Brian Fothergill: The Mitred Earl (Frederick Hervey)

[selenak]

Overall: A short and entertaining biography by Brian Fothergill. Comes with some 1970s sexism (mostly directed at Emma Hamilton) and not exactly homophobia but weird ideas, as when the author quotes first Pope's vicious satire on Hervey the memoirist (which basically accuses Lord Hervey of androgyny and gayness) and then proudly points out Hervey produced eight children with Molly for all that supposed gayness, so there, Alexander Pope. (Brian Fothergill, the ability to procreate doesn't say anything about one's sexual orientation, not that said orientation needs defending in the first place. As cahn said, if Monsieur could do it... ) , but is not, repeat not, a hagiography. Our author points out that Frederick Hervey had a definite cruel streak in his temper, was very self centric and unbelievably callous when cutting off people and/or ignoring them despite all professed previous affection. It's no wonder Augustus was Molly's favourite son; loyalty isn't Frederick's strong suit, at least not when it comes to women, be they wives, daughters or mistresses/ heavily flirted with female friends. (William Hamilton as Fothergill says was one of the very few exceptions in Frederick's life, a relationship that lasted their entire life time, literally, because they were both born in 1730 (you know, that year where the most exciting thing that happened was Heinrich moving in with AW) and died in the same year, too, and from their public school days at Westminster on were firm friends who never had a fallout. Which is true for hardly anyone else and the Earl-Bishop. Though presumably it helped that once William Hamilton becomes an envoy, it's a long distance friendship punctured by occasional visits.



Sources: Fothergill doesn't use footnotes on the same page, but he does use notes to each chapter in the appendix, which, however, makes it more difficult to look up which source he uses for which quote. This is especially inconvenient because on the one hand, Fothergill uses "The Hamilton and Nelson Papers", edited by Morrison, A., but then he also uses "The Memoirs of Lady Hamilton", which made me go ?????, because while I know Alexandre Dumas wrote a novel about Emma in memoirs format - not like the fake memoirs of Madame de Maintenon, these were openly published under his name, Alexandre Dumas, as a historical novel - , I couldn't remember the latest Emma biography I'd read, "England's Mistress" by Kate Wiliams, mentioning Emma wrote real memoirs. Then I googled and saw they - very different book to the Dumas novel - were published the year after her death, and yeah, that pretty much settles it for me as a fake a la the Maintenon memoirs that got Voltaire so upset. Emma was a broke alcoholic when she died. Which not only makes it doubtful she'd have had the focus and energy to write her memoirs, but also that if she had been able to, she would have published them before she died in order to get some cash, her financial circumstances were that desperate. Anyway, Fothergill uses these "Memoirs" as an actual source, which means you have to look up any Hamilton related story or letter in the appendix notes (if you can) for whether it's sourced to the "Memoirs" or to "The Hamilton and Nelson papers". Bad Fothergill.

On to the story of Frederick, third son of Hervey the memoirist and Molly, named after Fritz of Wales who was his literal godfather in the heyday of his and Hervey the Memoirist's friendship.



Frederick goes to Westminster at age 12 where he meets his friend for life, William Hamilton (Horowski says they met when 16, Fothergill says when they were 12) and loses his (mostly absent) father. Being a third son, Fred inherits 100 pounds a year for his education and maintenance from Hervey, plus an annuity of 200 pounds a year once his grandfather, Lord Bristol, dies, which won't happen for eight more years. (Lucky for Molly who lives with her father-in-law, since Hervey's will was notoriously hostile towards her, leaving her no more than he absolutely had to.) Fothergill quotes a letter from Molly about Frederick to her son's tutor which will turn out to be the only Molly quote we get in the entire book. Whatever the reason for the later fallout between Molly and Frederick, and between Augustus and Frederick, it's not narrated here.

"I am extremly pleased with all you say of Frederick for I value your judgment. He has certainly very good parts and great application, and will, I am persuaided, make a consderable figure in the world. I have heard from him of late pretty often; he is a very agreeable and entertaining correspondent. His scheme of study and travelling as you relate it to me seems a very good one."

So life long traits like Frederick being witty and entertaining (if he wants to) and having wanderlust are already there. From Westminster, Fred goes to Cambridge, entering Corpus Christi College on November 10th 1747. He makes friends who see the resemblance to Dad - "his sprightliness, wit, vivacity and learning prove him to be a genuine Hervey, and the son of my Lord Privy Seal" - and he turns out to be good at languages (master of five, according to one sources), and we get a quote from later day Frederick where he wrote when travelling: I have applied myself so close to recover Hebrew and Italian (not taht I propose being either circumcised or castrated) that I have had little time to write mere English. But does he actually finish his studies. He does not. When Grandpa Bristol dies in January 1751 and Frederick's favourite brother, George, becomes the next Earl of Bristol, Fred leaves Cambridge without taking a degree ("examinations were for lesser men", comments Fothergill and adds that Frederick three years later took his degree in absentia by right as a nobleman's son. (Stuff like this makes you go "Vive la revolution!", doesn't it.)

Now, Frederick needs a job or a rich wife. Instead, not a year after leaving Cambridge without a degree, he marries for love, and the penniless daughter of a Tory, no less (scandal for a Whig family like the Herveys), Elizabeth, nicknamed "Excellent". Molly can't object to a marriage for love since that's how she and Hervey the Memoirists got together, but Elizabeth's mother, Lady Davers, can and does and only receives her daughter and son-in-law for the first time when already a daughter has made her appearance. With a wife and a baby, Frederick needs a job even more, and despite having read law at Cambridge, he decides to join the Church. (Well, he couldn't join the navy, could he, that was Augustus' thing.) With his aristocratic connections, he gets made deacon and ordained and produces kids with the devoted Excellent, whom I'l continue to call this because there's another important Elizabeth in the story. But attempts to get a good position within the curch fail, except for being made Chaplain to young King George III. (A nominal and somewhat ironic position, given that G3 later will be shocked by and dislike Frederick the Bishop - "The wicked Prelate" - , but this early on, there's no objection.) Also, two of Excellent's brothers commit suicide and one is killed by Indians in America, which means some inheritance, which means the Herveys, Frederick and Excellent, make their first long journey through the continent. There, Frederick Hervey looks up Voltaire (who after all was friendly with both his parents), still alive at Ferney:

The Patriarch of Ferney, now aged seventy-one, indicated the church and the theatre he had recently built and asked the question: 'Où jouet t'on la plus grande farce?" Hervey studied the two buildings and replied: 'C'est selon les auteurs.'



You might guess here that Frederick Hervey's reputation re: his faith is on less than orthodox grounds before he ever makes bishop. Anyway, he also visits Naples where his bff William Hamilton is now envoy and has been for two years, and this is when I rose my eyebrows not at Fred but at Fothergill, for: It was the period of his first marriage to the quiet and charming Catherine Barlow, and many years before the beautiful but predatory Emmma Hart appeared on the scene.

Err. Excuse you, Brian Fothergill. "Predatory"? Later, he'll top that and say, re: Emma "she brought out the worst in him, as she did in all men". I mean: WHAT? Let's recapitulate: Emma the blacksmith's daughter comes to London really young, barely a teenager, gets first exploited as a maid, and then has a period where she was likely a teenage prostitute, and then, still only 16, is able to secure herself a position as a kept woman to a nobleman, Sir Herry Featherstonehaugh. No one has ever been able to accuse her of not being faithful to him, and it was Featherstonehaugh to dumped her like a hot potato once she got pregnant by him and produced her first kid, little Emily. Emma then gets together with Charles Greville, nephew to Sir William Hamilton. Again, she was faithful, and she remade herself according to his wishes (he was the one to put her through a quick education program). If anyone was behaving badly (and outrageously so), it was Greville, who when he got a) bored and b) was afraid his now widowed Uncle would remarry and thus reduce his inheritance hit upon the financial scheme of handing over his mistress to his uncle, thereby hitting two birds (in his pov) with one stone: William Hamilton would have to pay for Emma's upkeep, and since he couldn't possibly marry her, would remain a widower leaving all his money to Charles Greville. It's not like tihs is disputed, we have the letters between all the parties, we know Emma did not know this when arriving at Naples because as far as she knew, she was here to earn Sir William's good will so he would okay a marriage between Charles Greville and her, and Charles G. would follow soon after. So how on earth is Emma the predator in this whole sorry saga? As for her "bringing out the worse in men" - it's not her fault both Harry Featherstonehaugh and Charles Greville were cads. The fact that Sir William Hamilton did against all rules of the time marry her hardly is a demonstration of his worst side, I'd say if anything it speaks of his better qualities, as did that he stood by Emma during the Nelson years to the point of calming Nelson down when Nelson through a jealous fit after the Prince Regent hit on Emma. Nelson himself: did behave badly towards his wife, but good lord, he was an adult. What, the man is able to defeat the French at sea but mustn't be blamed for his own decisions in his private life? Fie on you, Brian Fothergill.

End of Justice For Emma interlude, I swear. Back to Frederick Hervey.

This is him describing his first climb of Vesuvious when in Naples with chum William:

At last after about an hour's fatigue we reached the summit, where we found a great hollow of about forty feet and half a mile round: at the bottom of this were two large mouths from whence hte maintain frequently threw up two or three hundred red hot stones some as big as your head, and some considerably larger. One of these struck me on the right arm, and without giving me much pain at the time made a wound about 2 inches deep, tore my coat all to shreads, and by a great effusion of blood alarmed my companions more than myself. IN a few days it became very painful, then dangerous, and so continued to confine me to my bed and my room for near five weeks.

But while he's recovering, oldest brother George gets the post as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and that means, at least. a bishopry for Frederick - first Boyne, and then Derry.



Now, Frederick's early Irish years are actually him at his best. Yes, he lived in aristocratic style, but he did take the job and the country seriously. One of the earliest things he does is a visitation in his entire diocese, visiting each parish and assuring himself that every parson is adequatly housed. He also makes a levy on every living (including his own which he valued at 6,000 pounds a yar) to raise a fund for the support of superannuated curates. Some of these reforms were received with mixed feelings; but one, at least, had the enthusiastic support of his Irish clergy. This was his resolution never to appoint an Englishman to an Irish benefice. It was acts such as this, according to William Cole, which "rendered him the idol of his people and had a wonderful effect in conciliating the natives of that kingdom, who were not apt to be over-fond of the English Clergy."

No kidding. Then there's the story his wiki entry also contains in shorter form.

On one occasion when a particularly rich living had fallen vacant he invited the fattest of his clergy and entertained them with a splendid dinner. As they rose heavily from the table he proposed that they should run a race and that the winner should have the living as his price. Greed contending with consternation the fat clerics were sent panting and purple-faced on their way, but the Bishop had so planned it that the course took them across a stretch of boggy ground where they were all left floundering and gasping int he mud, quite incapable of continuing. None reached the winning-post. The living was bestowed elsewhere, and the Bishop, though hardly his exhausted and humiliated guests, found the evening highly diverting.

This is the first though not the last time when our author points out the streak of cruelty within Frederick Hervey, and yeah, this kind of prank feels, if not identical to FW style "pranks", to at least heading towards this way. (Much as he's entertaining in general, by the time I finished the book I was glad Frederick Hervey had never been an absolute monarch.) Still, his actions in Ireland were his best, by and large. As opposede to many an (Protestant) Englishman holding land and office in the country, he could see that the (Catholic) Irish were treated abominably, that the situation was a powder kegg which could not go on forever, and that you couldn't go on denying Catholics nearly all civil rights while patting yourself on the back for being the most enlightened nation of Europe. When he went on the first long continental journey without "Excellent", for two years (1770 - 1772), he still used his visit in Rome to get two audiences with the Pope and tried to negotiate an agreement that would allow Irish Catholics to be treated better (Hervey's idea was that they should swear off any Stuart loyalties, swear loyalty to G3 and that they did not recognize the Pope as an authority in temporal matters, "just" in spiritual ones, and then all would be well. He was somewhat surprised when the Pope wasn't keen to signing on to this.) Frederick H., btw, had less than zero Jacobite enthusiasm; when in Rome, he met not BPC (by now a drunken depressed wreck) but the young trophy wife BCP had married and her lover the poet Alfieri, became friends with them, and what few references to BPC are in his letters are to "the poor sod".

Now the official wardrobe for Anglican bishops was the black frock and short cassock. This, Frederick Hervey decided, would not do in Italy among the Catholics where Bishops were dressed up way smarter, and so he created his own costume: Many years later Lord Cloncurry recalled how he had seen 'the excentric Earl-Bishop ride about the streets of Rome dressedin red plush breeches and a broad brimmed white or straw hat, and was often asked if that was the canonical costume of an Irish prelate'

This was when G3, who took a dim view of prelates not present in their bishopry and of Protestants behaving undignifiedly, started to refer to him as "the wicked Prelate".

What did Frederick Hervey believe? Fothergill:

Emma Hamilton, who knew him well, held the opinoin that 'though an ecclesiastic of such high station in the church, the bishop was an avowed sceptic in religion, the doctrines and institutions of which he would not scruple to ridicule in the company of women, treating even the immortality of the soul as an article of doubt and indifference.' Certainly Emma brought out the worst in him, as she did in most men, but others shared her view. The Countess Lichtenau (who was we shall see knew him as well as Emma did) declared roundly that the Bishop of Derry 'professed no religion although he had strong innate principles'.

(The supposed Emma quote is from her supposed Memoirs.)

As the friend of Voltaire, the student of geology at a time when official Christianity frowned on any scientific speculation that might challenge a strictly fundamentalist interpretation of Holy Scripture, a Whig magnate in a bishop's apron, he at no time aspired to a public reputation for piety; and to the narrowly orthodox a man whom Jeremy Bentham could describe as 'a most excellent companion, pleasant, intelligent, a well bred and well read, liberal-minded to the last degree, has been everywhere and knows everything" was bound to be suspect.

In 1775, brother George dies without heirs, which makes brother Augustus the next Earl of Bristol. Since brother Augustus is married to Elizabeth Chudley the bigamist and has a bastard son but no legitimate kids, this now puts Frederick into expection of eventually inheriting the Earldom. He's still sorry for George's demise: Within the last few days I have lost the kindest and most affectionate brother. This has blunted in me every sense of pleasure, and left me a mass and lump of inanimate matter. He has testified his kindness for me to the last; but no accession to wealth, especially to one in my situation, can compensate for the loss of a real friend (...)

He does start a building palaces program, though. On the extreme northern coast of Londonderry, a mansion called "Downhill". Which becomes his favourite residence before he'll leave Ireland for good, for the last eleven years of his life. (G3 goes spare.)


But before I get to the later journeys, let's talk about Frederick Hervey as a father. Because the biography clarifed that he is the father of one the most sensational talked about ladies of her day. His daughter Elizabeth would bear several names in her time, but is best known as Bess Foster, and when I came across her in this biography, I thought, OMG, Bess Foster is a Hervey, that explains so much.



What she's best known for: a menage a trois where, depending on whom you believe, either Bess first seduces the Duchess and then the Duke of Devonshire, and lives with both, or that she becomes bff with the Duchess, platonic or not, and then the Duke, jealous and mean, wants sex and because her income depends on him she agrees. The Duchess was
Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, whose biography by Amanda Foreman takes a somewhat more cynical view of Bess than the movie based on it, The Duchess (where the Duchess is played by Keira Knightley and Bess by Haley Atwell, Peggy Carter herself), and the question as to whether Bess was looking out for No.1 the entire time - she'd marry the Duke three years after Georgiana's death - or whether her friendship/love for Georgiana was sincere but she was also a realist and the money came from the Duke - Georgiana was a massive gambler who gambled entire fortunes away and could not have supported herself - is still debated. But anyway: the letters between Georgiana and Bess were pretty intense even for the 18th century and if they didn't have actual sex they definitely had an emotional love affair. Since Bess reproduced with the Duke (Ralph Fiennes in the movie), they definitely had sex, but whether he went Count Almaviva on her or whether she seduced him, no one will ever know.

But why was Bess Foster dependend on the Devonshires in the first place? I had read the Foreman biography of Georgiana, which introduces her as poor nobility and also in a bad situation because her husband - who as her husband takes their sons, whom she won't see again for fifteen years - is not paying any alimony, as she left him. (Because he had a go at the maidservant, or at least that was the last straw.) Now, when reading this, I did not wonder about Bess' parents, I assumed they either were poor themselves or dead. But no. All this happens when her father is the Bishop of Derry, globetrotting the continent, building mansions in Ireland and collecting Michelangelos (he did buy them, and they were already expensive by then). His wife, Bess' mother, poor Excellent tried to make him help their daughter, but by that time they weren't living together anymore in any way, and he just ignored her. And his daughter's plight. As far as Frederick Hervey was concerned, the 2000 pounds dowry he'd given Bess upon her marriage were all she'd get from him. Now, did he hate his daughter? No. His letters to her before and after the end of her marriage, her loss of her children and her financial situation before she became bff (or more) with Georgiana are fond letters. Once she was so established with the Devonshires as to be influential and he wanted favours from hs daughter, he asked those. But when she needed him? Zilch. Nothing. Rien. Not as much as offering to let her live in one of his many houses, or asking one of his friends to accept her as a companion, or inviting her to live with him. Or anything.

Bess, btw, was another Hervey who married originally for love and came to regret it. John Foster (called "little f" in her framily because "Big F" was his father, Rev. Dr. John Foster of County Louth in Ireland) was young and good looking. Frederick Hervey took the marriage of this second daughter (the oldest, Mary, had already been married) as his signal to go globetrotting again. This time, he visited the various German states at first and fell in love with Bad Pyrmont. Then it was Italy's turn again - in Florence, he met Leopold and wife - and like Goethe decided he absolutely loved Rome: Rome contains everything that can amuse, interest or instruct hte mind. No sore grapes for Frederick Hervey:

Tis likewise difficult to say which pleases one most, the magnificence of ancient or the elganceof modern Rome; for my own part I have been singularly fortunate - several ancient rooms have been unearthed since my arrival - the paintings were in fresco and almost as perfect as at first - the secret was soon found of detaining the painted stucco from the walls, and I have bought three complete rooms, with which to adorn the Downhill and le rendre un morceau unique. The Pope has granted me a permission to take a model from the Apollo Belvedere - a favour rarely granted but to crown-heads. I suppose his Holiness is so accustomed to considr mitred ones on a footing with him. I cannot resist the temptation of being extravagant here especially when it is with a view of beautifying dear Ireland.

Fred was still working for the various Irish causes in more distinterested matters than beautifying Ireland with his antiquities, though. In 1778, there was a parliamentary debate about a Relief Act for Catholics, in which he couldn't participate since he was in Italy at the time, but he wrote to daughter Bess (then still recently married):

Tell your husband that I should be much obliged to him fo ra list of the speakers in our house on the Popish bill; that I wish also to know if the bill to tolerate their religion is to take place, without which I do not know how the multitude are benefited. (...) If such a bill should pass, I pledge myself to bring sixty thousand pounds sterling within eighteen months into the kingdom (...) The Pope will give us fivethousand and one single convent in Bohemia, of Irish friars, subscribes one thousand pounds (...) The Empress of Germany (MT) if this war (the War of the Bavarian Succession) does not continue, has promised her confessor Father Kelly, an Irish Recolect, a considerable sum (...)

Alas, the grand Save The Irish Catholics action would come to not much, and in November 1779 Hervey wrote to Bess: Can any country flourish when two thirds of its inhabitants are still crouching under the lash of the most severe illiberal penalties that one set of citizens ever laid upon the other?

Voltaire dies, which Frederick H. gets a detailed report on by his oldest daughter, Mary, Lady Erne, because her husband is stationed in Paris at the time: What a miserable end! What a ridiculous farce about his Funeral, and what a refinement about giving his plays.

When the 1770s end, Fred is back in London for a while and meets Benjamin Franklin and Jeremy Benthan. (Franklin tweaks him a bit about not being as tolerant about Presbyterians as he is about Catholics.) And he meets my guy Boswell!

On returning to Ireland Hervey assured Boswell that the inhabitants of Dublin were violently against a union with England but that he imself considered that the rest of the country was likely to benefit from it. Boswell had claimed that Edinburgh had suffered as a result of the Union of 1707 - between Scotland and England, [personal profile] cahn, reminder, Boswell is a Scot - Hervey now asked him if he would ascertain what the present number of houses was in Edingburgh and how it compared with the number of houses at the time of the union. Boswell, however, was impatient of mere statistics: 'Let us, my Lord,' he replied, 'be satisfied to live on good and euqal terms as we might have done with our Sovereign's people of America had those been allowed to enjoy their Parliament or Assemblies as Ireland enjoys hers, and instead of calling Ireland a deluded people and attempting to grasp them in our paws, let us admire their spirit. A Scotchman might preach a Union to them as the fox who has lost his tail. But your Lordship is an Englishman and brother to the Earl of Bristol.

Indeed Frederick Hervey was both, but would change his mind on the question of Irish independence (as opposed to Ireland becoming an equal member of the UK).

Also, brother Augustus dies at the end of 1779, making Frederick an Earl. Like Erskine, Fothergill notes Augustus left everything he could - i.e. all that wasn't entailed to the estate - to people other than Frederick, though he doesn't say how their feud started. "Everything", to my surprise, included their Dad's memoirs!

(Augustus) had left his successor not a penny more than he could help, providing for a bereaved mistress and a natural son out of the unsettled estate, leaving all his father's manuscript pwritings to the latter with the injunction never to publish them during the present King's (George IIIs) lifetime, 'nor ever at any time to lend them to my brother Frederick, the present Bishop of Derry'.

When reading this for the first time I thought, did we wrong Not Yet Victorian Frederick Hervey the son of the Bishop and the censor was actually Augustus' illegitimate son? But then I remembered from Erskin's introduction that little Augustus doesn't reach adulthood, so I'm assuming that's when the scandalous memoirs went back to the general Hervey estate. I can see where the prohibition of publishing within G3' s life time comes from, btw: G3 presumably had fond memories of his father, Fritz of Wales. But I'm intrigued about the prohibition to let Frederick the Bishop get his fingers on them. Presumably Augustus thought Fred would publish, given at this point he and G3 were irrevocably estranged and Fred didn't care anymore?

Anyway: now that Fred is the Earl, his wife Excellent moves to Ickworth, the Hervey estate. Frederick doesn't. In 1782, both his own marriage and that of daughter Bess collapse for good. That the Bishop showed zlich interest in helping his daughter shocked virtually all his female relations. Bess had gone to her sister Mary at first (also temporarly at odds with her husband) and was living in Bath, where she'd meet Georgiana;, here's an outburst from her cousin, Mrs. Dillon:

Never was a story any more proper for a novel than poor Lady Elizabeth Foster's. She is parted from her husband, but would you conceive any father with an income he has should talk of her living alone on such a scanty pittance of 300 pounds a year! And this is the man who is ever talking of his love of hospitality and his desire to have his children about him! Might one not imagine that he would be opposed to a pretty young woman of her age living alone? It is incredile the cruelties of that monster Foster made her undergo with him; her father knows it, owned him a villain, and yet, for fear she should fall on hi shands agian, tried first to persuade her to return to him.

Which Bess won't. The 300 pounds a year, btw, aren't from Dad, they were Georgiana's first suggestion - to hire Bess as a governess of the Duke's illegitimate daughter (by someone else not important to this story).

Horace Walpole: The mission of Lord Bristol's daughter, and her circumstances, are just as you've heard them. You may add, that though the daughter of an EArl lin lawn sleeves, who as an income of four or five and twenty thousand a year, he suffers her from indigence to accept 300 pounds a year as governess to a natural child.

All the indignation is in vain, as far as Frederick is concerned, Bess is on her own, and Bess, of course, will do better for herself than governess of the Duke's illegitimate daughter. She's moving in with the Duchess and the Duke instead. While that happens, her parents break up.



The breach came at Ickworth. On the evidence of a servant, we are told that 'the Bishop and his wife went out for a drive together, and in the course of the drive something was said, something passed between them, and they came home and never spoke to each other again. (...) All we learn from Lady Bristol is of a dispute over the letting of a house in St. James Square. 'I am sorry that m y situation has sat so heavy on your mind,' she wrote to Elizabeth after the Bishop had left her, 'for I can agive you no comfort on that subject except by assuring you that my mind is quite above and out of the reach of the oppression I receive and the insults which accompany it, and that I have pride enough to bear being told that my advice is presumptous; and that I am being so made up of vanity and ostentation as not to be capable of cooperating in so laudable a polan without feeling the least humbled by it; and even my resentment is oftened down into compassion for the frailties of human nature, and for the wreck which warring passions bring upon it; my own happiness has long been an empty sound, and I am now only intent on drawing all the good possible out of this evil in favour of Louise.
(Louise is the youngest, not yet married daughter.)

Our clerical antihero goes back to Ireland sans wife and immediately gets himself a mistress, or at least loving friend, a second cousin, in fact, Mrs. Mussenden, born Frideswide Bruce, granddaughter of Henry Hervey-Aston (one of the mad uncles from Erskine's introduction of Augustus' journal). (He's 52 by now.) Fothergill doesn't think more than flirting happened as points to the fact the family Bruce remained friends with the bishop, but it did make the papers. He also joins the Irish Volunteers.

G3: Who will rid me of this troublesome prelate?

Frederick: I think I'm off to globetrot some more.

This time, when he shows up in Naples to say hello to bff William, Emma has arrived on the scene. (She arrived in April that year.) Emma and Frederick immediately hit it off famously.

Lady Holland, famous Whig lady, later on: Lord Bristol, whom (Lady Holland) declared to be 'full of wit and plesantry' (though she was also to call him 'a clever, bad man') was 'a great admirer of Lady Hamiton and conjured Sir. W. to allow him to call her EMMA. That he should admire her beauty and her wonderful attitudes is not singular, but that he should like her society certainly is, as it is imipossible to go beyond her in vulgarity and coarseness.

Fothergill: the guy who thought of making his portly clergy sprint certainly wasn't deterred by vulgarity and coarseness.

Goethe: I enjoyed Emma's society as well and wrote about it in the "Italian Journey".

Maria Carolina, daughter of MT, Queen of Naples: So did I. But only once she had actually become Lady Hamilton. No mistresses in my presence!

However, staying on the continent has one distinct disadvantage. (Or not, depending on your pov.) It's French Revolution time! The Bishop, until then firmly on the side of progress, is shocked. He also turns violently anti French. His grand masterplan, which he describes in various letters, including a fateful one, is for a French partition, one part ruled by the Bourbons, one by the Revolutionaries, that would ensure the various parts of evil France are always at war with each other, never to trouble Britain or anyone else again. (Yes, the Polish partition is one of his models there.) Otoh, he likes the German states more and more, despite the bad roads. Other than Bad Pyrmont, Kassel is his favourite for the gorgeous park and the wonderful museum (can confirm both are great) at the Wilhelmshöhe (soon to be renamed into Napoleonshöhe). The Bishop returns one more time to the British Isles, makes an attempt to make up with G3 (in vain), and is in Ireland when buddy William arrives in London to ask permission to marry Emma (which he eventually gets). Writes Fred:

Nobody mentons your decison but with approbation; no wonder provided that they have ever seen and heard Lady Hamilton; and now I flatter myself you have secured your happiness for life.

In 1791, our antihero leaves Ireland for the last time. He also makes a last will which says that Bess and Mary are supposed to regard their dowries as all they'll get from him, and: I give my affectionate and dutiful daughter Lady Louisa Hervey five thousand pounds and to my undutiful and ungrateful son Frederick William Hervey I give one thousand pounds.

Fothergill doesn't know what not yet Victorian Frederick has done to incure his father's ire - sided with Mom? - , but it will be academic, because at this point, Federick the Bishop's oldest son John is still alive and the current Lord Hervey. He'll die soon, though, which makes "ungrateful" Frederick the heir, at which point his father will rediscover his affection and make marriage plans for him.

Travelling through Germany, Frederick the Bishop meets Goethe (in Jena), who writes about him:

About sixty-three years of age,of middle or rather low stature, of slight frame and countenance, lively in carriage and manners, quick in his speech, blunt, sometimes even rude; in more than one respect narrow and one-sided, as a Briton, unbending; as an individual, obstinate; as a divine, stiff; as a scholar, pedantic. Honestly, zeal for the Good, and the unfailiing results thereof, show everywhere through the disagreeable points of the above qualities, and they are b alanced, too, by his extensive knowledge of the world, of men and of books, by the liberality of a noble and by the ease of a rich man. However vehemently he may be speaking (and he spares neither general nor particular circumstances) he yet listens most attentively to everything that is spoken, be it for or against him; he soon yields, if he be contradicted; contradicts if he doesn't like the argument, though made in his favour; now drops one sentence, now takes up another, while arguing througout from a few ideas.

The Bishop begain by attacking Goethe on Werther (that novel had been published in the 1770s, so the Bishop was really out of date), and it was the usual "you glorified suicide" /"Did not" argument.

Then it's back to Italy, hanging out with Sir William and flirting with Emma. ("Oh Emma, who'd be ever wise,/ If madness be loving of thee?") Fothergill doesn't think they ever did more than flirting (which of course he credits the Earl-Bishop for). There is a story from Emma's likely fake memoirs about English singer Elizabeth Billington giving a concert in Naples, and one of G3's sons, Prince Augustus, being present together with the Hamiltons and the Earl-Bishop. Alas Prince Augustus sings loudly along with Elizabeth Billiington. He can't sing, and it's rude, but he's a prince. What to do?

At length the interruptions became so annoying that (the Earl-Bishop) could contain himself no longer and turning to the royal singer, said: "Pray cease, you have the ears of an ass."



And now it's time for that other good-time girl gone noble to show up in our antihero's life. He first meets Wilhelmine Encke, married Rietz, not yet Countess Lichtenau, not as I had assumed and Horowski had said in Italy, but in Munich when she is en route to Italy. He falls for her at once, though Fothergill thinks it's not just her charm but from the beginning her connections as FW2's Maitresse en Titre that attract Frederick Hervey. Be that as it may, he will refer to her as his "adorable amie" (now hating the French doesn't stop him from peppering his speech with French expressions) and after the first meeting already invites hier to a trip to Lake Starnberg (as she loves paintings, he writes, surely she'll love beautiful scenery painted by nature - which it is, I should add) and signs himself her devoted admirer. They arrange to meet again in Naples, and in this connection, he's able to do do her a favour. Because he promises to introduce her to the Hamiltons AND the Queen of Naples. But the Queen of Naples can't receive Madame Rietz, so clearly, she'll have to be ennobled. FW2 complies, long distance wise, because the Bishop travels to Berlin to meet him and ask, and Wilhelmine the trumpeter's daughter is now the Countess Lichtenau. Fothergill thinks that might have doomed her, that the Prussian nobility would have been able to cope with her as long as she'd remained bourgois but the ennoblement would cause her downfall after FW2's death, but I don't think so - that was really something very personal that FW3 did, and he hated her already, blaming his parents' marriage (the state of same) on her.

Now remember, by now Frederick H. is very much anti France and anti Republic. FW2, however, is still neutral. Lord Bristol was offered some capon, but refused it. When the King of Prussia asked him if he disliked the dish he answered: Yes, Sire: I have an aversion to all neutral animals."

Off to Italy once more, where the Bishop reunintes with both Emma and Wilhelmine and flirts away in both directions and has the great idea that her daughter should marry his son, the same one he called ungrateful in his will two years before. But alas, young Frederick stuns him by saying no, wanting to marry for love a respectable, if penniless, English girl instead. The Bishop tries to enlist help to convince young Frederick. Whom does he ask for help? Why, Frederick's sister Bess, of course, by now living comfortqably if scandalously with the Devonshires.

I must confess it would half break my heart to see his fixed on any other than the beautfiul, elegant, important and interesting object I have proposed to him. At least, dearest Eliza, if you have any interest with him, induce him, beg him, my dar, not to decide before he is able to choose. She would bring him into our family 5,000 pounds a year, besides a principality in Germany, an English Dukedom for Frederick or me, which the King of Prusisa is determined to obtain in case the marriage takes place - a perpetual relationship with both the Princess of Wales and her children, als also with the Duchess of York and her progeny - the Embassy in Berlin, with such an influence an dpreponderance in favour of dear England as no other could withstand. Add to all this the King is so bent upon it from his great partiality to me, that I doubt not his doub ling the dot in case F desired it, which indeed I should not. (...) Dearest Elizabeth, the example he has before his eyes in and within his own family ought fully to determine him a gainst a love-match; it is so ominous a lottery, so pergnant with blanks, so improbable of success.

Frederick the not yet Victorian: Yeah, no. Miss Upton or nothing! Jane Austen would approve.

Frederick the Bishop: Jane Austen liked money, too.

The Bishop is very surprised that somehow, this letter doesn't convince Bess to intervene on his behalf to secure the Embassy and a Dukedom for her father. He calls her "a nasty little imp of silence" and asks "are you alive or dead? Or are you on a journey? or peadventure she sleepeth? If so, at least dream a little, or walk in your sleep, or talk in your sleep, for I have no patience with your long, long silence.

Bess: Seriously?

Wilhelmine Countess Lichtenau loses patience, her daughter marries a German noble, and Frederick the Bishop sighs and devotes himself to his grand political masterplan of Partioning France, though he doesn't stop flirting with her. And then FW2 dies, and we get another example of our clerical antihero being callous, because he goes from raving about Wilhelmine as his chere amie and wonder of beauty and adorable and what not to this comment on the news that FW3 has thrown her into prison:

Poor Madame Ritz is in Spandau after playing the fool and some say the knave these last eleven months; she was arrested the day after the death of that old Porc d'Epicure."

So much, says Fothergill, for "my adorable friend" and "the dear, amiable King". He says in the Bishop's defense that he may have heard that she was accused among other things, of having taken bribes form the French, and since he hated the French now, that made him forsake her. But note he immediately calls her "Madame Ritz" again, no more the Countess of Lichtenau, like the snobbiest of of nobles, the moment she can't do anything for him anymore. Young E.T.A. Hoffmann (who wasn't in love with her the way his friend was) had more character as a young student when defending her in Glogau.



As I told you elswhere, the Bishop then gets himself arrested by the Milanese. Where he meets General Berthier, who, according to the Bishop later, tells him everyone really hates Napoleon, he certainly does, the Republic is evil, he wants to swear an oath of loyalty to Louis XVIII right then and there, all the other generals think likewise, and oh, he wants Frederick the Bishop to tell PM Pitt the Younger that there is this secret master plan about the Partitioning of France that will defeat First Consul Bonarparte and will render France harmless forever more. Totally Berthier's idea, and it's a mere coincidence that the Bishop suggested this idea for years now.

(Fothergill thinks that it's not impossible Berthier, about to become a Napoleonic Marshal, was temporarily disillusioned wihen Napoleon made himself Consul, but... yeah.)

Nothing new about the Bishop's release and death en route when discovered to be an Anglican Heretic instead of a Catholic Bishop and thus kicked out of the peasant's house. In conclusion: a good provider of sensational gossip, to be sure. But also self centred to an amazing degree without Fritzian traumatic childhood excuses, a deadbeat Dad, lousy husband and disloyal friend (except to William Hamilton).




cahn, re: Frederick ignoring his daughter's original plight: It's at least extremely faintly reassuring that everyone else thought this was awful!

selenak: Quite. I mean, I know Amanda Foreman speculates that the reason why John Foster took custody of his sons, didn't pay Bess a dime and was sure he wouldn't get any retaliation from her family was that he had proof she cheated on him even while admitting he had had sex with the maid servant. But it might simply be John Foster correctly judged that his father-in-law wouldn't care, and no one else had any influence to do anything about it. (British law at the time certainly wouldn't have helped Bess had she tried to get financial support from him.) But I just managed to find my copy of Foreman's Georgiana biography, and she also agrees with Mrs. Dillon and Horace Walpole that the Bishop not doing anything at all to help his daughter was awful.

cahn: Honestly I cannot really blame her one bit if she was a conniving seducer!

selenak: The impression from Foreman's biography I got was that she saw Bess as ruthless and manipulative, certainly, but she also saw her as a survivor in an era where the game was rigged if you were a woman. Oh, and dragging out the biography also reminded me that Edward Gibbons, he of "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" fame, thought Bess was the most seductive woman he ever met, absolutely irresistable, and that if she'd wanted to make the Lord Chancellor leave his seat in Parliament and make love to her right then and there in front of everyone he would have. Georgiana's other friends hated her and basically saw her as a gold digger, and couldn't understand why Georgiana didn't ditch her once Bess and the Duke became an item at the very latest. Their comments sound somewhat like those of Melanie Wilkes' friends about Scarlett O'Hara, though Georgiana otherwise doesn't have much resemblance with Melanie. Now maybe Bess did see that the Devonshires were both very lonely in their unhappy marriage and decided she had an opportunity there to make herself indespensible, thereby securing herself a good life. But let's not forget, these were both emotionally demanding people, and if Bess was manipulative, she also - like many a Royal Mistress - had to work non stop to earn her place, so to speak, being there for both of them. It's not like Bess had any security other than the affection of these two people to fall back on - if the Duke at any point had decided to kick her out for good, that would have been that. (If she couldn't sue her husband for support, she could hardly sue her lover.) If otoh Georgiana had decided to dump her as her friend of friends, well, she'd have survived that, so I'm inclined to believe she did care for Georgiana since she never stopped her relationship with her, either, as opposed to letting it slack once she'd secured the Duke. But as I said - having read about royal Mistresses, I know pleasing one demanding person of high position is much work (and not in the sex sense, see Madame de Pompadour and Louis XV), and can't imagine what pleasing two (very different people) for years and years would have been like.

When Georgiana died (with Bess at her side), Bess had to navigate a tricky time again because Georgiana's family (starting with her mother) loathed her as an intruder and gold digger, and of course they campaigned to get her out of the house. But Georgiana had foreseen that Bess would be in danger once she was dead and that's why in her will she explicitly made Bess the guardian of all her papers. She couldn't leave her money, being a notorious gambler entirely dependent on her husband to pay her debts, but the papers thing meant that Bess and only Bess had access to all of Georgiana's letters (political and personal), and that in turn meant that the family had to grit their teeth and treat her politely, and so had the Whig VIPs, down to being supportive when the Duke married Bess after the mourning period was over. It was very clever (and strategic) by Georgiana, and leaves no doubt that she loved Bess till the end. (Many years after they first met - this wasn't in the flush of infatuation.

As for Bess, she wrote to her son Augustus Foster (whom she'd gotten back into contact with once he was grown up) about Georgiana, and here I have to translate back from German into English, because my copy of Foreman's Georgiana biography is in German:

She is so present to me, and I am constantly thinking about her, that I feel like she's on a journey, and sometimes I catch myself saying 'Oh, I'll have to tell her about this...(Georgiana) was the constant charm of my life. She doubled every joy, and lessened every grief. Her society had an attraction stronger than any other beings I met. Her love to me truly was 'stronger than the love of women'.

(And yes, that was a biblical David-about-Jonathan quote Bess makes there. The next crisis for her came when the Duke died, because of course the Cavendish/Spencer family still wanted to get rid of her. Bess faced them down demanding her share of the inheritance both for herself and her two daughters by the Duke (who weren't, of course, officially his daughters, so it was seen as incredibly shocking when she basically said that yes, they were). Georgiana's and the Duke's son Hart (nickname) then offered her and his half siblings a very generous but one time big summ if they moved out of Chiswick (seat of the Cavendishs) within a week. Which they did. Bess build a small but neat house for herself in Richmond and divided her time between it and London. After five years of being a respectable widow (and the Duchess of Devonshire, which Georgiana's mother absolutely HATED) , she had enough of English society, took a leaf from Dad's book and moved to Italy - Rome, to be specific. Where she seduced herself a Cardinal (Cardinal Consalvi), financed diggings at the Forum Romanum (she had inherited Frederick's interest in antiquities), and according to visitors had her rooms full of books, being now able to read as much as she liked.

Lady Spencer (Georgiana's mother): "This Witch of Endor the Duchess of Devonshire now wrecks a different kind of havoc than that she's created her whole life, since she now finances diggings at the Forum and claims to do this for the public benefit!"

Bess died on March 30th 1824, exactly on the same day as Georgiana, and at her side were: a medaillon with Georgiana's strawberry blond hair, one of Georgiana's hairbands, and two of Georgiana's kids, because to the rest of the family's horror, Bess had regained the affection of both Georgiana's son Hart and of Georgiana's illegitimate daughter by Charles Grey, Eliza. (Georgiana's kids had started out liking Bess but as teenagers and adults had condemned her for the role she played in their parents' marriage.) Hart had her body brought back to England to be buried with Georgiana and the Duke. I think what maddened a lot of people about Bess till the end, especially now that England was moving into the Victorian age, is that she wasn't punished by fate for her sinful ways, but ended feted as a scholarly English Milady by admiring Italians instead of ruined and broke. Or committing suicide. After having got what she wanted from both Georgiana and the Duke for as long as they lived. Where was the victory of morality there?


As much as he was a deadbeat Dad to her, I do think Frederick Hervey would have approved. :)