble Blood, A production of I Heart Radio
and Grim and Mild from Aaron Mankie listener discretion advised.
(00:21):
In February seventeen ninety two, reclined in a bed somewhere
on the outskirts of Montpellier, France, Georgiana Cavendish lifted a
shaking hand to dip her quill into the well of
Crimson Ink at her bedside. Quote. As soon as you
are old enough to understand this letter, it will be
given to you, she wrote to her infant son. It
(00:44):
contains the only present I can make you, my blessing
written in my blood. At thirty four years of age,
fearing her death, the Duchess of Devonshire wrote to her
children overseas in the hopes that these words, written in
what would be the only lasting piece of her living form,
(01:04):
would be some comfort to them. Quote. One of my
greatest pains in dying is not to see you again,
she wrote to her elder daughter. I die, my dearest child,
with the most unfeigned repentance for my many errors. As
her hands gripped desperately onto what she believed would be
her last words to her children, it's difficult to say
(01:27):
exactly which of her many errors Georgiana was referring to.
On the surface, it seems obvious that she might be
speaking of her thousands upon thousands of pounds and gambling debt,
especially when she later advised in her letter to quote
learned to be exact about expense. But if you were
there with Georgiana that day, if you were watching her
(01:50):
fill the pages with her parting thoughts, it would have
been impossible for you to ignore the significant swell of
her belly protruding from her otherwise slight frame, a belly
which alludes to one particular error, the one that had
put her there in a stranger's home in the French countryside,
(02:11):
days away from giving birth. But is that right? Had
it been an error to have followed her heart, to
have fallen in love, to wish more than anything that
she could keep this child that she was about to
give birth to. Perhaps her only errors lied in the
circumstances outside of her control, the decisions she was being
(02:33):
forced to make in order to keep her three other
children with a mother in their lives. Days later, despite
the difficult pregnancy, Georgiana would survive the birth of her daughter,
though she would never be able to claim her as such.
Barely hours after entering the world, the newborn infant Eliza Courtney,
(02:54):
was ripped from her mother's arms to live with her
paternal grandparents in Northumberland into England. The birth may have
spared Georgiana's life, but the unspeakable pain she felt watching
her daughter be taken away would, along with the combined
weight of the rest of her life's many errors, threatened
to sink her into an even deeper oblivion than the
(03:17):
death that she had so feared. I'm Dana Schwartz and
this is noble blood. Two years earlier, on a much
happier morning in May, the deafening cry of a newborn
(03:39):
child was celebrated with the wet smiles and warm embraces
of a family brimming with equal parts joy and relief.
At long last, the Duke and Duchess had finally been
blessed with their Devonshire air. The newborn Marquess of Hardington,
or Heart, as he was affectionately called, was the product
(03:59):
of nearly sixteen years of fertility struggles and marital turmoil
that had at long last settled into an, if not healthy,
at least semi functional arrangement. In the years since the
Duke and Duchess's temporary separation, Georgiana's uncontrollable gambling continued to
escalate her debts. Only then, following the Duke's threat of
(04:23):
separation and her best friend Bess's suspicious lack of support,
did Georgiana become determined to change her ways, or short
of that, she at least swore to stop withholding the
details of her debt from her best friend Best That
was what Georgiana had assumed had angered Best anyway, not
that Bess had a desire to see Georgana gone so
(04:47):
that she herself could become the duchess. Best or Lady
Elizabeth Foster, for those who need a quick refresher, was
the half genuine, half social climbing best friend of Georgiana, who,
after being invited to live with the couple in London,
later became Georgana's husband. The Duke's mistress. Without a doubt,
(05:07):
Best stood to gain quite a bit had her friend
no longer been the Duchess, But the drawbacks of driving
Georgana from her own home while she was supposed to
be her closest friend ultimately forced her to accept her
lot in life as the Devonshire's token third wheel. Though,
following the arrival of their long awaited air, Bess and
(05:30):
Georgiana's relationship became stronger than it had ever been. With
the Devonshire's marital future secured, the physical responsibilities of Georgiana's
marriage had been fulfilled, which meant that Best no longer
had to share the Duke with his wife, and so
when Georgiana began to express interest in a man other
than her husband, Best certainly had no reason to object.
(05:53):
The man in question was the young, passionate, up and
coming Wig politician Charles Gray. Where the Duke was distant
and emotionally unavailable, Gray was bold and romantic, with an
inherent flare for drama. The two had met through their
joint work for the Whig Party, but it quickly became
clear that Gray's passion wasn't just limited to politics. From
(06:19):
causing scenes at Devonshire House circle parties to quote unquote
secret rendezvous in Bath, the pair couldn't have been less
discreet if one of Georgiana's legendary Whigs had had a
neon sign attached flashing the words where having an affair
above her head As they paraded across London. The more
London talked, the more Georgana's friend tried to persuade her
(06:42):
to be at least less conspicuous about her newfound love. Bess,
who had initially supported the affair, feared the Duke's inevitable
retaliation at seeing his wife plastered across the London tabloids.
Even the playwright Richard Sheridan, who wrote The School for Scandal,
the play from the beginning of last week's episode based
(07:04):
loosely on the Duchess's life, wrote to her begging her
to see reason now. The very fact that the man
who wrote an entire play scandalizing Georgiana's life was urging
her to use discretion should have been enough of a
red flag, But Georgiana was well past the point of
listening to reason. Unlike the early years of her marriage,
(07:25):
when she had bent over backwards in an attempt to
get the Duke to simply look at her for the
first time in her life, Georgiana was not just romantically loved,
but chased as popular and universally loved as she was
by the Devonshire House circle. None of it compared to
the singular romantic attention that she received from Charles Gray.
(07:48):
His bold declarations of love appealed to the romantic in Georgiana,
who had been forced to tamper down her expectations of
happily ever afters early on in her marriage. Of course,
just as Georgiana was settling into her whirlwind fairytale romance,
the universe had already set planned into motion to bring
(08:08):
her back to reality. By the end of summer se
she could no longer ignore the familiar changes her body
began to take on, nor the inevitable repercussions that such
changes were going to bring. After so many years of
fertility issues and desperate prayers for a healthy child, against
(08:29):
all odds, that Duchess was pregnant once again. In the
early months, Georgiana was able to keep the physical signs
of her pregnancy relatively hidden under the guise of helping
her sister, who had fallen ill and been sent to
Cornwall to convalesce. Georgiana was able to carry her secret
for six months before word of her condition began to spread.
(08:53):
Of course, rather than simply coming clean and telling her
husband the truth, Similarly to how she handled her game
billing debts, the Duchess chose to keep the truth from
her husband until the day it would inevitably come knocking
on their door. Only when the Duke finally received word
that it was of the utmost importance to see his
(09:14):
wife with his own eyes did he not knock on
her door so much as kick it down. The Duke
took one look at Georgiana, more than six months pregnant
at this point, and dragged her into the next room,
locking the door behind them, not that the walls could
do much to block out the volume of the Duke's
rage or of Georgiana's responding cries. In the end, the
(09:38):
Duke gave his wife an ultimatum. Either end her affair
with Gray and put their forthcoming child up for adoption,
or he would divorce her and refuse to let her
see their three children ever again. It was an impossible choice,
but one that she made without pause. Even if the
entirety of her decision hinged on the Duke keeping his word.
(10:01):
She could never live without her three children. By the
time the Duke departed from Cornwall, it had been decided
Georgiana would be sent abroad to France as soon as possible,
presumably to come back once the child had been born
and sent away, and so with nothing but the weight
of her impending heartbreak and the future of her unborn
(10:22):
child on her mind, Georgiana packed her bags and set
forth to meet her uncertain fate. It's at this point
I think it's important to remind you exactly what was
happening in France in the early seventeen nineties. If you
(10:44):
were a long time listener, you may remember the very
first Noble Blood episode was on none other than Marie Antoinette,
the queen whose decapitated head became the symbol of the
French Revolution. Well coincidentally, she and Georgiana had grown to
be quite good friends, both able to commiserate over their
overbearing mothers and lackluster husbands, but considering the general French populace,
(11:11):
agreed that they wanted to see Marie Antoinette's head in
a blood straw lined basket. Being her friend, or being
associated with French nobility at all, was about the last
thing you would want to do in seventeen nineties France,
Which brings us to a residence on the outskirts of Montpellier,
days before Georgiana was due to give birth to her
(11:32):
fourth child. With the comforts of home and her family
physicians across the English Channel. The precarious ground on which
the French monarchy stood only added to the Duchess's paranoia
as to the likelihood of her impending death. In addition
to the blood inked letters she wrote to her children,
Georgiana penned a new will dated January and took out
(11:58):
a life insurance policy on herself for about a thousand pounds. Comparatively,
the thousand pounds was a pittance in the grand scheme
of what she owed to her various creditors across Great Britain,
but the intention of her gesture was clear. She may
have had no control over when or even if she
would be able to return to see her children again,
(12:18):
but she wanted to make sure they would be taken
care of regardless of what happened to her. Perhaps Georgiana's
only saving grace in her forced exile were the people
that had chosen to accompany her, along with her mother
and her sister, to the Duke and the rest of
London Society's surprise, Bess had agreed to join Georgana's party abroad.
(12:39):
When he had initially made his ultimatum the Duke had
expected Georgiana to agree to his terms and her affair
and have the child abroad. He had not expected his
mistress to voluntarily choose to abandon him, albeit temporarily, to
go with his exiled wife to war torn France. After all,
now that the Duke had proof of the Duchess's infidelity,
(13:01):
Bess's role in Devonshire House suddenly had new potential. Should
he go back on his word and choose to divorce Georgiana,
he'd technically be in his right to do so, meaning
Bess would naturally be next in line to become Duchess.
But what the Duke hadn't taken into account was that
this wasn't the first time he had sent a woman
in Devonshire House abroad to have their illegitimate child. Bess
(13:25):
knew how it felt. In fact, over the course of
their nearly decade long affair, the Duke had sent Bess
abroad to have not one but two of his illegitimate children,
subsequently forcing her to hand each of them off to
a foster family so she could come back to London
child free. But now that Georgiana was to be forced
(13:46):
to endure the same fate, best saw an opportunity to
bring her children back into her life, and if Georgiana
and Bess had anything in common other than their relationship
to the Duke, it was their determination to sure the
well being of their children. So when the rest of
Georgiana's family moved on to Nice for the sake of
(14:08):
Georgiana's sister's health, Bess and her six year old daughter,
Caroline St. Jules stayed behind with Georgiana in Montpellier, and
on February twenty, seventeen ninety two, with Bess at her side,
Georgiana gave birth to her daughter, Elizabeth Courtney. In a
poem by Georgiana dated just days after Eliza's birth, she
(14:30):
wrote to her daughter, quote and should then generous world
upbraid thee for mine and for thy father's ill. A
nameless mother offt shall asiste a hand unseen protect thee.
Still it's obvious the loss of her newborn daughter was devastating,
but the words she left for Eliza in the poem
(14:50):
suggests she hadn't given up hope as to the possibility
of influencing her daughter's life from afar, and while there's
no substantial evidence to prove it, I like to think
that despite their somewhat tumultuous relationship, having Best there to
support her, not just as her close friend, but as
another woman who had been forced to give away her
(15:10):
child because of the Duke, was at least a small
comfort to Georgiana, especially with Caroline Saint Jules at Bess's side,
even though the child was technically the living proof of
Bess's and her husband's infidelity. Seeing Bess and her daughter
reunited after so many years apart likely gave Georgiana some
(15:32):
semblance of hope in the bleak days following the loss
of her own daughter. But soon days turned into weeks,
and apart from dealing with her considerable grief, Georgiana's days
were spent doing one thing and one thing, only waiting
to hear word from the Duke. By the time Georgana
and Bess had caught up with the rest of their
(15:53):
party in Niece, there was still no word. It became
obvious that ultimatum or not, the Duke was not going
to let Georgiana return to England so easily. Finally, in April,
the Duke wrote to Georgiana, making himself perfectly clear Beth
could come home, but she Georgiana was to stay abroad
(16:14):
until he deemed her worthy of returning. Just when she
had begun to grow accustomed to the well of grief
that had permanently taken resident in her chest, a new
wave of heartbreak threatened to overtake her entirely. As the
repercussions of the Duke's message settled in quote, Oh, my
dear child, Georgiana wrote in a letter to her eldest daughter,
(16:37):
I can only assure you that your love and the
hopes that you will not forget me, is the comfort
of my life now that I am absent from you.
When I am to return is now very uncertain. I
hope it will be soon, as I do not feel
I have strength to bear so long in absence. In
her desperation to see her children again, the Duchess pleaded
(16:58):
with her husband to let her and Best visit, even
for just a month in secret, but the Duke refused.
Even Georgana's sister Harriet, noticed the despondent turn her sister
had taken, writing in a letter to a mutual friend,
quote he never writes to her, and seldom to Best.
And the last letter was in so harsh a style
(17:20):
that I have little hopes of good. Even though the
Duke had invited Best to return to Devonshire House in London,
it didn't take her long to realize that his irritation
didn't solely lie with his wife. Going back so far
as when the Duke discovered Georgiana's pregnancy back in Cornwall,
the Duke had been furious that Bess had kept such
(17:41):
a monumental secret from him for so long. Add to
that the fact that she had chosen to accompany his
wife to France and had taken back their illegitimate child
with her to France, and Bess was suddenly vying for
the title of most vexing woman in Devonshire House. Still,
the Duke invited her back, but it was clear to
(18:03):
even those without the intimate knowledge of what went on
in the Devonshire Managatois that the Duke was doing so
not out of his love for Best, but in an
effort to further isolate Georgiana. Ultimately, his efforts would be
for not. Bess had solidified her place at Georgiana's side,
and there would be nothing that could threaten to take
(18:24):
her away. In the end, it would be two years
before the Duke finally wrote to invite his duchess back
to London. As soon as they received word, Georgiana and
Bess wasted no time packing their belongings and beginning the
arduous task of returning home in the midst of the
freshly overthrown French monarchy, and while watching English refugees attempt
(18:46):
to clamber aboard the small yachts she and Bess had
somehow charmed their way onto. Was no doubt traumatic the
welcome Georgiana was waiting for at Devonshire House would prove
to be something else entirely. Quote. I have seen them,
I have seen them, Georgiana wrote to her mother after
being reunited with her three children at long last. Hartington
(19:10):
is very pretty, she continued, but very cruel to me.
He will not look at me or speak to me,
though he kissed me a little at night. End quote.
The differences in her children's demeanor were just the tip
of the iceberg in terms of the changes Georgiana walked
into upon her return to London. Two years seemed to
have passed in the blink of an eye. Yet the
truth remained that two years was vastly more significant in
(19:34):
the eyes of her young children. Heart barely remembered his mother,
and after further investigation, was discovered to be almost entirely
deaf after an infection of his had been left neglected
for too long without being treated. In addition to the
fury that she felt on behalf of her children, Georgiana
was greeted with yet another betrayal, Charles Gray was engaged
(19:57):
to be married. Even if she had no tension of
rekindling her flame with Gray, the fact that she had
learned the news through the London papers and not through
Gray himself, was another bruise on Georgiana's already withering ego.
London may have still considered her their darling, but the
Duke's forced exile had taken its toll on the Duchess's
(20:18):
mental health. She was terrified to make any wrong moves
and fear that the Duke would sent her away from
her children again, which had the inverse reaction of making
her somewhat of a recluse in the initial years after
her return. This behavior only compounded after a series of
recurring migraines, which escalated into severe swelling and ultimately lost
(20:41):
a vision in her right eye. The treatments done by
the doctors to attempt to salvage her vision verged on torture,
and along with residual chronic pain, Georgiana was left with
considerable scarring across her face. Upon her return, newspapers had
expected Georgiana to come back to the town with nude fervor,
but the combined trauma of her time away and the
(21:04):
physical repercussions of her illness paralyzed her into a life
now spent indoors. For months, she refused to see visitors,
but after so much time spent in isolation, the Duchess
finally began to slowly take her life back. The children
were steadily improving now that she had returned, and though
her illness had left her with substantial vision loss and
(21:26):
scarring on the upper half of her face, the imperfections
had an oddly liberating effect on her life. In a
letter she wrote two years after her illness, she wrote, quote,
I have learned, however, to love my age and not
be ashamed of it, and my illness perhaps was a
benefit in making me relinquish at once the ridiculous trade
of an old beauty end quote. After accepting her new appearance,
(21:50):
Georgana slowly began making her way back out into the world.
She actively took part in her eldest daughter's coming out
into society, but in the final years of her life,
her most significant role would be in the political sphere.
In her absence, the Whig Party had fallen well out
of power, its main players scattered as they each attempted
(22:11):
to push their own agendas to little avail. The Duchess
would become instrumental in hosting gatherings that brought together and
solidified alliances within the Whig Party for the first time
since their unforgettable loss in seventeen eighty four. Following the
turn of the century, Georgiana's health would steadily begin to decline,
(22:32):
but she was determined to bring the Whig Party back
to its former glory. In the end, she would live
long enough to see the Whigs finally come back into
power in eighteen o six, only to succumb to a
liver abscess a few weeks later. Georgiana passed away in
the early morning hours of March eighteen o six, with
(22:54):
Bess and the Duke both at her bedside. Her sister
wrote of her passing quote, I saw it all held
her through all her struggles saw her expire, and since
have again and again kissed her cold lips, and pressed
her lifeless body to my heart, and yet I am
alive and quote. For those closest to the Duchess, it
(23:14):
seemed impossible that the world could possibly continue to spin
onwards after the loss of such a titanic presence. Even
the Duke, whose emotional bandwidth had held previously little regard
to the well being of his wife, lamented her passing.
They may have had their differences, but for better or worse,
Georgiana had been a constant presence in his life, one
(23:38):
that he found himself longing for now that it was gone.
Of course, he still had best But in the wake
of their return from France, the Duke and Bess's relationship
never fully recovered from her quote betrayal of choosing Georgiana
over him. Initially, after her death, Bess and the Duke
went their separate ways, the Duke taking his children to
(24:00):
their Chiswick house, while Bess went to stay with Georgiana's sister,
and perhaps Georgiana had worried that after her death the
Duke would cast Bess out, because, whatever the reason, even
after she was gone, Georgana made certain Best would be
taken care of. One of Georgiana's final actions was choosing
Best to be the sole guardian of all of her
(24:21):
papers and correspondence, and whether it was intentional or not,
Bess's involvement in the goings on at Devonshire House solidified
her place there, even after all of Georgiana's papers had
been sorted. The Duke, after so many years attempting to
distance himself from Bess after Georgiana's exile, now found himself
(24:41):
increasingly reliant on Bess in the wake of his wife's death. Eventually,
in eighteen o nine, three years after Georgiana's passing, Bess
and the Duke finally married, and Bess finally became the
Duchess of Devonshire. And though Bess may have finally gotten
the title, she had so long been envious of. The
(25:02):
grief that she felt the loss of her best friend
was undoubtedly genuine. In a letter to her son written
just a few months after Georgiana's death, quote, she is
so present to me, and I am so constantly occupied
by her that I feel as if she was absent
on a journey. And I catch myself saying I'll tell
her this end quote. Bess ended the letter to her
(25:24):
son with a thought, no doubt shared by all of
London as they grieved the loss of their duchess. Quote.
Georgiana was the constant charm of my life. She doubled
every joy, lessened every grief. Her society had an attraction
I never met with in any other being. Her love
for me was really passing the love of woman. End
(25:46):
quote That marks the end of our two part series
on the tragedy life of Georgiana Cavendish, the Duchess of Devonshire.
But stick around after a brief sponsor break to hear
a little bit about the legacy of Georgiana's lover, Earl Gray.
(26:18):
Charles Gray, the young romantic wig politician who won the
Duchess's heart, had not solely made it into our history
books just on his association with Georgiana Cavendish. Nor was
it because of his eventual rise to the office of
British Prime Minister. No, despite his important role in the
political sphere. Ironically, Gray's fame, his lasting fame, at least,
(26:42):
would come from perhaps the most British thing that you
can become famous for. T Following the death of his
father in eighteen oh seven, Charles inherited his father's title
Earl Gray. Yes, that Earl Gray. As is often the case,
there are conflicting theories as to the authenticity of the
ties between the Bergamot flavored black tea and the Earl.
(27:05):
Some say that the tea was given to him as
a gift by a Chinese man whose son was rescued
from drowning by one of Gray's men. The Twinings Tea
website claims that the Earl asked Richard Twining himself to
recreate the blend after quote he was presented with the
exquisite recipe by an envoy on his return from China.
(27:25):
In the end, like most of history's tall tales, the
details will likely remain lost to us. But the next
time you enjoy a cup of Earl Gray, maybe take
a moment to remember the man behind the tea or
the woman who loved him. Noble Blood is a production
(27:56):
of I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Mank.
Noble Blood is hosted by me Danishwortz. Additional writing and
researching done by Hannah Johnston, Hannah's Wick, Miura Hayward Courtney
Sunder and Laurie Goodman. The show is produced by rema
Il Kayali, with supervising producer Josh Thaine and executive producers
(28:18):
Aaron Manky, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. For more podcasts
from I Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Noble Blood, A production of I Heart Radio
and Grim and Mild from Aaron Mankie listener discretion advised.
(00:21):
In February seventeen ninety two, reclined in a bed somewhere
on the outskirts of Montpellier, France, Georgiana Cavendish lifted a
shaking hand to dip her quill into the well of
Crimson Ink at her bedside. Quote. As soon as you
are old enough to understand this letter, it will be
given to you, she wrote to her infant son. It
(00:44):
contains the only present I can make you, my blessing
written in my blood. At thirty four years of age,
fearing her death, the Duchess of Devonshire wrote to her
children overseas in the hopes that these words, written in
what would be the only lasting piece of her living form,
(01:04):
would be some comfort to them. Quote. One of my
greatest pains in dying is not to see you again,
she wrote to her elder daughter. I die, my dearest child,
with the most unfeigned repentance for my many errors. As
her hands gripped desperately onto what she believed would be
her last words to her children, it's difficult to say
(01:27):
exactly which of her many errors Georgiana was referring to.
On the surface, it seems obvious that she might be
speaking of her thousands upon thousands of pounds and gambling debt,
especially when she later advised in her letter to quote
learned to be exact about expense. But if you were
there with Georgiana that day, if you were watching her
(01:50):
fill the pages with her parting thoughts, it would have
been impossible for you to ignore the significant swell of
her belly protruding from her otherwise slight frame, a belly
which alludes to one particular error, the one that had
put her there in a stranger's home in the French countryside,
(02:11):
days away from giving birth. But is that right? Had
it been an error to have followed her heart, to
have fallen in love, to wish more than anything that
she could keep this child that she was about to
give birth to. Perhaps her only errors lied in the
circumstances outside of her control, the decisions she was being
(02:33):
forced to make in order to keep her three other
children with a mother in their lives. Days later, despite
the difficult pregnancy, Georgiana would survive the birth of her daughter,
though she would never be able to claim her as such.
Barely hours after entering the world, the newborn infant Eliza Courtney,
(02:54):
was ripped from her mother's arms to live with her
paternal grandparents in Northumberland into England. The birth may have
spared Georgiana's life, but the unspeakable pain she felt watching
her daughter be taken away would, along with the combined
weight of the rest of her life's many errors, threatened
to sink her into an even deeper oblivion than the
(03:17):
death that she had so feared. I'm Dana Schwartz and
this is noble blood. Two years earlier, on a much
happier morning in May, the deafening cry of a newborn
(03:39):
child was celebrated with the wet smiles and warm embraces
of a family brimming with equal parts joy and relief.
At long last, the Duke and Duchess had finally been
blessed with their Devonshire air. The newborn Marquess of Hardington,
or Heart, as he was affectionately called, was the product
(03:59):
of nearly sixteen years of fertility struggles and marital turmoil
that had at long last settled into an, if not healthy,
at least semi functional arrangement. In the years since the
Duke and Duchess's temporary separation, Georgiana's uncontrollable gambling continued to
escalate her debts. Only then, following the Duke's threat of
(04:23):
separation and her best friend Bess's suspicious lack of support,
did Georgiana become determined to change her ways, or short
of that, she at least swore to stop withholding the
details of her debt from her best friend Best That
was what Georgiana had assumed had angered Best anyway, not
that Bess had a desire to see Georgana gone so
(04:47):
that she herself could become the duchess. Best or Lady
Elizabeth Foster, for those who need a quick refresher, was
the half genuine, half social climbing best friend of Georgiana, who,
after being invited to live with the couple in London,
later became Georgana's husband. The Duke's mistress. Without a doubt,
(05:07):
Best stood to gain quite a bit had her friend
no longer been the Duchess, But the drawbacks of driving
Georgana from her own home while she was supposed to
be her closest friend ultimately forced her to accept her
lot in life as the Devonshire's token third wheel. Though,
following the arrival of their long awaited air, Bess and
(05:30):
Georgiana's relationship became stronger than it had ever been. With
the Devonshire's marital future secured, the physical responsibilities of Georgiana's
marriage had been fulfilled, which meant that Best no longer
had to share the Duke with his wife, and so
when Georgiana began to express interest in a man other
than her husband, Best certainly had no reason to object.
(05:53):
The man in question was the young, passionate, up and
coming Wig politician Charles Gray. Where the Duke was distant
and emotionally unavailable, Gray was bold and romantic, with an
inherent flare for drama. The two had met through their
joint work for the Whig Party, but it quickly became
clear that Gray's passion wasn't just limited to politics. From
(06:19):
causing scenes at Devonshire House circle parties to quote unquote
secret rendezvous in Bath, the pair couldn't have been less
discreet if one of Georgiana's legendary Whigs had had a
neon sign attached flashing the words where having an affair
above her head As they paraded across London. The more
London talked, the more Georgana's friend tried to persuade her
(06:42):
to be at least less conspicuous about her newfound love. Bess,
who had initially supported the affair, feared the Duke's inevitable
retaliation at seeing his wife plastered across the London tabloids.
Even the playwright Richard Sheridan, who wrote The School for Scandal,
the play from the beginning of last week's episode based
(07:04):
loosely on the Duchess's life, wrote to her begging her
to see reason now. The very fact that the man
who wrote an entire play scandalizing Georgiana's life was urging
her to use discretion should have been enough of a
red flag, But Georgiana was well past the point of
listening to reason. Unlike the early years of her marriage,
(07:25):
when she had bent over backwards in an attempt to
get the Duke to simply look at her for the
first time in her life, Georgiana was not just romantically loved,
but chased as popular and universally loved as she was
by the Devonshire House circle. None of it compared to
the singular romantic attention that she received from Charles Gray.
(07:48):
His bold declarations of love appealed to the romantic in Georgiana,
who had been forced to tamper down her expectations of
happily ever afters early on in her marriage. Of course,
just as Georgiana was settling into her whirlwind fairytale romance,
the universe had already set planned into motion to bring
(08:08):
her back to reality. By the end of summer se
she could no longer ignore the familiar changes her body
began to take on, nor the inevitable repercussions that such
changes were going to bring. After so many years of
fertility issues and desperate prayers for a healthy child, against
(08:29):
all odds, that Duchess was pregnant once again. In the
early months, Georgiana was able to keep the physical signs
of her pregnancy relatively hidden under the guise of helping
her sister, who had fallen ill and been sent to
Cornwall to convalesce. Georgiana was able to carry her secret
for six months before word of her condition began to spread.
(08:53):
Of course, rather than simply coming clean and telling her
husband the truth, Similarly to how she handled her game
billing debts, the Duchess chose to keep the truth from
her husband until the day it would inevitably come knocking
on their door. Only when the Duke finally received word
that it was of the utmost importance to see his
(09:14):
wife with his own eyes did he not knock on
her door so much as kick it down. The Duke
took one look at Georgiana, more than six months pregnant
at this point, and dragged her into the next room,
locking the door behind them, not that the walls could
do much to block out the volume of the Duke's
rage or of Georgiana's responding cries. In the end, the
(09:38):
Duke gave his wife an ultimatum. Either end her affair
with Gray and put their forthcoming child up for adoption,
or he would divorce her and refuse to let her
see their three children ever again. It was an impossible choice,
but one that she made without pause. Even if the
entirety of her decision hinged on the Duke keeping his word.
(10:01):
She could never live without her three children. By the
time the Duke departed from Cornwall, it had been decided
Georgiana would be sent abroad to France as soon as possible,
presumably to come back once the child had been born
and sent away, and so with nothing but the weight
of her impending heartbreak and the future of her unborn
(10:22):
child on her mind, Georgiana packed her bags and set
forth to meet her uncertain fate. It's at this point
I think it's important to remind you exactly what was
happening in France in the early seventeen nineties. If you
(10:44):
were a long time listener, you may remember the very
first Noble Blood episode was on none other than Marie Antoinette,
the queen whose decapitated head became the symbol of the
French Revolution. Well coincidentally, she and Georgiana had grown to
be quite good friends, both able to commiserate over their
overbearing mothers and lackluster husbands, but considering the general French populace,
(11:11):
agreed that they wanted to see Marie Antoinette's head in
a blood straw lined basket. Being her friend, or being
associated with French nobility at all, was about the last
thing you would want to do in seventeen nineties France,
Which brings us to a residence on the outskirts of Montpellier,
days before Georgiana was due to give birth to her
(11:32):
fourth child. With the comforts of home and her family
physicians across the English Channel. The precarious ground on which
the French monarchy stood only added to the Duchess's paranoia
as to the likelihood of her impending death. In addition
to the blood inked letters she wrote to her children,
Georgiana penned a new will dated January and took out
(11:58):
a life insurance policy on herself for about a thousand pounds. Comparatively,
the thousand pounds was a pittance in the grand scheme
of what she owed to her various creditors across Great Britain,
but the intention of her gesture was clear. She may
have had no control over when or even if she
would be able to return to see her children again,
(12:18):
but she wanted to make sure they would be taken
care of regardless of what happened to her. Perhaps Georgiana's
only saving grace in her forced exile were the people
that had chosen to accompany her, along with her mother
and her sister, to the Duke and the rest of
London Society's surprise, Bess had agreed to join Georgana's party abroad.
(12:39):
When he had initially made his ultimatum the Duke had
expected Georgiana to agree to his terms and her affair
and have the child abroad. He had not expected his
mistress to voluntarily choose to abandon him, albeit temporarily, to
go with his exiled wife to war torn France. After all,
now that the Duke had proof of the Duchess's infidelity,
(13:01):
Bess's role in Devonshire House suddenly had new potential. Should
he go back on his word and choose to divorce Georgiana,
he'd technically be in his right to do so, meaning
Bess would naturally be next in line to become Duchess.
But what the Duke hadn't taken into account was that
this wasn't the first time he had sent a woman
in Devonshire House abroad to have their illegitimate child. Bess
(13:25):
knew how it felt. In fact, over the course of
their nearly decade long affair, the Duke had sent Bess
abroad to have not one but two of his illegitimate children,
subsequently forcing her to hand each of them off to
a foster family so she could come back to London
child free. But now that Georgiana was to be forced
(13:46):
to endure the same fate, best saw an opportunity to
bring her children back into her life, and if Georgiana
and Bess had anything in common other than their relationship
to the Duke, it was their determination to sure the
well being of their children. So when the rest of
Georgiana's family moved on to Nice for the sake of
(14:08):
Georgiana's sister's health, Bess and her six year old daughter,
Caroline St. Jules stayed behind with Georgiana in Montpellier, and
on February twenty, seventeen ninety two, with Bess at her side,
Georgiana gave birth to her daughter, Elizabeth Courtney. In a
poem by Georgiana dated just days after Eliza's birth, she
(14:30):
wrote to her daughter, quote and should then generous world
upbraid thee for mine and for thy father's ill. A
nameless mother offt shall asiste a hand unseen protect thee.
Still it's obvious the loss of her newborn daughter was devastating,
but the words she left for Eliza in the poem
(14:50):
suggests she hadn't given up hope as to the possibility
of influencing her daughter's life from afar, and while there's
no substantial evidence to prove it, I like to think
that despite their somewhat tumultuous relationship, having Best there to
support her, not just as her close friend, but as
another woman who had been forced to give away her
(15:10):
child because of the Duke, was at least a small
comfort to Georgiana, especially with Caroline Saint Jules at Bess's side,
even though the child was technically the living proof of
Bess's and her husband's infidelity. Seeing Bess and her daughter
reunited after so many years apart likely gave Georgiana some
(15:32):
semblance of hope in the bleak days following the loss
of her own daughter. But soon days turned into weeks,
and apart from dealing with her considerable grief, Georgiana's days
were spent doing one thing and one thing, only waiting
to hear word from the Duke. By the time Georgana
and Bess had caught up with the rest of their
(15:53):
party in Niece, there was still no word. It became
obvious that ultimatum or not, the Duke was not going
to let Georgiana return to England so easily. Finally, in April,
the Duke wrote to Georgiana, making himself perfectly clear Beth
could come home, but she Georgiana was to stay abroad
(16:14):
until he deemed her worthy of returning. Just when she
had begun to grow accustomed to the well of grief
that had permanently taken resident in her chest, a new
wave of heartbreak threatened to overtake her entirely. As the
repercussions of the Duke's message settled in quote, Oh, my
dear child, Georgiana wrote in a letter to her eldest daughter,
(16:37):
I can only assure you that your love and the
hopes that you will not forget me, is the comfort
of my life now that I am absent from you.
When I am to return is now very uncertain. I
hope it will be soon, as I do not feel
I have strength to bear so long in absence. In
her desperation to see her children again, the Duchess pleaded
(16:58):
with her husband to let her and Best visit, even
for just a month in secret, but the Duke refused.
Even Georgana's sister Harriet, noticed the despondent turn her sister
had taken, writing in a letter to a mutual friend,
quote he never writes to her, and seldom to Best.
And the last letter was in so harsh a style
(17:20):
that I have little hopes of good. Even though the
Duke had invited Best to return to Devonshire House in London,
it didn't take her long to realize that his irritation
didn't solely lie with his wife. Going back so far
as when the Duke discovered Georgiana's pregnancy back in Cornwall,
the Duke had been furious that Bess had kept such
(17:41):
a monumental secret from him for so long. Add to
that the fact that she had chosen to accompany his
wife to France and had taken back their illegitimate child
with her to France, and Bess was suddenly vying for
the title of most vexing woman in Devonshire House. Still,
the Duke invited her back, but it was clear to
(18:03):
even those without the intimate knowledge of what went on
in the Devonshire Managatois that the Duke was doing so
not out of his love for Best, but in an
effort to further isolate Georgiana. Ultimately, his efforts would be
for not. Bess had solidified her place at Georgiana's side,
and there would be nothing that could threaten to take
(18:24):
her away. In the end, it would be two years
before the Duke finally wrote to invite his duchess back
to London. As soon as they received word, Georgiana and
Bess wasted no time packing their belongings and beginning the
arduous task of returning home in the midst of the
freshly overthrown French monarchy, and while watching English refugees attempt
(18:46):
to clamber aboard the small yachts she and Bess had
somehow charmed their way onto. Was no doubt traumatic the
welcome Georgiana was waiting for at Devonshire House would prove
to be something else entirely. Quote. I have seen them,
I have seen them, Georgiana wrote to her mother after
being reunited with her three children at long last. Hartington
(19:10):
is very pretty, she continued, but very cruel to me.
He will not look at me or speak to me,
though he kissed me a little at night. End quote.
The differences in her children's demeanor were just the tip
of the iceberg in terms of the changes Georgiana walked
into upon her return to London. Two years seemed to
have passed in the blink of an eye. Yet the
truth remained that two years was vastly more significant in
(19:34):
the eyes of her young children. Heart barely remembered his mother,
and after further investigation, was discovered to be almost entirely
deaf after an infection of his had been left neglected
for too long without being treated. In addition to the
fury that she felt on behalf of her children, Georgiana
was greeted with yet another betrayal, Charles Gray was engaged
(19:57):
to be married. Even if she had no tension of
rekindling her flame with Gray, the fact that she had
learned the news through the London papers and not through
Gray himself, was another bruise on Georgiana's already withering ego.
London may have still considered her their darling, but the
Duke's forced exile had taken its toll on the Duchess's
(20:18):
mental health. She was terrified to make any wrong moves
and fear that the Duke would sent her away from
her children again, which had the inverse reaction of making
her somewhat of a recluse in the initial years after
her return. This behavior only compounded after a series of
recurring migraines, which escalated into severe swelling and ultimately lost
(20:41):
a vision in her right eye. The treatments done by
the doctors to attempt to salvage her vision verged on torture,
and along with residual chronic pain, Georgiana was left with
considerable scarring across her face. Upon her return, newspapers had
expected Georgiana to come back to the town with nude fervor,
but the combined trauma of her time away and the
(21:04):
physical repercussions of her illness paralyzed her into a life
now spent indoors. For months, she refused to see visitors,
but after so much time spent in isolation, the Duchess
finally began to slowly take her life back. The children
were steadily improving now that she had returned, and though
her illness had left her with substantial vision loss and
(21:26):
scarring on the upper half of her face, the imperfections
had an oddly liberating effect on her life. In a
letter she wrote two years after her illness, she wrote, quote,
I have learned, however, to love my age and not
be ashamed of it, and my illness perhaps was a
benefit in making me relinquish at once the ridiculous trade
of an old beauty end quote. After accepting her new appearance,
(21:50):
Georgana slowly began making her way back out into the world.
She actively took part in her eldest daughter's coming out
into society, but in the final years of her life,
her most significant role would be in the political sphere.
In her absence, the Whig Party had fallen well out
of power, its main players scattered as they each attempted
(22:11):
to push their own agendas to little avail. The Duchess
would become instrumental in hosting gatherings that brought together and
solidified alliances within the Whig Party for the first time
since their unforgettable loss in seventeen eighty four. Following the
turn of the century, Georgiana's health would steadily begin to decline,
(22:32):
but she was determined to bring the Whig Party back
to its former glory. In the end, she would live
long enough to see the Whigs finally come back into
power in eighteen o six, only to succumb to a
liver abscess a few weeks later. Georgiana passed away in
the early morning hours of March eighteen o six, with
(22:54):
Bess and the Duke both at her bedside. Her sister
wrote of her passing quote, I saw it all held
her through all her struggles saw her expire, and since
have again and again kissed her cold lips, and pressed
her lifeless body to my heart, and yet I am
alive and quote. For those closest to the Duchess, it
(23:14):
seemed impossible that the world could possibly continue to spin
onwards after the loss of such a titanic presence. Even
the Duke, whose emotional bandwidth had held previously little regard
to the well being of his wife, lamented her passing.
They may have had their differences, but for better or worse,
Georgiana had been a constant presence in his life, one
(23:38):
that he found himself longing for now that it was gone.
Of course, he still had best But in the wake
of their return from France, the Duke and Bess's relationship
never fully recovered from her quote betrayal of choosing Georgiana
over him. Initially, after her death, Bess and the Duke
went their separate ways, the Duke taking his children to
(24:00):
their Chiswick house, while Bess went to stay with Georgiana's sister,
and perhaps Georgiana had worried that after her death the
Duke would cast Bess out, because, whatever the reason, even
after she was gone, Georgana made certain Best would be
taken care of. One of Georgiana's final actions was choosing
Best to be the sole guardian of all of her
(24:21):
papers and correspondence, and whether it was intentional or not,
Bess's involvement in the goings on at Devonshire House solidified
her place there, even after all of Georgiana's papers had
been sorted. The Duke, after so many years attempting to
distance himself from Bess after Georgiana's exile, now found himself
(24:41):
increasingly reliant on Bess in the wake of his wife's death. Eventually,
in eighteen o nine, three years after Georgiana's passing, Bess
and the Duke finally married, and Bess finally became the
Duchess of Devonshire. And though Bess may have finally gotten
the title, she had so long been envious of. The
(25:02):
grief that she felt the loss of her best friend
was undoubtedly genuine. In a letter to her son written
just a few months after Georgiana's death, quote, she is
so present to me, and I am so constantly occupied
by her that I feel as if she was absent
on a journey. And I catch myself saying I'll tell
her this end quote. Bess ended the letter to her
(25:24):
son with a thought, no doubt shared by all of
London as they grieved the loss of their duchess. Quote.
Georgiana was the constant charm of my life. She doubled
every joy, lessened every grief. Her society had an attraction
I never met with in any other being. Her love
for me was really passing the love of woman. End
(25:46):
quote That marks the end of our two part series
on the tragedy life of Georgiana Cavendish, the Duchess of Devonshire.
But stick around after a brief sponsor break to hear
a little bit about the legacy of Georgiana's lover, Earl Gray.
(26:18):
Charles Gray, the young romantic wig politician who won the
Duchess's heart, had not solely made it into our history
books just on his association with Georgiana Cavendish. Nor was
it because of his eventual rise to the office of
British Prime Minister. No, despite his important role in the
political sphere. Ironically, Gray's fame, his lasting fame, at least,
(26:42):
would come from perhaps the most British thing that you
can become famous for. T Following the death of his
father in eighteen oh seven, Charles inherited his father's title
Earl Gray. Yes, that Earl Gray. As is often the case,
there are conflicting theories as to the authenticity of the
ties between the Bergamot flavored black tea and the Earl.
(27:05):
Some say that the tea was given to him as
a gift by a Chinese man whose son was rescued
from drowning by one of Gray's men. The Twinings Tea
website claims that the Earl asked Richard Twining himself to
recreate the blend after quote he was presented with the
exquisite recipe by an envoy on his return from China.
(27:25):
In the end, like most of history's tall tales, the
details will likely remain lost to us. But the next
time you enjoy a cup of Earl Gray, maybe take
a moment to remember the man behind the tea or
the woman who loved him. Noble Blood is a production
(27:56):
of I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Mank.
Noble Blood is hosted by me Danishwortz. Additional writing and
researching done by Hannah Johnston, Hannah's Wick, Miura Hayward Courtney
Sunder and Laurie Goodman. The show is produced by rema
Il Kayali, with supervising producer Josh Thaine and executive producers
(28:18):
Aaron Manky, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. For more podcasts
from I Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Host
Dana Schwartz
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