Prime Ministers' Wives E-Book

Marc Hichens

• Herausgeber: Peter Owen Publishers
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Seitenzahl: 583

Beschreibung

Much is required of a prime minister's wife. As a hostess, sympathetic ear and adviser, she must ensure her husband never puts a foot wrong (and never do so herself). Arguably she has one of the hardest jobs in politics - without ever stepping into the House of Commons. Of the wives from the past two centuries featured in this book, nearly all have given their husbands unqualified support in political matters, two notable exceptions being Emily Palmerston and Clementine Churchill, who were always ready to dissent. And, until Audrey Callaghan and Cherie Blair, none had careers of their own. They came from a variety of backgrounds: some, such as Emily Palmerston, Caroline Lamb, Catherine Gladstone and Dorothy Macmillan, from the ruling classes. Two - Clementine Churchill and Margot Asquith - had aristocratic connections, while Lucy Baldwin's father was a scientist, Mary Ann Disraeli's was a junior naval officer and Margaret Lloyd George's a Welsh hill farmer. In terms of their marriages, some were secure, some wobbly and one actually broke down. In the case of Clementine Churchill, her marriage to Winston of fifty-seven years was a particularly remarkable achievement. Mark Hichens examines these women - and one husband, Denis Thatcher - in the light of their personalities and achievements as well as the roles they have indirectly played in British history in this timely volume.

Leseprobe

PRAISE FOR PRIME MINISTERS’ WIVES – AND ONE HUSBAND

‘Hichens’s narrative is fresh … he writes with clarity, pace, wisdom and wry humour.’ – Spectator

PRIME MINISTERS’ WIVES – AND ONE HUSBAND

Over the centuries, the wives of British prime ministers have come from a variety of backgrounds. Much has been required of them: they need to be gracious hostesses, practical managers, sound advisers and sympathetic listeners. Nearly all have served their husbands well, toiling behind the scenes with little recognition. When the glare of publicity has swung round to them it has all too often been of the wrong sort, even when, like barrister Cherie Blair, they are high-flyers in their own right.

In this book Mark Hichens provides vivid portraits of these wives, assessing their roles and achievements and the aspects of their characters that have made some of them so memorable. Caroline Lamb, for instance, would dress up as a pageboy and had herself borne naked into the dining-room on a silver salver. Catherine Gladstone regularly had to cope with the ladies of the night brought home by her husband for redemption. Margot Asquith, who had a relationship with the poet Tennyson before her marriage, was known for her wit, once referring to a US general as ‘an imitation rough diamond’; while Clementine Churchill gained respect during the Second World War by supporting bombed-out families in the East End of London. Lady Palmerston proved to be an effective diplomat, exerting considerable influence on affairs of state at receptions and other gatherings, while some spouses, such as Denis Thatcher, appear to have regarded public appearances as fraught with embarrassing possibilities and preferred to remain in the background. In recent times prime ministers’ consorts have taken refuge from the stresses of Downing Street in various ways – Mary Wilson through poetry, Denis through golf and Norma Major through charitable works and biography.

In terms of their marriages, some have been secure, some wobbly and one broke down altogether. This book considers the changing nature of the role. Is it right in the modern world to expect a prime minister’s wife to live in the shadow of her husband?

Mark Hichens brings all the spouses – both the celebrated and the obscure – into the spotlight, by examining their personalities and lives as well as the roles they have played on the British political stage.

MARK HICHENS is a biographer, historian and retired teacher. His publications include several history books and Oscar Wilde’s Last Chance: The Dreyfus Connection and Wives of the Kings of England: From Hanover to Windsor (also published by Peter Owen).

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I have had generous help in writing this book. Shelagh Montague-Browne was kind enough to read through the chapter on Clementine Churchill and made some valuable suggestions; and the late John Grigg went through with great care the part on Margaret Lloyd George and made a number of helpful and apposite comments. I am especially indebted to Anne Armitage (de Courcy) for extensive guidance and encouragement. The book has been much improved and facilitated by her assistance.

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

Introduction

1. Catherine Walpole – Henrietta Newcastle – Hester Chatham – Mary Bute – Anne North

2. Ursula Addington – Anne Grenville – Dorothy Portland – Jane Perceval – Louisa Liverpool – Joan Canning – Catherine Wellington – Mary Grey

3. Caroline Lamb

4. Julia Peel – Frances Russell – Catherine and Harriet Aberdeen

5. Emily Palmerston

6. Mary Anne Disraeli

7. Catherine Gladstone

8. Georgina Salisbury – Hannah Rosebery – Sarah Campbell-Bannerman

9. Margot Asquith

10. Margaret Lloyd George

11. Lucy Baldwin

12. Annie Bonar Law – Margaret MacDonald – Anne Chamberlain

13. Clementine Churchill

14. Dorothy Macmillan

15. Violet Attlee – Clarissa Eden – Elizabeth Douglas Home – Mary Wilson – Audrey Callaghan

16. Denis Thatcher

17. Norma Major

18. Cherie Blair

Bibliography

Index

ILLUSTRATIONS

Plates appear between pages 128 and 129

Catherine, Lady Walpole, c. 1700 (National Portrait Gallery)

William Pitt the Elder’s wife Lady Hester Grenville, Countess of Chatham, 1750 (Board of Trustees of the Chevening Estate; photograph: Photographic Survey, Courtauld Institute of Art)

Mary, Countess of Bute, 1777 (Private Collection, National Portrait Gallery)

Catherine, Duchess of Wellington, 1814 (Photograph: Photographic Survey, Courtauld Institute of Art; reproduced by permission of the Duke of Wellington)

The Right Honourable Mary Elizabeth, Countess Grey, 1831 (National Portrait Gallery)

Lady Caroline Lamb, c. 1820 (Althorp Collection)

Julia, Lady Peel, c. 1832 (National Portrait Gallery)

Emily, Viscountess Palmerston, c. 1860 (Collection of Lord Egremont; photograph: Photographic Survey, Courtauld Institute of Art)

Mary Anne Disraeli, 1829 (National Trust)

Catherine Gladstone, 1883 (National Portrait Gallery)

Catherine and William Gladstone, c. 1870 (Getty Images)

Georgina, Marchioness of Salisbury, 1873 (photograph: Photographic Survey, Courtauld Institute of Art; reproduced by permission of the Marquess of Salisbury)

Hannah Rosebery, c. 1880 (National Gallery of Scotland; reproduced by permission of the Earl of Rosebery)

Margot Asquith, Countess of Oxford and Asquith, 1920s (National Portrait Gallery)

Dame Margaret Lloyd George, 1941 (National Portrait Gallery)

Lucy, Countess Baldwin, 1945 (National Portrait Gallery)

Lucy and Stanley Baldwin, c. 1936 (Topham Picturepoint)

Clementine and Winston Churchill, 1952 (Topham Picturepoint)

Lady Dorothy Macmillan, 1964 (Topham Picturepoint)

Mary Wilson, 1969 (Topham Picturepoint)

Denis Thatcher, 1987 (Topham Picturepoint)

Cherie Blair, 2002 (Trinity Mirror)

INTRODUCTION

Great Britain has been well served by the wives of her Prime Ministers. Nearly all have been loyal, conscientious and discreet. With a few exceptions their marriages have been soundly based, and there have been no divorces – although Dorothy Macmillan pleaded with her husband for one and David Lloyd George gave his wife ample grounds for separation. There has been one legal separation – between Caroline and William Lamb (later Lord Melbourne), and for most of their married lives Robert and Catherine Walpole lived apart as did the Duke and Duchess of Wellington. Moreover, relations between Henry and Margot Asquith were not always on an even keel. Otherwise, with the usual ups and downs, the marriages have been loving and lasting.

It might have been expected that among the forty or so spouses there would have been a few who would have been power-hungry and unscrupulous and sought to be the power behind the throne, but this has not been the case. There have been no Marie Antoinettes or Tsarina Alexandras breathing pernicious advice into their husbands’ ears. Of course some wives have been powerful and influential: Emily Palmerston was certainly the most powerful woman in the country in her day and so, some believed, was Lucy Baldwin. But their power was exercised benignly – on behalf of their husbands or their charitable causes and not themselves. The majority of the wives have not been politically minded and have been content to remain in the background, managing their homes, caring for their families and providing for their husbands a calm and happy domestic base where they could relax and do the things they enjoyed most. It was perhaps the most important quality in a wife that she should be a good listener, as the great need of politicians is for someone to whom they can pour out their concerns and in whom they can confide with complete trust. No great political sophistication is required of them, but they should at least be be attentive and ready with down-to-earth advice and, in particular, be good judges of people’s character; in this some have been more shrewd than their husbands.

Not many Prime Minister’s wives have felt themselves capable of speaking out candidly when they thought their husbands might be acting unwisely. Of course in public they must back their spouses up and stand squarely behind them, but in private there are times when the best service a politician’s wife can render is some plain speaking. This was Clementine Churchill’s great strength, notably in 1940 when Winston’s popularity and prestige were at their height and she wrote him an outspoken letter saying, in effect, that power was going to his head. Years later Denis Thatcher, too, was ready to speak frankly. Usually he kept out of politics, but at carefully judged moments he would intervene to calm his wife and introduce a note of reality or, in his own words, ‘to tell her what the hell was going on’.

A thorny problem for wives has been coping with the media. Journalists will always seek them out for their views on every sort of topic as well as titbits of information on their private lives. Any communication is dangerous: all too often their lightest word will be distorted and taken out of context and they suddenly find themselves in the midst of controversy. Because of this most have found it the safest course to give no interviews at all, even to the friendliest correspondent. But they cannot escape that easily. Journalists are constantly on the look-out for the least indiscretion or slip of the tongue, and they have to be humoured and treated with courtesy, whatever the provocation. In the twentieth century it has been the aim of nearly every consort – Margot Asquith being the main exception – to keep out of the limelight and say as little as possible, and in this, on the whole, they have been successful. But of course there is nothing they can do when the satirists decide to make them the butt of their jokes, as Private Eye did so successfully with Mary Wilson and Denis Thatcher. All they can do then is to go along with it and seem to enjoy the fun.

The wives have come from different backgrounds: some, but not many, from the aristocracy – Dorothy Macmillan, Catherine Gladstone, Caroline Lamb – but most from business and professional families. It is notable that of the last two aristocrats to be Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury and Lord Rosebery, the former married the daughter of a judge and the latter the daughter of a banker. It is likely, therefore, that the wives would have been very different from one another in their personalities, interests and lifestyles. A few have been keen political activists, ready to play their parts behind the scenes, drawing people out, soothing ruffled feelings and building bridges. In this Emily Palmerston was supreme, but Margot Asquith in her idiosyncratic way and Hannah Rosebery less conspicuously were no mean performers. Others were essentially homebodies and did the minimum of political entertaining but undertook extensive charitable works (notably Catherine Gladstone, Lucy Baldwin and Norma Major). Apart from Audrey Callaghan and Cherie Blair none had had careers of their own. Most were domestically minded, although only Mary Anne Disraeli considered that her sole task was to see to the comfort and well-being of her husband.

In recent times the role of the Prime Minister’s wife or consort has begun to change. Before arriving in Downing Street Audrey Callaghan’s career had been in local government. Denis Thatcher had been a successful businessman, and although he had retired before Margaret became Prime Minister he continued to lead his own independent life. Cherie Blair pursues a successful legal career as well as being the first wife for a hundred years to give birth to a baby while in Downing Street.

Much is expected of Prime Ministers’ wives. They are constantly in the public eye, and some of their duties are arduous and uncongenial. But there are some perks – including the right to live in 10 Downing Street. No house in the country is so rich in history. It is the centre of government and a place to which most people love to be invited. But not all wives have found it an unmixed blessing; as a home it has certain disadvantages. It may contain splendid rooms with historic associations, but the Prime Minister’s living quarters are plain and somewhat cramped. The house is constantly overrun by officials and politicians, and, with an office and household staff of over a hundred, for those who value their privacy and a quiet life it is not ideal.

It is paradoxical that London’s most famous address should be a relatively undistinguished building. Its façade is unexceptional, and it has a long history of major structural faults. Certainly its origins were unworthy, even murky. At the restoration of Charles II in 1660 the site fell into the hands of an unprincipled adventurer, one George Downing, who had been a soldier in Cromwell’s army and had ingratiated himself with the King by the zeal with which he hunted down his former comrades in arms and brought them to the scaffold. For this he was awarded what was then King Street, which he demolished, replaced with jerry-built houses and renamed Downing Street. It was not then a prime location, being in the middle of marshland and one of the more sleazy parts of Westminster, abounding in brothels and gin palaces. However, it was well placed for the Houses of Parliament, and by 1732 it had been acquired by King George II and offered to his First Lord of the Treasury – the title of Prime Minister was not used until later – Robert Walpole, who accepted it only on condition that it became the home of each succeeding First Lord of the Treasury. Walpole himself lived there for six and a half years, but on his demise it did not straight away become the London home of his successors, who preferred to live in their own more palatial residences. However, it was occupied by Lord North at the time when the American colonists were freeing themselves from British rule and later by Pitt the Younger during the war with Napoleon. Pitt was a bachelor, and in spite of the fact that he employed some twenty-seven servants (or perhaps because of it) his domestic arrangements were chaotic, and at the end of his twenty-four years’ occupancy his successor, Lord Grenville, described the place as ‘uninhabitable’. By then the shoddy building work and inadequate foundations were becoming evident and the first of many major overhauls became necessary.

During the nineteenth century most Prime Ministers preferred their own houses to 10 Downing Street, which they regarded as shabby and inconvenient, and it was used only for offices or residences for junior ministers. However, in 1877 Disraeli, by then a widower and in some financial straits, decided to move in. He found the place ‘dingy and depressing’ and had a major battle with the Ministry of Works about an adequate refurbishment.1 A few years later his great rival W.G. Gladstone, during his second ministry, also moved in and found it ‘a wilderness and a chaos’ and had the same difficulties with the Ministry of Works. After him it was spurned by Lord Salisbury and Lord Rosebery, and the next Prime Minister to occupy it for any length of time was Henry Asquith, who was not a rich man. His wife, Margot, later recorded her impressions of the place while waiting in a car in Downing Street, as he was about to become Prime Minister:

The street was empty and but for the footfall of a few policemen there was not a sound to be heard. I looked at the dingy exterior of Number Ten and wondered how we would live there.

Later she wrote that the building was ‘liver-coloured and squalid’, and she was amazed how little known it was – even taxi drivers did not know how to get there. The inside, too, was dismal: ‘inconvenient with three poor staircases’. And her stepdaughter, Violet, was astonished to find hardly any bookcases or baths. ‘Did Prime Ministers’, she wondered, ‘never read and never wash?’

During the twentieth century it became the custom for all Prime Ministers to move into Number Ten, but not all of their wives were happy to do so. Dame Margaret Lloyd George had no love for the place and made little effort to make it homely or comfortable. A contemporary wrote that ‘the housekeeping was very ramshackle and that it was as if a small suburban household was picnicking there’. For Ramsay MacDonald, the first Labour Prime Minister, moving into Downing Street presented special problems. He was a widower and not at all wealthy and was dismayed to find that he was expected to provide some of his own furniture as well as all linen, cutlery and crockery. His twenty-year-old daughter Ishbel did her best to make the house habitable for him and his five children, but she later wrote:

For us Number Ten was just a colony of bed-sitting rooms with a large communal dining room where we met for breakfast at eight o’clock.

Both Winston and Clementine Churchill had a deep love for Number Ten and gave it great distinction, but during the Second World War, following heavy bomb damage, it became necessary for them to move out into the Number Ten annexe in nearby Storey Gate, which was better protected. Clement Attlee, the next Labour Prime Minister, also liked Number Ten and found it ‘very comfortable’, but this enthusiasm was not shared by his wife, Violet, who became distraught by the way their living quarters were overrun by officials and Members of Parliament. This dislike was shared by the next Labour Prime Minister’s wife, Mary Wilson, who also found Number Ten oppressive and who during her husband’s second premiership refused to live there. Some reluctance to move in was also shown by Labour Prime Minister Jim Callaghan who would have liked to have stayed in their modest south London flat, but his competent and businesslike wife Audrey insisted on living there and coped with all problems admirably.

By the time Margaret Thatcher arrived Number Ten had expanded considerably, consisting of some sixty rooms, three staircases and office space for 140 people. Her daughter Carol has described the private flat on the top floor as ‘an extended railway carriage with four bedrooms, a modest dining-room, drawing-room and small kitchen’. No staff were provided and the Prime Minister had to make her own domestic arrangements, with the result that meals for the family and visitors were often sparse potluck affairs. When the Blairs arrived there in 1997 they soon realized that Number Ten would be too small for their young family, so it was exchanged for the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s larger flat at Number Eleven.

Today, with the threat of international terrorism, Downing Street and the neighbourhood is under close security guard. But it is still a focal point for most tourists, still the nerve centre of government and host to an endless stream of home and foreign VIPs. For three hundred years it has had an extraordinary history and has been through many vicissitudes: at times it has been stormed by angry mobs threatening to destroy it, at others by cheering crowds come to rejoice and give thanks; it has also been under bombardment from both Hitler’s Luftwaffe and the IRA. Inside its walls historic decisions have been taken and many dramas enacted. Who in the early eighteenth century would have foretold such a future for a nondescript house in a Westminster backwater?

If 10 Downing Street has not always provided unalloyed joy for Prime Ministers’ wives, few of them have felt anything but affection for Chequers, the other prime ministerial residence. A historic country house set in the Buckinghamshire Chilterns, Chequers was a gift to the nation from Arthur Lee (later Lord Lee of Fareham) and his beautiful and wealthy American wife Ruth. The estate consisted of a mansion of Elizabethan origins (with Gothic additions made in Victorian times) along with some twelve hundred acres of farmland and gardens.

The Lees had acquired a life lease of the estate in 1909 and immediately set about repairing the mansion and restoring it to its Elizabethan splendour. In this they spared no expense, and in addition they lost no opportunity to buy pictures and other works of art with any connection to the place’s history (including a death mask of Oliver Cromwell). They were naturally proud of what they had achieved at Chequers and were concerned about its future. They had no children and wanted to bequeath it to the nation, but this was not possible until 1917 when they were able to obtain the freehold of the property.

Arthur Lee was a Conservative Member of Parliament in the early years of the twentieth century and during the First World War had held office in the coalition government of Lloyd George for whom he had a fervent admiration. Working in close contact with him, he had witnessed the tremendous strain under which Lloyd George laboured, and it was as a result of this that Lee conceived the idea of providing for Prime Ministers a house of peace and quiet where they could relax and recuperate. As the wartime pressure on Lloyd George became more intense Lee and his wife decided that they must set the project up at once, which was an act of great unselfishness as they had both become deeply devoted to Chequers and would have loved to spend the rest of their lives there. Before the property could be legally transferred an Act of Parliament was necessary and this would take time, but Lee made it clear to Lloyd George that he could start using the house at once, which he did quite frequently, especially for high-level conferences with war leaders.

The house was not finally made over until 1921 and, although according to the Act the Lees had the right to remain in it during their lifetime, they decided to move out at once; this they did quietly and unobtrusively after a grand celebratory dinner attended by the highest in the land.

In the years that followed, Prime Ministers and their wives quickly came to appreciate the value of Chequers. It was somewhere to which they could escape and unwind, with all their needs attended to by a highly efficient domestic staff for which they had no responsibility. (Since the Second World War it has been manned by volunteers retired from the Services.) It is not surprising then that some of them came to love the place dearly and were greatly distressed when they had to leave it.2 Some would have loved to leave their mark there, but they were limited in this by the Chequers Trust, drawn up by the Lees, which aimed to prevent any major changes. All that was allowed to Prime Ministers was to leave a memorial window in the house and a tree planted in the grounds (although Churchill was allowed, uniquely, to plant an avenue of beeches known as Victory Drive).

Since 1917 Chequers has been the scene of great events. During the Second World War it was much used by Winston Churchill and became something of a fortress, surrounded by barbed wire entanglements, sandbags, anti-aircraft guns and Nissen huts containing a company of the Guards, but on moonlit nights it was considered too prominent a target from the air and Churchill would move to another country house, Ditchley Park in Oxfordshire.

After the war Chequers remained a great favourite of Prime Ministers’ wives, who welcomed a break from domestic responsibilities and the hurly-burly of Downing Street. Not that there was always peace and repose there, for on occasions it would be used for harbouring visiting heads of states, and then there would be frenetic activity. When President Clinton dropped in for a visit of only a day he had a retinue of over a hundred, including a doctor, nurse, kitchen steward and various political advisers as well as a host of Secret Service men. In addition to exhaustive arrangements about protocol and security visitors had to be entertained in a thoroughly English way; they were shown round the house and briefed on its antiquities (including the Prison Room, where the unfortunate Lady Mary Grey, younger sister of Lady Jane the Ten-Day Queen, was locked away on the orders of Queen Elizabeth I for the offence of making an unsuitable marriage); they were taken for a walk in the garden and grounds where they might plant a tree and then on to a local pub where they would drink tepid beer; and in the evening there might be a performance by a peripatetic opera company.

Just before he left Lord Lee wrote in the Chequers visitors’ book: ‘This house of Peace and Ancient Memories was given to England as a thanks-offering for the deliverance in the Great War 1914-1918 and as a place of rest and recreation for her Prime Ministers for ever.’

Few will dispute that the Lees’ bequest has been an unqualified success.

Notes

1. Even a bath was considered inessential.

2. Strangely, the one exception was Lloyd George. Although fulsome in his thanks and praises to the Lees, he confided to his secretary (and second wife) that he felt uneasy in Chequers and that it was full of ghosts of dull people. His wife, Margaret, also disliked it, but then she could never love anywhere that was not in North Wales.

1

FROM CATHERINE WALPOLE TO ANNE NORTH

An empty, coquettish, affected woman, anything rather than correct in her own conduct, or spotless in her fame, greedy of admiration.’ -Lady Mary Wortley Montague on Catherine Walpole

Caress the favourite, avoid the unfortunate and trust nobody. – Advice of Mary Bute to her husband

CATHERINE WALPOLE

Although Robert Walpole is generally accepted to have been the first English Prime Minister, it is not a title he himself would have acknowledged, and it did not come into official use until a century later. His position was that of First Lord of the Treasury, but he was the first man to be head of a government consisting entirely of his own supporters, with powers, previously exercised by the sovereign, to appoint them and fire them as he wished.

As well as being the first he is also the longest-serving Prime Minister, holding office for over twenty years. In many ways this is surprising: in an aristocratic age he was no aristocrat, nor was he a great orator or inspirational politician. The reason he was able to stay in office for so long, in spite of strong, sometimes vitriolic, opposition, was his hard head for business, his great capacity for work and a keen insight into human nature; to this should be added the wholesale corruption of Parliament.1

He was the third son of a Norfolk landowner and as such would, in the normal course of events, probably have been put into some trade or profession or, possibly, the Church. But with the death of his two elder brothers his father set about grooming him as heir to his estate, and this included finding him a suitable wife. In this Robert had no part; he was expected to accept his father’s choice, which was for a lady of a different class, the daughter of a well-to-do Kentish timber merchant, who was also the granddaughter of a former Lord Mayor of London.

Catherine Shorter brought with her a handsome dowry but was otherwise an unfortunate selection. She had little interest in politics and none at all in country life, with a particular distaste for Norfolk. Her aspirations lay in the world of fashion. Such things as clothes, jewellery, gossip and cards were what absorbed her. To achieve her ends she could be recklessly extravagant, and for much of their marriage Walpole was heavily in debt. Her physical charms were considerable and for a time Walpole went along with her modish lifestyle, but he soon tired of it. He was never a courtly figure: to the end of his life he had a rustic air about him that was out of place in high society. And so after six years their marriage had virtually broken down, and most of the time they went their separate ways: Robert to the life of a Norfolk country squire – farming, hunting, shooting, carousing-while Catherine dabbled in the more brittle delights of London and Bath. During those years each gave the other ample grounds for divorce, but there was never any question of this or even a legal separation. They continued to see each other from time to time to keep up the pretence that their marriage was still intact, and they were unbothered about each other’s activities while they were apart.

During the last thirty years of their marriage Robert sired at least two illegitimate children, including one by Maria Skerrett, who became his regular mistress and then his second wife after the death of Catherine.

Meanwhile Catherine’s life, too, had been licentious and her lovers had included, so it was rumoured, the Prince of Wales (the future George II). When in 1717, eleven years after her last child, she gave birth to a son there was considerable speculation as to his paternity. In time Horatio, or Horace as he was better known, was to become one of the great wits and writers of his age. In almost every way, in looks and character, he was quite unlike Robert, and the general belief was that he was the son of Carr, Lord Hervey, with whom he had much in common, notably a polished literary style and a waspish tongue. This was stated positively in one of her numerous letters by a leading light of society, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.2 Robert, however, always accepted Horace as his son, although it was noticeable that he had little to do with him.

Catherine was not without her successes in society life, but it seems that generally she was not highly regarded. Lady Mary was scathing about her: ‘an empty, coquettish, affected woman, anything rather than correct in her own conduct, or spotless in her fame, greedy of admiration’. Certainly it is easy to find fault with her, but in fairness it should be remembered that she had had a difficult life: married to a man with whom she had little in common and with whom she had had six babies or miscarriages in six years. And being the mother of Horace redeems much.

By the time of Catherine’s death Robert had been living with Maria Skerrett for ten years. He married her at once, but she died of a miscarriage five months later. Robert by then was sixty-one and did not marry again. Maria had been the great love of his life. Although no great beauty, she was clearly a remarkable lady. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was fulsome in her praises, writing of her ‘sweetness of temper and many agreeable qualities’. Robert was inconsolable at her loss, but she had given him ten years of happiness. He died eight years later.

HENRIETTA NEWCASTLE

The revolution of 1688, which overthrew James II and replaced him with William III and Mary, is generally recognized as marking the predominance of the powers of Parliament over those of the monarchy, and for this reason has become known as ‘glorious’. But what happened to Parliament soon afterwards was far from glorious. The House of Commons, once the great upholder of constitutional rights and personal liberty, was systematically corrupted so that it became the servile instrument of the Whig oligarchy. This became possible partly by means of outright bribery but more especially by what was known as jobbery; that is, providing supporters with comfortable, well-paid jobs on which they came to depend for their livelihood. At elections votes were easily procured – in the so-called rotten boroughs there was often only a handful of voters who could usually be bribed or otherwise coerced into voting for the candidate of the local aristocrat. There was no secret voting at that time, and if a voter stepped out of line he would soon pay the penalty by being ousted from his home or job or both. The result of this was that the House of Commons was filled with abject placemen out for what they could get. As Walpole so bitterly remarked: All these men have their price.’

In this field of jobbery and corruption no one played a more prominent and flagrant role than Thomas Pelham-Holles, Duke of Newcastle. He owned estates in eleven English counties and had enormous political influence, which he exercised to the full. Not a particularly gifted or intelligent man, he yet brought political patronage to a fine art, so that for over forty years he held high offices of state, including that of First Lord of the Treasury, and no government was possible without his support.

At an early stage in his career Newcastle realized that it was necessary for him to make a prestigious marriage. Love would not come into the matter. Station and influence were everything. And, casting around, his eyes fell on Henrietta (usually known as Harriet) Godolphin, of no great beauty or vivacity but of impeccable antecedents. One of her grandfathers, the first Earl Godolphin, had held high office under four monarchs, and the other was the great Duke of Marlborough. Negotiations were opened and on Harriet’s side these were carried out by her grandmother, the formidable Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough. Some hard bargaining ensued over the size of Harriet’s dowry, on which at first the two sides could not agree. A mediator was found in Sir John Vanbrugh, the architect, who had done work both at Blenheim Palace and at Newcastle’s stately home at Claremont in Surrey, and he reported back to Newcastle that as in all her other traffick, so in a husband for her Grand Daughter, the duchess would fain have him good and cheap’. Eventually, however, a compromise was reached, Newcastle looking forward (vainly as it proved) to founding a family descended from the Duke of Marlborough, and Duchess Sarah realizing that the physical charms of her granddaughter were not great.

Although at first there was no love in their marriage this was to come in time; Thomas and Harriet became deeply devoted to each other and found a number of interests in common. These did not, however, include politics, to which Thomas was passionately devoted but in which Harriet took only a passing interest. She would not go electioneering, nor did she become a great political hostess. When Thomas was away from home, which he was frequently, he wrote to her every day, but the content of his letters was not weighty matters of state but rather gossip, or tittle-tattle as he called it, which he knew would amuse her. The great sadness of their marriage was that it brought no children. After one miscarriage Harriet had no further pregnancies. It may be that one reason for this was Harriet’s health, which was always precarious. She seemed to suffer interminably from one complaint after another, and most of her visits away from home were for treatment at Bath or some other spa. On these, as at all times, a troupe of doctors and apothecaries were in attendance with fancy cures that almost certainly did more harm than good.

It must not be supposed, however, that Harriet led an idle life, dabbling in the arts and fretting about her health. She took an active part in the management and development of the Claremont estate and in particular helped her husband by keeping meticulous accounts. She seems to have inherited a clear head for money in part, perhaps, from her grandfather, the first Earl Godolphin, who was a distinguished Lord of the Treasury, and also from her grandmother, Sarah, whose parsimony and cupidity were legendary. And this hard head was badly needed, for her husband’s personal finances were always in chaos. He might have been immensely wealthy in land and electoral influence but ready money was always in short supply. He was forever in debt with creditors clamouring for settlements.

In spite of her ill health and the ministrations of quack doctors, Harriet was to survive her husband by eight years.

HESTER CHATHAM

After the accession of George III, Prime Ministers (or First Lords of the Treasury, as they were still called) came and went in quick succession. For the most part these were undistinguished men who were not always the most powerful member of the government. This was notably the case when William Pitt, later Lord Chatham, was a minister, for whatever post he held he was always the dominant force in the Cabinet.

William Pitt was a phenomenon. The odds against his achieving high office were long. In an aristocratic age he was the younger son of a commoner, without great wealth and, initially, with no powerful connections. Moreover, he had a great capacity for making enemies: most leading statesmen were ill disposed towards him, and both George I and George II detested him. And yet he succeeded in imposing himself on both kings and the ruling clique. All governments dreaded his opposition and sought, sometimes cravenly, to gain his support. For with all his disadvantages Pitt did have unique qualities. Outstanding among these was his magnificent oratory. Perhaps no other British statesman has ever had such a hold over Parliament – and not only Parliament. At his most powerful most of the country came under his spell. He was War Minister during the Seven Years War, and opinions may have differed as to his ability as an administrator or strategist, but few would deny the electrifying effect he had on those who came in contact with him and that he more than anyone was responsible for winning one of Britain’s most successful wars and establishing the first British Empire.

Pitt’s great popularity in the country was due not only to his oratory; of equal importance were his independence and integrity. In Parliaments full of placemen and timeservers he stood out as being his own man with a reputation for being scrupulous about money and refusing to rely on any form of patronage.3 In a country where the great majority of the people were unrepresented in Parliament he came to be regarded as their spokesman against the deeply entrenched ruling caste; hence his sobriquet ‘the Great Commoner’.

For whatever reasons, Pitt did not marry until he was forty-six, when his choice of wife was Lady Hester Grenville, the offspring of a marriage between two powerful and ambitious Buckinghamshire families: the Grenvilles of Wotton and the Temples of Stowe.4 Lady Hester was thirty-three and had probably known William Pitt for at least fifteen years, so it would not seem to have been a particularly romantic marriage, but neither was it just a dynastic match. All the evidence is that they were in love, and the marriage never faltered, producing five children including the brilliant William, known to history as ‘Pitt the Younger’. Credit for the strength of the marriage must go to Lady Hester. It is never easy to be married to a genius, and William was more difficult than most. In the first place, he suffered from appalling health. Since childhood he had been afflicted with gout, which today is mainly associated with pain in the feet but in the eighteenth century was used to describe a variety of symptoms, and Pitt was affected all over including in his bowels. He seems to have been in almost constant pain, endlessly seeking relief by drinking the waters at various spas and by taking the advice of doctors with imaginative but unscientific cures. His nervous system, too, was prone to violent lapses, when he would be plunged into the deepest depressions; his mind would become clouded and he would become obsessed with wild and impractical ideas.5 Despite all these torments Lady Hester was a tower of strength, never failing in her love and devotion. As far as possible she pandered to his whims and was always soothing and supportive. Particularly trying must have been his theatricality. For Pitt was essentially a great actor and, like most great actors, was never off-stage. Everything, even the most trivial details such as the arrangement of his bandages and bedclothes, had to be invested with drama when visitors were expected. Never did Hester lose sight of the fact that she had the care of a great man, whom it was her bounden duty to protect and sustain.

She did not meddle much with politics, being fully occupied with her husband and five children. She did, however, perform valuable services as an intermediary especially when, as quite often happened, her husband had shut himself up in his room and would communicate with no one but her. In 1761, after William’s resignation as Secretary of State, Hester was created a baroness in her own right, an honour that was surely hard won and well deserved.

MARY BUTE

When, at the age of twenty-two, George III came to the throne he was full of lofty ideas about purifying the political scene and ridding the country of the venal Whig oligarchs who had for so long been in power. In this ambitious aim he had been inspired partly by his mother, Princess Augusta, and partly by his tutor. John Stuart, Earl of Bute, for years an impecunious Scottish nobleman on the make, had been greatly favoured by fortune. Almost by chance he had been taken into the household of Frederick, Prince of Wales, George’s father, and had then established an intimate relationship with Princess Augusta. This may or may not have been of an amorous nature,6 but it is certain that, on the premature death of Frederick, Bute became the dominant influence in Augusta’s life, and she appointed him personal tutor to her son, then, at the age of fourteen, heir to the throne.

Bute had good looks, some erudition and a compelling personality, and it was not long before he had gained a complete ascendancy over the young prince, a somewhat callow, indolent youth with no particular interests or ambitions. Under Bute’s tutelage, however, this would change completely: he became filled with moral fervour and an urge to improve himself in every way. This was all to the good, but less beneficial was his devotion to and complete dependence on Bute.

When George III came to the throne he lost no time in making Bute Secretary of State and in the following year Prime Minister in place of the Duke of Newcastle. The year 1761 was indeed an annus mirabilis for Bute, for it was then, too, that he became a rich man. In 1736 he had married the daughter of a very wealthy but niggardly Yorkshire landowner, Edward Wortley Montagu, whose wife, Lady Mary, was the famous scholar and traveller. Both parents had strongly opposed the marriage, as at the time Bute had seemed to be a penniless peer without prospects. It had been necessary, therefore, for the couple to elope. In time, however, as Bute’s prospects improved they came to terms with him, and when Edward died in 1761 he left his large fortune to his daughter.7 As well as great riches this also brought Bute the potential for powerful electoral influence, as he became the owner of at least nine rotten boroughs. In the same year, following the death of the Duke of Argyll, Bute inherited control of the forty-five Scottish members of the Commons, so that as a borough-monger Bute was almost on a par with the Duke of Newcastle. With this number of parliamentary seats at his disposal, great powers lay within his reach, but he proved unable to grasp them. He was not an adept politician and did not remain long in office. Besides his rapid rise to high office, his Scottish birth and his suspected liaison with Princess Augusta had made him many enemies. London mobs frequently demonstrated against him, bearing aloft a boot (a mispronunciation of his name) and a petticoat (as a protest at undue feminine influence).

For a time after his resignation he continued to have influence with the King, but this was to decline. His wife, Mary, had by then borne him eleven children as well as providing almost limitless money. She had watched over his rise to power with some acumen: ‘Caress the favourite, avoid the unfortunate and trust nobody’ had been her worldly advice to him. In recognition of her services she was created a peeress in her own right as Baroness Mountstuart of Wortley.

ANNE NORTH

The government that lasted longest during the early years of George Ill’s reign was that headed by Lord North, a name for ever associated with the loss of the American colonies and one of England’s most disastrous wars. Posterity has not been kind to him: he is usually represented as obstinate, foolish and out of control. But he was in fact an able parliamentarian, a good administrator and a man of great charm and wit. If his prime ministership had come to an end before the American entanglement he might have been regarded as an outstanding peacetime holder of that office. His fault was that he felt it his duty to carry out the wishes of his King and stand by him through thick and thin, even though this meant supporting a policy which in his heart he knew to be wrong and heading for disaster. For this he came under ferocious attack from most of the great orators of that time (including William Pitt, Charles James Fox and Edmund Burke), attacks that he bore with great courtesy and good humour.

Throughout his long ordeal it is doubtful that even he could have survived without the devoted support of his wife and family. At the age of twenty-four he had married Anne Speke, the daughter of a Somerset landowner, who was reputed to be a lady with great expectations. But, in the event, these did not materialize, and for most of his life North lived in straitened financial circumstances, dependent on the salary he obtained from his public offices. This was not necessary as his father, the Earl of Guildford, was very wealthy but also, unfortunately, very niggardly and long lived, so that North came into his inheritance only in the last two years of his life.

Little is known of Anne Speke, but there seems to have been general agreement that she was no great beauty, although, like her husband, sensible and sweet-tempered. She was also a prolific bearer of children – altogether seven, five of which in ten years. One of their daughters later recorded that during their thirty-six years of marriage she had never heard an unkind word between them.

North died in 1792 at the age of sixty, by then completely blind and heavily overweight. Anne died five years later.

Notes

1. More of this later. See p. 19.

2. A famous eighteenth-century bluestocking. As well as a scholar and a poet she was also a prolific diarist and scandalmonger.

3. This was not perhaps altogether deserved. In Parliament for a time he represented the most corrupt of rotten boroughs, Old Sarum, an almost entirely deserted site. He also found it necessary in order to maintain himself in office to come to terms with the Duke of Newcastle, the great wielder of patronage.

4. The descendants of whom were to become Dukes of Buckingham.

5. Particularly in the matter of gardens in which he had a consuming interest, and he would suddenly demand sweeping and impossible changes to the landscape.

6. Characteristically Horace Walpole (see p. 18) had no doubts about it.

7. This was after disinheriting his wildly eccentric son, whose aberrations included converting to Islam and marrying a Nubian.

2

FROM URSULA ADDINGTON TO MARY GREY

She has grown ugly by Jove. – Wellington about to propose to Kitty after an absence of nine years

URSULA ADDINGTON

In 1800 the English political scene was dominated by William Pitt the Younger. He had become Prime Minister in 1783 at the age of twenty-four and held that office with one intermission until his death in 1806. He was unmarried.

While Pitt was out of office between 1801 and 1804 his place was taken by Henry Addington, competent and businesslike but a dull speaker and an uninspired personality – a marked contrast to Pitt.1 While he was Prime Minister peace was made with Napoleon by the treaty of Amiens (‘a peace of which everyone was glad and no one proud’). When the war was renewed he was forced to resign and make way for the return of Pitt. Soon afterwards he was created Lord Sidmouth and held high office in various governments. He lived until the age of eighty-seven, by which time he had sunk into obscurity where he has remained ever since.

His marriage to Ursula Mary Hammond of Cheam was a completely happy one, although they were of widely differing temperaments. Where Ursula was lively, outgoing and humorous, Henry was sombre and buttoned up. But they were deeply devoted to each other and Ursula was able to draw Henry out in a way no one else could; only with her was he able to feel relaxed and at ease. Their marriage was blighted by tragedy: Ursula had at least two miscarriages and two children died in infancy; later their eldest son suffered a mental breakdown from which he never recovered. When Ursula died in her fifties Henry was devastated and went into a mourning that some found excessive. Twelve years later he married again at the age of sixty-six – a widow some thirty years younger than him who, like Ursula, was able to bring some warmth and humour into his life. She predeceased him by two years.

ANNE GRENVILLE

On the death of Pitt a coalition government was formed known as ‘the Ministry of All Talents’. At the head of this was George, Lord Grenville, a politician of wide experience and considerable ability but not well liked. Cold and aloof, he made little effort to contain his natural arrogance. At the age of thirty-three he proposed marriage to Anne Pitt, daughter of Thomas Pitt, younger brother of Lord Chatham. This was considered a highly advantageous match by the relatives of both parties, as it would form an alliance between two eminent Whig families; but at the age of seventeen Anne was somewhat overawed by the overtures of this grand, alarming figure whom she hardly knew and for a time held back. Then, after parental and other pressures had been brought to bear, she relented. There was little question at first of it being a love match, but in time the two became deeply devoted and found a number of interests in common, although these did not include politics. In spite of being the niece of Pitt the Elder and the cousin of Pitt the Younger, Anne kept aloof from them. They had no children.

DOROTHY PORTLAND

The Ministry of All Talents was followed in 1807 by another makeshift coalition, headed by the elderly Whig grandee William Bentinck, third Duke of Portland, a man of great stature and erudition but few political skills. By 1807 he was sixty-nine, in poor health and not at all anxious to take on the tasks of Prime Minister; but he was persuaded that it was his duty, and for two years in the middle of the war against Napoleon he struggled to keep some control over the disparate groups in his Cabinet.2

His wife, Dorothy Cavendish, was the daughter of the fourth Duke of Devonshire. Dorothy and her three brothers had been brought up in great splendour but amid much family discord. Their grandmother, wife of the third Duke, had strongly disapproved of the marriage of Dorothy’s mother and father and would have nothing to do with the children, even when they were left orphans; and so they were cared for somewhat coolly by uncles and aunts.

After her marriage Dorothy kept in close contact with her brother, the fifth Duke of Devonshire, and tried to support him through his troubled marriage to Georgiana Spencer. In middle age she had become an imperious lady and took a strongly censorious view of her sister-in-law’s peccadilloes (particularly her gambling debts), at one time urging that she be sent to Coventry by the Devonshire family. Throughout her life Dorothy was a staunch and active Whig and when, at the time of the French Revolution, her husband showed signs of gravitating towards the Younger Pitt and the Tories, she held him in check; it was not until after her death from cancer in 1794 that he felt able to make such a move.

JANE PERCEVAL

When the Duke of Portland’s health finally broke down there were several brilliant men who might have succeeded him, but in the event the choice fell on Spencer Perceval – capable, courageous, honourable but a political mediocrity. He was the second son of the Earl of Egmont and on his mother’s side was related to the Earl of Northampton. Being a younger son without an inheritance it was necessary for him to earn his own living, which he did at the Bar, eventually with considerable success.

At the age of twenty-five Spencer fell deeply in love with Jane Wilson, the nineteen-year-old daughter of a reasonably prosperous ex-army officer. Jane returned his love, but her father, considering that Spencer, although the son of an earl, was impecunious, forbade the match. Two years later, however, when Jane came of age, he could forbid it no longer, and she and Spencer were married in 1790. By then Spencer’s prospects at the Bar were improving, but his finances were still stretched and they began their married life in lodgings above a carpet shop in Bedford Row. In time his earnings increased considerably, but so, too, did his family – at an alarming rate, eventually numbering ten.

In 1794 at the age of thirty-four Spencer was elected to Parliament, where he soon made a name for himself by his oratory and debating skills, but his career was always held back by shortage of money. When in 1809 he was offered the premiership it was something of a poisoned chalice, as the Tory Party at the time was bitterly divided and the war against Napoleon was at a critical stage. It was no mean achievement on his part that for three years he held the party together and kept the country on course in the European war. It is doubtful that he would ever have become a great Prime Minister, but this was not put to the test as in 1812 he was assassinated outside Parliament by a lunatic with a grievance.

After her husband’s death Jane and her large family were reasonably well provided for by Parliament, and two years later she married again – to an army officer with adequate means. She died thirty years later at the age of seventy-six.

LOUISA LIVERPOOL

Spencer Perceval was succeeded as Prime Minister by Robert Jenkinson, second Earl of Liverpool, apparently another man of no great distinction. But he was more able than might appear. Disraeli’s judgement of him as ‘the arch mediocrity’ was surely not justified. He was to remain Prime Minister for fifteen years (longer than any other Prime Minister except Walpole). His government brought the war against Napoleon to a victorious conclusion and was to survive, although with bitter criticism, the troubled times at home which occurred in the years that followed. And when he died, still in office, there was a major split in the Tory Party.

In 1798 Robert Jenkinson, as he then was, married Louisa Hervey, the youngest daughter of the notorious Earl of Bristol, also Bishop of Derry – an unusual combination even in the eighteenth century. The marriage, although childless, was a happy one, and, unlike those of most of Louisa’s nearest relations, did not break up. In reaction perhaps to the ‘dissipation, vice and folly’ she found all around her, and particularly in her own family, Louisa was noted for her strict Evangelical piety and works of charity among the poor. Towards the less righteous members of her own class she tended to be outspokenly censorious and had a reputation in some quarters for prudery.

JOAN CANNING

On the death of Lord Liverpool the Prince Regent, overcoming a strong distaste for him, chose George Canning as the next Prime Minister. Canning, on the progressive wing of the Tory Party, was a brilliant but controversial character. In wit and intelligence he was unsurpassed, but he was also arrogant and malicious, which had made him many enemies. For several years he had been an outstanding Foreign Secretary, but he was to occupy the premiership for only seven months before he died.

Canning had a turbulent childhood. His father, a ne’er-do-well Irish lawyer, died when George was a baby, leaving his mother virtually penniless, so that for a time she was compelled to earn her living as an actress, at that time considered a dubious profession. Later George was taken under the wing of a wealthy uncle who saw to it that he went to Eton and Oxford and was then elected to Parliament, where his skills as a speaker attracted the attention of the Younger Pitt, who gave him office.

Great as were Canning’s abilities, however, he would not have gone far in politics without financial backing, which at first he did not have. But in 1799, at the age of twenty-nine, he fell in love with Joan Scott, a lady of beauty and charm as well as considerable wealth. Her father, a Scottish general, had made a substantial fortune, so it was said, as a professional gambler. In 1799 he was no longer alive, nor was his wife, but his three daughters had been left well endowed. Of these, the elder two had married heirs to dukedoms (Portland and Moray), and it might have been expected that Joan would follow suit, but instead she succumbed to the overtures of George Canning, brilliant but impecunious and something of a political adventurer. Inevitably it was thought by many that George had married Joan for her money, but it is certain that his love for her was genuine. Until then his life had not been chaste and he had had love affairs with various ladies including, improbably, a dalliance with the coarse and voluptuous Princess of Wales.3 But these had been transitory, and with Joan Scott he was never in doubt that it was true love at last.

Certainly the marriage proved a happy one and survived successfully Canning’s stormy political career. It is evident that Joan had no great addiction to politics and did not aspire to be a great political hostess. She was content to be her husband’s confidante and listen to him pouring out his woes with occasional words of sympathy. It seems she made no great impression on the beau monde. A contemporary described her as ‘a pretty woman with a large fortune and of very pleasing manners’, and, if this is to damn with faint praise, at least she neither gave rise to any scandal nor caused her husband serious embarrassment.

Canning died in 1827 at the age of fifty-seven, his life almost certainly shortened by strain and overwork. In spite of faults of temperament he was widely lamented. It was felt that an exceptionally bright light had gone from the political firmament. Even George IV, at one time a bitter enemy, relented and, as a mark of respect, created Joan a viscountess in her own right.

CATHERINE WELLINGTON

For a time after the death of Canning his followers on the left of the Conservative Party remained in the ascendant under the premiership of Lord Goderich. But ‘Goody Goderich’, as he was known, was no leader. Reputed to be ‘as firm as a bulrush’, he resigned after a few months, when the leadership passed to the Duke of Wellington on the hard right of the party. Wellington’s genius on the battlefield did not extend to the political arena. Under him there was a major split in the Tory Party, and later he was forced to accept most of the changes he was pledged to resist – notably Catholic emancipation and the reform of Parliament. Wellington’s marriage, too, was a failure.