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If the Duchess of Gordon
was tireless in the performance of her social duties, her exertions in the
wider sphere of politics were even more remarkable. Her desire to enrol
the name of Gordon in the lists of fame side by side with those of Pitt
and Dundas, her qualities of masculine determination and independence, her
caustic wit, as well as the rank, sex, and beauty which exempted her from
those restraints usually imposed on a woman by the exigencies of social
intercourse, combined to make her the most active and useful partisan of
Pitt’s administration. As the blandishments of the beautiful Duchess of
Devonshire were of infinite assistance in the electoral campaign of
Charles James Fox in 1784, so were the talent for intrigue and the
personal attractions of Jane, Duchess of Gordon, assets of inestimable
value to William Pitt and his advisers. In her splendid town house in Pall
Mall – a house that was once the property of the Marquis of Buckingham,
afterwards became the headquarters of the War Office, and is now, alas! an
automobile club – she collected a crowd of all the most distinguished
Whigs of the day, as well as a number of admiring satellites and
sycophantic hangers-on. It is even said that, relying on her immunity from
any obedience to the recognised usages of society, she would send for
members of Parliament who showed signs of wavering in their allegiance,
and use every means in her power to confirm their adherence to the
Government. [The Memoirs of Sir Nathaniel Wraxhall, vol. iii. p.267.
(1836.) (In the Life of Sir James Mackintosh, vol. i. p.189, we
read of her unsuccessful efforts to detach that distinguished philosopher
from his party.)]
As a firm follower of Pitt,
and consequently of the Queen, she was naturally unpopular among the
partisans of the Prince of Wales. On one occasion the Prince’s secretary
uttered some ribald remark at the expense of her Majesty in the presence
of the duchess. “You little, insignificant, good-for-nothing, upstart,
pert, chattering puppy,” said she; how dare you name your Royal Master’s
Royal Mother in that way?” She was not, indeed, a woman whom it was safe
to irritate or offend, and the freedom of her speech, too often of a
coarse and unrefined nature, gained her an unusual number of enemies.
Once, when the Earl of Buchan was speaking with unnecessary eloquence of
the brilliant talents of his family, she ingenuously inquired whether it
were not the case that they had been inherited from the mother, and were
consequently “all settled on the younger sons.” When Sir William Nairne
was raised to the bench in 1786 the duchess asked him what title he had
chosen. “I am Dunsinnan,” replied the eminent lawyer. “You astonish me,”
said her Grace, “for I never knew you had begun.” And similar examples of
her dry humour are numerous, but could not, for the most part, be printed
in these pages without incurring the just strictures of even the least
censorious reader. A certain lack of reserve in speech and thought was
evidently a heritage of the Maxwell family. Lady Wallace, the duchess’s
sister, wrote a play entitled The Whim which contained passages so
freely expressed that it was refused the Lord Chamberlain’s licence. The
duchess herself was an adept in the art of vituperation, and possessed a
fine uninterrupted flow of language and an extensive vocabulary which she
was never ashamed to use. She evidently agreed with that other Scotswoman
who, while lamenting a relative’s continual use of oaths, was wont to add
apologetically that “Nae doot, ‘tis a great offset to conversation.” [The
use of strong language was prevalent at that time among all classes of
society. There is a well-known story of how that staunch old Jacobite,
Lady Strange, when some tactless individual referred to Charles Edward in
her presence as “The Pretender,” rebuked him by exclaiming, “Pretender,
indeed, and be damned to you!” Sir William Stirling Maxwell, in one of his
essays, recounts an amusing anecdote of an old Scottish lady of
distinguished family who, while driving home from a ball one night, was
awakened by the carriage being stopped by the old coachman, who put his
head in at the window to tell her that he had seen a falling star. “And
what ha’e ye to do wi’ the stars, I wad like to ken?” asked his indignant
mistress. “Drive on this moment and be damned to you!” adding in a lower
tone, “as Sir John wad ha’ said, if he had been alive, honest man.”]
The duchess was a dangerous
enemy, but a good friend. Her friendships, “once formed were very sincere
and not easily shaken,” says a contemporary. [Memoirs of a Literary
Veteran, by R. Gillies, vol. i. p.298.] By her indomitable
perseverance and courage she acquired a measure of political power such as
probably no woman, with the brilliant exception of the Duchess of
Lauderdale, has ever possessed in this country before or since. It was
through her influence that her husband, who lacked both her initiative and
energy, received the Great Seal of Scotland, while his brother, Lord
William Gordon, was made Deputy Ranger of St. James’s and Hyde Parks, a
sinecure then much in request.
In 1787, when the Prince of
Wales’s debts had reached the alarming total of £200,000, and both Pitt
and Dundas were anxious that matters should be arranged without any
disclosures being made in the House of Commons, the Duchess of Gordon was
entrusted with the delicate task of settling the affair. The allowance of
the heir-apparent had always been a meagre one, at any rate in the opinion
of his friends. The King had appropriated to his own use the revenues of
the Duchy of Cornwall during his son’s minority, and declined to give any
account of their expenditure. Public opinion was consequently on the side
of the prince, and the government of the day thought it wise policy to
accommodate him. At Pitt’s suggestion the duchess spent many evenings in
the prince’s society, talking with all her accustomed freedom upon the
subject of his debts, and thus paving the way for the Chancellor of the
Exchequer, who subsequently interviewed him and gave the much-needed
promise of financial aid. Later on, when the question of George III.’s
insanity was the subject of a select committee, and had divided the nation
into two opposing and bitter parties, the Duchess of Gordon threw the
whole weight of her influence into the balance on the side of Pitt, and
consequently drew down much odium upon her own head.
She did not, however,
confine her exertions entirely to the promotion of party or family
interests, and at a time when the defeat of General Burgoyne’s army was
arousing sentiments of patriotism and loyalty throughout the country, was
one of the first to offer her personal assistance. Determined to employ
her enormous influence in promoting the enlistment of the required troops,
she left London in the very depth of winter, just as the gay season was
commencing, and set out for the Highlands, where her presence inspired the
peasantry to form a corps of volunteers. It must have been a great
sacrifice to this leader of Society to leave the centre of gaiety and
fashion and make a laborious pilgrimage by coach to the snow-swept North.
But the Duchess of Gordon was not to be stayed by any minor considerations
of personal discomfort. When duty, whether national or maternal, called
her, she obeyed without a question. In 1793 when the French Republic, then
in the throes of an internal revolution, declared war against Great
Britain and Holland, the Duke of Gordon offered to raise another regiment
of Highlanders to send abroad. His wife’s efforts to further such a
project were as strenuous as they were successful. The feeling in Scotland
for “Jenny of Monreith,” with her broad Scots accent and her still broader
sense of humour, was a very deep one. Wearing a military bonnet on her
head, she rode to all the country fairs, and, following the example of
another duchess, her great rival, distributed kisses to all men who were
willing to enlist. In the striking but not very flattering portrait of her
by Gainsborough, which was exhibited a Burlington House in 1907, she is
shown as wearing the headgear of the famous Highland regiment which she
assisted in raising, which is now one of the most sacred possessions of
the 2nd Battalion Gordon Highlanders (late 92nd). It
is said that she would hold a guinea between her lips and allow the
fortunate recruit to take it as a bullfinch takes seed from its mistress.
One young Highland blacksmith, whom every recruiting sergeant had besieged
in vain, was unable to resist the Duchess’s lure, took the kiss and the
guinea, and then threw the latter to the assembled crowd to show that his
motives were anything by mercenary. Several farmers are said to have
“taken the shilling” so as to obtain one of her Grace’s kisses, and then
paid the £1 fine, termed “smart money,” which enabled a recruit to
withdraw his enlistment. A kiss from Duchess Jane was well worth a pound,
said they, and probably they were right. The corps thus raised, and known
as the Northern or Gordon Fencibles, was afterwards reviewed in Hyde Park
by George III., being the first Highland regiment seen in London since the
review of the Black Watch in 1743.
It was on this journey to
the Highlands that the duchess was deeply shocked at discovering the
methods – more drastic than her own – in use in some parts of Scotland to
encourage recruiting. One day, as she was passing through a provincial
town where a battalion was at drill, she observed a sergeant beating some
unfortunate recruit with what appeared to be unnecessary violence. On
inquiring the nature of the crime which demanded such stringent
punishment, “No crime at all, if it please your Grace,” replied the
sergeant; “this is in our corps the way we have of making volunteers!” [Was
the duchess the heroine of Dean Ramsay’s famous story of the witty woman
who administered so well-merited a snub to a conceited Perthshire cavalry
colonel? He had been complaining of the inefficiency of his officers, and
saying that the whole duties of the corps devolved upon himself. “I am my
own captain,” he declared, “my own lieutenant, my own cornet, and my –“
“Your own trumpeter!” added the lady.] On her return to London the
duchess took occasion to mention this incident to Pitt, who no doubt
promised to give the matter his attention, just like any modern Prime
Minister. (Perhaps he even sent a memorandum on the subject to the
Secretary of State for War, who handed it to the Military Secretary, who
forwarded it to the Adjutant-General, who referred it to the
Inspector-General (or Director) of Recruiting, who initialled and passed
it on to the Director of Auxiliary Forces, who communicated its contents
to the Officer commanding the unit concerned, who ordered a Court of
Enquiry to assemble. That Memorandum may still be drifting along the
sluggish channels of military correspondence, to return to the War Office
in time to find that the question of the treatment of Volunteers has been
settled by the simple process of their total abolition.)
The presence of the duchess
was always sufficient to secure the success of any social entertainment.
In 1775, she appeared at a masquerade held at Banff – much to the scandal
of the local elders – in the house of a certain Mr. Abercromby. On this
occasion she was dressed as a flower-girl, but changed this simple costume
before supper for a superb court dress. When she unmasked and disclosed
her entrancing beauty and the glitter of her diamonds to the public gaze,
the admiration of her fellow-guests knew no bounds. “I had read the
Arabian tales,” says an officer of Marines who was present (and evidently
possessed those imaginative qualities usually attributed to members of his
amphibious profession), “and was transported to the regions of that
fanciful work.” [Personal Memories, by Pryse Lockhart Gordon, vol. i.
p.37.] This same officer, who afterwards joined the Duke of Gordon’s
Fencibles, was entertained as a poor subaltern at Gordon Castle by the
duchess and her daughters – “beautiful and interesting nymphs” he calls
them. [Ibid., p.67.] He describes the ardour with which Lord
Monboddo, another of the duchess’s guests, remarked to him, “Sir, her
Grace had a brilliancy and radiance about her like the rays round the head
of an apostle!” [Ibid., p.399.] Her laugh, too, as another
contemporary tells us, had “a mesmeric influence, was unequalled, and,
once heard, could not be forgotten”; [Memoirs of a Literary Veteran,
vol. i. p297.] so it is not surprising that she won all hearts.
The duchess was always
ready to lend the weight of her influence to the advancement of literature
and art, in which she took a deep, if not very intelligent, interest. “Her
Grace’s present ruling passion is literature,” wrote Mrs Grant of Laggan,
in 1808. “To be the arbitress of literary taste and the patroness of
genius – a distinction for which her want of early culture and the flutter
of a life devoted to very different pursuits, has rather disqualified her.
Yet she has strong flashes of intellect, immediately lost in the formless
confusion of a mind ever hurried on by contending passions and
contradictory objects, of which one can never be obtained without
relinquishing the others.” [Memoirs and Correspondence of Mrs. Grant of
Laggan, vol. i. p.182] Byron, too, in one of his letters, [The
Letters of Lord Byron, p.92. (Moore, 1875.)] says that his cousin,
Lord Alexander Gordon, told him that the duchess requested he would
introduce his “poetical lordship to her Highness,” as she had bought his
volume, in common with the rest of the fashionable world, and wished to
claim her relationship with the author.
It was through the kindness
of the duchess –
“Her Grace,
Whose flambeaux flash
against the morning skies,
And gild our chamber
ceilings as they pass,” –
That Robert Burns, like herself a native of Ayrshire,
was introduced to the delights of the New Assembly Rooms at Edinburgh,
where he suffered such acute discomfort and felt so thoroughly out of
place. Of the ploughman-poet she once confessed that she had never met a
man whose conversation “so completely carried her off her feet.” [Allan
Cunningham’s Life of Burns, vol. i. p.131] Burns paid several
visits to Gordon Castle, [In 1787 Burns paid a brief visit to Gordon
Castle, which in his diary he calls a “fine palace, worthy of the noble,
the polite, and generous proprietor.” The duke and duchess were both
extremely kind to him. “The duke makes me happier than ever great man
did,” he writes; “noble, princely, yet mild and condescending and affable
– gay and kind. The duchess charming, witty, kind and sensible. God bless
them!”] and, indeed, the intimacy of the friendship that existed
between the duchess and the poet gave rise to a great deal of ill-natured
gossip at the time.
Sir Walter Scott, however,
does not seem to have been very favourably impressed by her charms, though
he would sometimes attend her soirées and read portions of
Marmion to her guests. [Memoirs of a Literary Veteran, vol. i.
p.323.] “The duchess stayed here [Edinburgh], a day or two on her way
to Ireland,” he writes to Lady Abercorn in December 1809. “I rather wonder
that your viceroy [Charles, 4th Duke of Richmond.] has
not contrived to parry this visitation from la chère maman. She is
not, begging her Grace’s pardon, altogether the conciliatory sort of
person that is best calculated to endure, and to restrain, and to
mitigate, all the little heart-burnings which must arise in every court
whether regal or vice-regal.” [Familiar Letters of Walter Scott (D.
Douglas. Edin., 1894), vol. i. p.157.]
The duchess, on the other
hand, accused Sir Walter of not paying her sufficient attentions, a
neglect for which he apologised by declaring that he had but little time
at his disposal, and that he should therefore be an object of pity rather
than abuse. They were, however, as he says, very civil whenever they met,
though there was evidently little love lost between them. Mrs. Grant of
Laggan relates how she saw Walter Scott at the duchess’s house in
Edinburgh in 1809. On this occasion her Grace told Mrs. Grant that her
respect for the prejudices of the Scotch was so great that she never “saw
company,” played cards, or went out in Edinburgh on a Sunday. In England,
added the duchess, she was not so particular, because there every one else
did what they pleased, and she naturally followed the fashion, but was
unwilling to introduce habits of laxity in the matter of Sabbath
observance into Scotland. “I stared at these gradations of piety,” writes
the sage old lady, “growing warmer as they came northward; but was wise
enough to stare silently.” [Memoirs and Correspondence of Mrs. Grant of
Laggan, vol. i. p.199.]
One of the duchess’s many
guests at Gordon Castle was Dr. James Beattie, poet and essayist, who
maintained a prolific correspondence with her. His epistolary style was of
a somewhat florid description. “ I pray that you Grace may enjoy all the
health and happiness that good air, goat’s whey, romantic solitude, and
the society of the loveliest children in the world can bestow,” [The
Letters of James Beattie, L.L.D., vol. ii. p.51. (1820.)] he wrote
when she was staying at Glenfiddich, the duke’s shooting-box in the
Grampians. In 1780 he sent the duchess some whisky contained in bottles
bearing upon the seal a representation of the Three Graces, “whom I take
to be you Grace’s near relations,” he says, “as they have the
honour, not only to bear one of your titles, but also to resemble you
exceedingly in form, feature, and manner. If you had lived three thousand
years ago, which I am very glad you did not, there would have been four of
them, and you the first.” [Ibid., p.81.] In return for all this
flattery the duchess gave her correspondent a copy of Sir Joshua Reynolds’
famous picture of herself.
The Duke of Gordon, himself
a writer of comic songs, [“There is Cauld Kail in Aberdeen” was his.]
had encouraged the musical genius of his butler, a man of the name of
Marshall, whom Burns has termed “the first composer of strathspeys of the
age”; and the duchess was one of the first to patronise Neil Gow, the
“father of Scotch ball music,” who wrote the famous “Farewell to Whisky,”
and whom she met at Athol House. Under her protection Scottish music began
to rise towards a deserved eminence. She introduced and popularised
dancing as an accomplishment worthy of study, and by making it fashionable
at routs and assemblies, did good work in diminishing the passion for
gambling, which had hitherto been the sole amusement indulged in at
evening parties by members of the upper class. Reels and strathspeys took
the place of rouge-et-noir and faro; round games were abandoned for
country (if not for round) dances. “If,” says the author of Public
Characters, in a burst of inspired oratory which compares favourably
with the impassioned tirades against so-called “smart society” nowadays so
prevalent in the pulpit and the press – “if the flow of hilarity tends
more to beauty than anxiety, avarice, and rage; if a fine young woman
appear to more advantage interweaving in the animating dance than with her
whole soul wrapt up in the odd trick” – “bridge” had not then been
invented, or I fear the rival attractions of the ballroom would have been
scarcely strong enough to oust so alluring a game; - “if it is better to
enjoy innocent pleasure than to lose sums that may involve circumstances
or distress relations; then is dancing superior to gaming; and the person
who has substituted so delightful a recreation in the place of so
pernicious a pursuit, and who has substituted it into those circles in
which it chiefly prevails, and which inferior classes are so apt to envy,
has produced a beneficial change on society.” “Such,” concludes the
chronicler, pausing a moment to take breath, “has resulted from the
countenance of the Duchess of Gordon.”
That countenance, however –
of which Wraxall writes that it was overclouded by occasional frowns of
anger or vexation, but much more frequently lighted up with smiles – was
destined to be sadly darkened by the shadows of adversity and unhappiness.
The violent conduct of her brother-in-law, Lord George, who incited the
mob to the famous riots of 1780, caused the name of Gordon to be publicly
execrated, and did incalculable harm to her prestige. In 1808 her youngest
and best-beloved son, Alexander, died suddenly in his twenty-third year,
and the shock of his death completely prostrated her. But she retained her
good looks to the end of her life, and when Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe
called upon her four years before she died, he found her looking
“perfectly beautiful, covered with lace veils and artificial roses,” and
surrounded by what he called the “three ugly yellow London babies” of the
Duchess of Manchester. Occasionally she would retire to her little house
at Kinrara, on the banks of the Spey.
“Here lived the lovely
Jane, who best combined
A beauteous form to a
superior mind,”
playing the part of Lady Bountiful, and spending her
time in “embellishing that mountain residence, and improving the situation
of the inhabitants in its neighbourhood.” [Correspondence of Sir John
Sinclair, vol. i. p.159.] At Badenoch she established a “farming
society” for her tenants, and started a manufactory of woollen stuffs
designed to give employment, as she said, to “Highland spinsters.” “Now I
have lost my daughter,” she writes in 1804, “agriculture and adorning
nature are my only delights.” [Ibid., p.180.] And again, “Books,
peace, and solitude are the blessings I value.” [Memoirs of a Literary
Veteran, vol. i. p.295.] But permanent rural seclusion was not
suited to her tastes. Her love of gaiety did not ever altogether desert
her. And five years before she died we read of her presence adding much to
the brilliancy of the winter season at Edinburgh. Her health and spirits
were no longer what they had been, but her conversation was still as
lively as ever, her looks as bright and attractive.
Her last days were fraught
with tragedy. As the years advanced she had gradually lost that unique
political power which it was her one ambition to retain. She had lost –
if, indeed, after the tragedy of her honeymoon she had ever possessed –
the love and affection of her husband, with whom she was no longer on
speaking terms. She accused him of meanness; he retorted by accusing her
of extravagance: and no doubt both these accusations were founded upon a
solid basis of truth. Estranged from most of her relations, she led a
wandering life, having no fixed home and few loyal friends, until
eventually this “Empress of fashion,” as Walpole calls her, died in
London, at Pulteney’s Hotel, Piccadilly, on April 11, 1812. It is said
that her body was exhibited by the waiters of the hotel to a curious
public, who were only too ready to pay their shillings to view the remains
of so illustrious a woman.
Once, long before, when she
was regretting the removal from her old house in George Square, Edinburgh,
to the more fashionable New Town, but declared that really the Old Town
was intolerably dull, the ever-courteous Henry Erskine had replied,
“Madam, that is as if the sun were to say, ‘It seems vastly dull weather –
I think I shall not rise this morning!’” [Henry Erskine: His Kinsfolk and
His Times, by Lt.-Col. Alexander Fergusson, p.278. (W. Blackwood,
1882.)] So, in the evening of her life, this social sun may perhaps
have found the weather “vastly dull,” as she sank to rest beneath the
political horizon which for so many years she had illumined and brightened
by her presence. |
