Noble Dames and Notable Men of the Georgian Era (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

By John Fyvie

This entertaining volume presents six character sketches from the Georgian era—admittedly not the most noble dames and men of the era. Here are a humorist, Abraham Tucker; a grande dame, Lady Mar Coke; a beggar, Bampfylde-Moore Carew; a parson, Sir Henry Bate-Dudley; an heiress, The Countess of Strathmore; and a hostess, Lady Holland Elizabeth. In addition to having interesting life histories, they each exhibit some peculiarity or quaintness, or eccentricity of mind and behavior to merit being dubbed by our Fyvie as “characters.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barnes & Noble
• Release date: May 3, 2011
• ISBN: 9781411452664

Book preview

NOBLE DAMES AND NOTABLE MEN OF THE GEORGIAN ERA

JOHN FYVIE

This 2011 edition published by Barnes & Noble, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher.

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ISBN: 978-1-4114-5266-4

PREFACE

THE reader will be in little danger of supposing me to imply that the Georgian era did not produce nobler dames and more notable men than any I have included in the present volume. Nevertheless, it may perhaps be advisable for me to point out that the subjects of the six character sketches here brought together have been selected because, in addition to the interest of their several life histories, they all exhibit some peculiarity, or quaintness, or eccentricity, of mind and behaviour, such as would have caused our forebears to dub them emphatically characters.

So far as was possible, I have let Horace Walpole tell the story of Lady Mary Coke, supplementing him, where necessary, from other sources, and especially from Lady Louisa Stuart's brief but brilliant sketch of the family of John, Duke of Argyll and Greenwich, which was prefixed to the portion of Lady Mary's Journal privately printed for Lord Home in 1889. It was not permissible for me to quote (as I should have been very glad to do pretty extensively) from Lady Louisa's delightful little memoir; but I am especially fortunate in being able to enrich and enliven my narrative by the inclusion of eighteen scarcely known letters of Horace Walpole. When Cunningham issued his great edition of Walpole's Letters, and for a good many years afterwards, it was thought that only one letter of his to Lady Mary Coke had survived; but some eighteen or twenty years ago a packet was found amongst the papers of the late Mr. Drummond-Moray which contained no less than twenty-six hitherto unknown letters from Walpole to the lady, of various dates ranging from 1759 to 1772. These letters were included in the third volume of Lady Mary's Journal, which was privately printed in 1892. I have to express my most cordial thanks to Colonel Home Drummond-Moray for permitting me to use these letters, and also to Lord Home for allowing me to copy them from his privately printed book. Whether or not it be true that people's characters may be always as well known by the letters addressed to them as by those of their own composition, it is certainly the fact that these letters to Lady Mary Coke contain not a few indications of the character of the recipient, as well as of that of the writer; and they are likewise amongst the pleasantest and wittiest epistles that even that prince of letter-writers ever penned.

The sketch of Lady Holland was written before the appearance of the selection from her Journal which was published under the editorship of Lord Ilchester in 1909. But I have not found it necessary to make any alteration, because, as Lord Ilchester says, the later career of Lady Holland does not come within the scope of his volumes, and it is that later career alone with which I have attempted to deal. If it should be objected that Lady Holland, who died as recently as 1845, does not properly come within the period indicated in my title, I would reply that she was born in the 10th of George the Third; that she was, both literally and metaphorically, a child of the eighteenth century; and, moreover, that the period which we refer to somewhat vaguely as the Georgian era, or the eighteenth century, did not, as Sir Walter Besant first pointed out, come to an end on December 31st, 1800, or even on the day of the death of George the Fourth, but lasted on, in all its essential characteristics, at least until about the time of the accession of Queen Victoria.

J. F.

CONTENTS

PREFACE

I. A GRANDE DAME—LADY MARY COKE, 1726–1811

II. A JOURNALISTIC PARSON—SIR HENRY BATE-DUDLEY, BART., 1745–1824

III. A HUNTED HEIRESS—THE COUNTESS OF STRATHMORE, 1749–1800

IV. A PROFESSIONAL BEGGAR—BAMPFYLDE-MOORE CAREW, 1693–(?) 1758

V. A UNIQUE HOSTESS—ELIZABETH, LADY HOLLAND, 1770–1845

VI. A METAPHYSICAL HUMORIST—ABRAHAM TUCKER, 1705–1774

I

A GRANDE DAME—LADY MARY COKE

HOLKHAM HALL, in Norfolk, is one of the stateliest of the stately homes of England. It was built in the earlier half of the eighteenth century by Thomas Coke, Earl of Leicester, after a design by the classic Palladio. In order that it might stand as a monument of his name forever, it was constructed of specially made bricks and mortar, carefully fashioned after the pattern of the marvellously durable bricks and mortar of the ancient Romans. Its casements and window-sashes were of burnished gold. Its great marble and alabaster hall was adorned with priceless antique statuary, for which his agents ransacked Italy and Greece. Its spacious rooms were filled with costly furniture and curios, and their walls hung with beautiful tapestries and with pictures by Titian, and Van Dyk, and Paul Veronese, and Holbein, and other old masters. For the last five-and-twenty years of his life Lord Leicester devoted himself to the personal superintendence of every detail of the building and adornment of this splendid palace, which he had planned to be the envied habitation, not of himself only, but of his children's children for generation after generation. But the fates conspired against the realisation of his dream. Of all his children only one survived infancy, and that one, Edward, Viscount Coke, lived such a life of drunken riot and debauchery that his excesses threatened to bring him to an early grave. After he came of age the one hope of his anxious parents was that a suitable marriage might regenerate their graceless son, or, at the least, provide an heir to the family title and estates; and they consequently negotiated, in the fashion of those times, for an alliance with some family possessed either of blue blood or of money. Notwithstanding the enormous wealth to which he was heir, it was apparently the money that was looked out for first, for, as Horace Walpole remarks, it was only after offering him to all the great lumps of gold in all the alleys of the City that they settled upon one of the daughters of the Dowager Duchess of Argyll, a young damsel who undoubtedly had the bluest of blood in her veins, but whose portion was only a paltry £12,000. Before saying anything further about this lady herself, it will be worth while to make a few observations concerning her parentage.

In 1712 John, Duke of Argyll, fresh from warlike exploits on the Continent, which had made him no mean rival of the great Duke of Marlborough, made his appearance at the Court of Queen Anne, was invested with the Order of the Garter, and became, of course, the popular hero of the day. He was then thirty-four years of age, and not only a soldier of great reputation, but as handsome, graceful, and engaging a personality as the Court had ever seen. It may not, therefore, seem a very extraordinary thing that, when the ladies' toasts were called for one day at a dinner given by the Lord Chamberlain to the maids of honour, one of those maids, Jane Warburton, should ingenuously propose the name of the popular hero whose figure and achievements were probably dominant in the minds of all of them. But for two reasons this apparently simple and natural manifestation of the general feeling aroused a storm of satirical and hilarious comment. In the first place, it was most unusual for a young lady, when called upon for a toast, to propose any name but that of some discreet bishop, or statesman, or courtier who was old enough to be her father; and, in the second place, the particular young lady who had committed this breach of maidenly etiquette was so devoid of personal charms and so rustic in her speech and manners that nobody had ever been able to make out how so unlikely a creature had obtained an appointment in the Court. She was the daughter of a Cheshire squire of good family, but her education and speech were those of a dairymaid, and had all along been made a standing jest by her companions in office. When she proposed her toast, therefore, there was a general shout of laughter, and she had to endure the raillery of the whole company on the modest humility of her choice, some suggesting that the Duke ought to be informed of the wonderful conquest he had made, and keeping up their battery with such effect that poor Jane could bear it no longer, and burst into a passion of tears. That night the Duke of Shrewsbury, happening to stand next to the Duke of Argyll at a ball, related this story as a good joke, when, to his and everybody else's extreme surprise, the gallant Argyll immediately asked to be introduced to the young lady, in order that by chatting with her for a few moments he might make some amends for the discomfort to which she had been subjected on his account. And, to the still further surprise of everybody, he not only devoted himself to Jane Warburton for the remainder of that evening, but afterwards visited her constantly, and made it perfectly plain that he was over head and ears in love with her. Unfortunately, the Duke had a wife already, having been married at the early age of twenty-one to Mary Brown, daughter of a rich citizen, and niece of Sir Charles Duncombe, Lord Mayor of London. He had very soon discovered that he cordially detested the lady, and they had been promptly separated. Since then his experience of women had been limited to specimens of that class which follows a camp, and he had come to the conclusion that every woman had her price. When, therefore, he found that Jane Warburton was not to be tempted from the path of rectitude by presents or promises, however magnificent these might be, he was greatly astonished, and he came to the further conclusion that it had been his good fortune to become acquainted with a solitary exception to the foregoing principle, or, in other words, with the only virtuous woman in the world. For about four years he was a visitor to her room every morning; and it is a remarkable circumstance that, compromising as the situation was, Jane Warburton's character was considered by the whole Court to remain altogether unimpeachable.

When Queen Anne died in 1714, Jane would probably have been dismissed to her home with a small pension but for the fact that the Whig leaders, who then came into office, wished to make sure of the continued adhesion of the powerful Duke of Argyll, and considered that one of the best ways of doing so was to keep his lady love at Court. They consequently made her one of the maids of honour to the new Princess of Wales. But about two years after the death of Queen Anne the Duke's wife died; and the ladies of the Court immediately began to speculate how long it would be before he would find it necessary to drop the poor maid of honour and ally himself with some lady of suitable rank in order to provide an heir for his titles and estates. Once more they were very greatly surprised, for, after a very short period of perfunctory mourning, Jane Warburton was duly made Duchess of Argyll. Lady Louisa Stuart says that, although everybody else agreed in calling Jane extremely plain, the Duke believed her to be an incomparable beauty; and it is certainly remarkable that, notwithstanding the very great disappointment it must have been to him to have no son and heir, but only daughters, whom he contemptuously regarded as useless encumbrances, he remained a faithful and doating husband to the end of his life.

Of course the Duke, Pope's

"Argyll, the State's whole thunder, born to wield

  And shake alike the senate and the field,"

who was a distinguished statesman as well as a distinguished general, who was possessed of large information and gifted with great conversational powers, would have been glad to have about him in his own home many of the intellectual and eminent men with whom he was inevitably associated in public affairs. But poor Duchess Jane had a horror of clever people, and managed to keep all such out of her intimate circle. With all his affection for her, the Duke would never have dreamt of asking her opinion or advice on any matter which he considered to be of real importance; but in all matters of social and family life he let her have her own way altogether. Unfortunately he considered the education of a parcel of useless girls a matter of no importance; and consequently the tuition of his four daughters was left entirely to the discretion of Duchess Jane, who neither sent them to school nor provided proper tutors for them, being quite satisfied if they were taught the elements of reading, writing, and arithmetic by her steward, and needlework by her housekeeper. One stipulation, indeed, the Duke did make: he objected to their being taught French in addition to their mother-tongue, because, as he contemptuously observed, one language was quite enough for any woman to talk in; and, as Duchess Jane knew no word of any language save her own, she probably considered this as only another instance of her lord's superior wisdom. They were none of them deficient in good looks; but they all of them inherited from their mother a harsh and discordant voice, so that they came to be called the screaming sisterhood and the bawling Campbells, while their want of proper training caused them to become, as Lady Louisa Stuart declares, the most noisy, hoydening girls in London. But the Duke not only left undone those things which he ought to have done; he also did those things which he ought not to have done; for the ungovernable violence of the temper of his youngest daughter, Mary, was largely due to his injudicious habit of alternately teasing and indulging her. After he had purposely irritated the little minx into a fury he would cry, Look! look at Mary! and laugh heartily to see her flying about, screaming and scratching like a wild cat, and then, when he had had enough of the scene, would coax her with sugar-plums to kiss and be friends again. Of course it was inevitable that such unwise treatment should produce after-effects of a very pronounced character. But, in addition to a peculiarly violent temper, Lady Mary exhibited as she grew up very exalted notions of her own importance, together with a morbid, dominant idea that nothing which happened to her was quite the same as what occurred to mere ordinary commonplace people. Not merely was she so hypersensitive that if she simply pricked her finger the pain was almost too exquisite for words, but if she caught cold, or had a sore throat, it was impossible that this could be a mere common ailment, it must be a disease of extraordinary malignity; or, if she happened to be caught in a shower, it was no ordinary shower, but such a rain as had never fallen from heaven since the Deluge. She was also possessed by the notion that she was destined to occupy some particularly high and conspicuous position in the world. It might have been thought that she had nourished her mind on the extravagant romances of Calprenède and Madame Scuderi; but we are told that she had little liking for imaginative literature of any kind, though she had a turn for reading and was much given to the perusal of histories, and genealogies, and State papers. And, says Lady Louisa Stuart, she had heated her brains with history as others have done with romances, with the result that, wishing to make herself comparable with some of the heroines of whom she had read, she was reduced to magnifying every common matter that concerned herself into the semblance of something uncommon. Her personal appearance was certainly very uncommon, and, in the opinion of many people, uncommonly beautiful. She possessed a majestic figure, a handsome neck, and well-shaped arms, together with a fine set of teeth and a very agreeable smile; but her extremely fair hair, dead whiteness of skin, unshaded eyebrows, and fiercely brilliant eyes, produced altogether so feline an expression as to obtain for her the nickname of the White Cat. Such was the young damsel, nineteen years of age, and with a portion of £12,000, who was selected by Lord Leicester to carry on the succession in his family, and to be the regenerator of his scapegrace of a son.

The Duke of Argyll had died in 1743, and the overtures of marriage were made by Lord Coke's parents to Duchess Jane, through the instrumentality of Lady Gower. The Duchess hesitated at first, not so much on account of the character and habits of Lord Coke as on account of the temper and dissoluteness of his father. But the young man contrived to make a very good impression on her, and she wrote her married daughter, Lady Dalkeith, saying she thought his gambling habits were due to his father's bad example and encouragement, also that he had a very good understanding, and a great deal of knowledge, and, I think, a sweet disposition. Lady Mary merely said that she had no objection; so the family lawyers on both sides were set to work, and after a good deal of bargaining it was settled that there should be £500 a year pin-money and a jointure of £2,500. But before the lawyers had time to draw up deeds to this effect Lady Mary was of another mind. Horace Walpole, writing to George Montagu on July 3rd, 1746, apropos of certain rumours of marriages, remarks:—

"I can tell you another wedding more certain and fifty times more extraordinary; it is Lord Coke with Lady Mary Campbell, the Dowager of Argyll's youngest daughter. It is all agreed, and was negotiated by the Countesses of Gower and Leicester. I don't know why they skipped over Lady Betty, who, if there were any question of beauty, is, I think, as well as her sister. They drew the girl in to give her consent when they first proposed it to her; but now la belle n'aime pas trop le Sieur Léandre. She cries her eyes to scarlet. He has made her four visits, and is so in love that he writes to her every other day. 'Tis a strange match. . . . She objects his loving none of her sex but the four queens in a pack of cards; but he promises to abandon White's and both clubs for her sake."

Lord Coke was by no means in love, as Walpole and other gossips were led to suppose. He did not like Lady Mary any more than she liked him; and he was quite as proud and as self-willed as she was. But while she treated him with flouts and jeers, and, like a heroine of one of the old romances, posed as a miserable matrimonial martyr, he kept his resentment in reserve, bore all her vagaries with a smiling face, and by his respectful attentions and moral discourse confirmed his prospective mother-in-law in her opinion of the wonderful sweetness of his disposition. At last, however, in the spring of 1747, Lady Mary suffered herself to be led to the altar, exhibiting herself as a reluctant bride, who was yet prepared to submit, as in duty bound, to the caresses of an unloved husband. But as soon as the young couple reached home after the ceremony Lord Coke threw off his mask, and, assuring her ladyship that she need be in no fear of caresses from him, promptly went off to a tavern to carouse with his boon companions, with whom he stayed the whole night, making merry over his insolent bride's discomfiture. During the courtship his conduct had been unwontedly respectable, but now he plunged headlong into his former extravagant dissipations; and whenever he did happen to be in his own home he amused himself by ridiculing his wife's mother, attacking the memory of her father, and generally abusing the whole clan of the Campbells. In August, about three months after the marriage, it was arranged that Coke and his wife should spend some time with his parents in Norfolk; but when Lord Leicester's coach-and-six called at their house early one morning to take them to Holkham, Lady Mary, who was dressed and ready to start, was obliged to report that her husband had not yet returned from his tavern. When Lord Leicester found that this was a constant practice, he was furious, warmly espoused his daughter-in-law's side, and declaimed in good set terms against the brutishness of his son. Walpole, writing to Mann on January 12th, 1748, says:—

Lord Coke has demolished himself very fast; I mean his character. You know he was married but last spring. He is always drunk, has lost immense sums at play, and seldom goes home to his wife till eight in the morning. The world is vehement on her side; and not only her family, but his own, give him up. At present matters are patching up by the mediation of my brother, but, I think, can never go on. She married him extremely against her will, and he is at least an out-pensioner of Bedlam; his mother's family have many of them been mad.

A fortnight later, Lady Hervey wrote saying that things were patched up for the present, though, in her opinion, when they required so much darning things seldom lasted long. However, Lord Coke professed to have mended his ways, and sued for a reconciliation, whereupon his father once more settled his very considerable gambling debts, and expected to find the young couple disposed to make mutual concessions and to live with one another at least in outward decency, if not in the most perfect private harmony. But, to his extreme dismay, Lady Mary now firmly refused to have anything to do with such a husband; and Lord Leicester, whose one anxiety was that his only son should have an heir to carry on the succession, became as furious against her as he had been previously enthusiastic in her support. The Duchess of Argyll interfered, and only made matters worse. Then the Duke of Argyll, Lady Mary's uncle, intervened, and proposed an amicable separation; but this was the very last thing the Leicester family were disposed to listen to. About the end of June, Horace Walpole, after remarking to Conway that the first article in everybody's gazette of gossip must be my Lord Coke, goes on to say:—

They say that since he has been at Sunning Hill with Lady Mary she has made him a declaration in form that she hates him, that she always did, and that she always will. This seems to have been a very unnecessary notification. However, as you know his part is to be extremely in love, he is very miserable upon it; and relating his woes at White's, probably at seven in the morning, he was advised to put an end to all this history and shoot himself—an advice they would not have given him if he were not insolvent. He has promised to consider of it.

It was just about this time that Henry Bellenden, brother of the celebrated beauty Mary Bellenden, maid of honour to the Princess of Wales, fought a duel with Lord Coke in Marylebone Fields in consequence of a quarrel arising out of remarks or remonstrances concerning Coke's treatment of his wife. They both missed fire, and their seconds parted them without either being hurt. But certain very ugly reports of this affair became current, as will be seen from the following letter of Horace Walpole to George Montagu, which is dated July 14th, 1748:—

"I heard the history of Lord Coke three thousand ways. I expect next winter to hear of no Whigs and Jacobites, no courtiers and patriots, but of the Cokes and the Campbells. I do assure you the violence is incredible with which this affair is talked over. As the Irish mobs used to say 'Butleraboo' and 'Crumaboo,' you will see the women in the assemblies will be bellowing 'Campbellaboo!' But, with the leave of your violence, I think the whole affair of sending Harry Bellenden first to bully Coke and then to murder him is a very shocking story, and so bad that I will not believe Lady Mary's family could go so far as to let her into the secret of an intention to pistol her husband. I heard the relation in an admirable way first from my Lady Suffolk, who is one of the ringleaders of the 'Campbellaboos,' and, indeed, a woeful story she made of it for poor Coke, interlarding it every minute with very villainous epithets bestowed on his lordship by Noel Bluff, and when she had run over her string of 'rascal,' 'scoundrel,' etc., she would stop and say, 'Lady Dorothy, do I tell your story right? for you know I am very deaf, and perhaps did not hear it exactly.'

I have compiled all that is allowed on both sides, and it is very certain, for Coke's honour, that his refusing to fight was till he could settle the affair of his debts. But two or three wicked circumstances on t'other side, never to be got over, are Bellenden's stepping close up to him after Coke had fired his last pistol and saying, 'You little dog, now I will be the death of you,' and firing, but the pistol missed; and what confirms the intention of these words is its having come out that the Duke of Argyll knew that Coke, on having been told that his Grace had complained of his usage of Lady Mary, replied, 'Very well! Does he talk? Why, it is impossible I should use my wife worse than he did his.' When Harry Bellenden left Coke on the road from Sunning, the day before the duel, he crossed over to the Duke, which his Grace flatly denied, but Lord Gower proved it to his face. I have no doubt but a man who would despatch his wife would have no scruple at the assassination of a person that should reproach him with it.

After this affair Coke carried off his wife to Holkham, thinking that there he and his father would be better able to break down her determination. But she kept to her own apartment, assumed the dress and demeanour of an invalid, and refused to associate with any of the family. They retaliated, not only by being rude to her themselves, but by encouraging the servants to be rude also; and the Leicester flunkeys, taking full advantage of so congenial a permission, jeered at her as our Virgin Mary. In March 1749, Lord Coke left Holkham for the society of his old boon companions elsewhere, leaving his father a power of attorney to deal with Lady Mary according to the strict letter of the law. Lord Leicester accordingly, having taken legal