A Georgian Love Story: The Aristocrat and His Courtesan

Charles James Fox

Noblemen in Georgian England visited houses of prostitution. Noblemen of Georgian England typically kept mistresses. But noblemen of Georgian England rarely formed lasting attachments to one particular courtesan – and it was even more rare for a nobleman to offer marriage to a courtesan.

The charismatic leader of the Whigs, Charles James Fox, risked the censure of Society and took for his wife Mrs. Elizabeth Armistead, his longtime mistress, a former courtesan who is alleged to have been a mistress of Fox’s friend, the Prince of Wales (who later became regent).

Theirs is one of the great love stories of Georgian England.

Fox, the Prodigy

Charles James Fox (1749-1806) was the second son of the 1st Baron Holland, was grandson of the Duke of Richmond, and was a direct descendent of Charles II. His fabulously wealthy father indulged his boys, and he was particularly proud of the precocious Charles James. With good reason. Charles James was brilliant.

At Eton, and later at Oxford, Charles James was a classics scholar of some repute, and he “vastly” enjoyed mathematics. He read Latin, Greek, French, Italian, and later in life, Spanish. And this he did for the enjoyment of it.

Edmund Burke said he was “the greatest debater the world ever saw.” At the tender age of 19 he was elected to Parliament, and from then until his death the Whig party was guided by the extremely personable Charles James Fox. At 21, he took a cabinet post under Lord North, and at his death at 57, he was Foreign Secretary in the “Ministry of All Talents.”

Elizabeth Armistead

The Popular Mr. Fox

The friends Fox made at Eton – all of them from England’s most noble families – would remain close friends throughout his life. But almost everyone who came into his sphere adored the kindly, portly man who was a brilliant conversationalist.

In one matter, his intelligence failed him: he recklessly spent money, could never manage money, and spent almost all of his adult life deeply in debt.

It was said his good friend Lord Carlisle (owner of Castle Howard, the spectacular setting of Brideshead Revisited) spent one fifth of his income helping to pay off Fox’s debts. In 1793 members of the ton got up a “subscription” to help pay Fox’s debts. The subscription brought in £61,000 to establish an annuity for Fox. (That would be several million dollars today.)

Fox’s followers were known as Foxites, and during one particularly contested campaign, his supporters donned buff and blue clothing and sported fox tails. Fox himself had adopted wearing buff and blue clothing during the American War of Independence to show his support for the colonists. Needless to say, George III hated Fox and would continue to oppose him in any way he could.

 The Profligate Fox

In addition to loathing Fox’s politics, the king may also have blamed Fox for his dissipating influences on his heir, the future regent.

Fox rightfully earned his reputation for profligacy. When he was but 14 years of age, his father took him to France where he introduced him to high-stakes gambling, and encouraged him to lose his virginity. When he returned to Eton four months later, he wished to continue those two vices and was asked to leave.

One of Lord Holland’s last acts was to settle a staggering £140,000 (about $20 million today) of his son’s debts, but the indulged Fox continued to win and lose huge fortunes in a single sitting. He once gambled from Tuesday night until Friday with no sleep, taking time off one evening to debate in the House of Commons. He played hazard from Tuesday evening until five Wednesday evening, covering £12,000 he had lost, but losing that and £11,000 more before going to Parliament. At eleven that night he went to White’s and drank all night, returning in the morning to Almack’s (later to be known as Brook’s), where he won £6,000, then rode to the races at Newmarket, where he lost £l0,000 (over $1 million today).

 Mrs. Armistead

The woman known throughout the ton as the courtesan Mrs. Armistead is believed to have been born Elizabeth Bridget Cane in 1750. Some reports say her father was shoemaker, and others say he was a market porter. Her origins are obscure.

How did she become a courtesan? That, too, remains obscure. The Town and Country Magazine, much like today’s National Inquirer, said that she was seduced by a hairdresser when she was 16 and when he tired of her, he set her up in a fashionable place where she could not help but succeed at prostitution.

A contrary report in Tete-a-Tete claims her father abandoned her, and the teen-ager had no other recourse than to sell herself.

She may have worked at Mrs. Goadby’s famed high-end house of prostitution. It is unknown how she got the name Mrs. Armistead. A Mr. Armistead could have been one of her early protectors. Courtesans often used the surname of a protector. Most courtesans also adopted the use of Mrs. even though many of them never married.

Mrs. Armistead soon found favor with several men of high rank. The Duke of Ancaster set her up in a house in Portman Square. He was followed b the Duke of Dorset, then the Earl of Derby. She had a most profitable liaison with the fabulously wealthy nabob Gen. Richard Smith.
Many of her patrons and protectors were associated with Whig society. This included Lord Cholmondley, the Prince of Wales, and Fox.

She was intelligent enough to secure annuities from two of her protectors. It is thought they were from Smith and from Lord George Cavendish, brother of the Duke of Devonshire.

Settling with Fox

Elizabeth and Fox had known each other for many years before they officially became lovers. She was 32 when she began living with Fox. Past her prime, she lived comfortably because of the annuities she had secured. It is said she sold her annuities as well as some of her property to bail Fox out of some of his debts.

It is surprising – because of her origins – that she was literate. She must have been possessed of intelligence in order to have held Fox’s interest. She and he took comfort in reading to one another, and when he was away from her he would write long letters telling her of all the ministrations in government, and he would tell her how dear his Liz was to him.

Though she may have been shrewd, she was truly humble, and she adored Fox.

And he adored her. Living with her tamed him. His favorite place on earth was her house, St. Anne’s Hill in Surrey, which became their house.
In 1788, six years after they had been living together, the 22-year-old daughter of the wealthy banker Thomas Coutts asked for a lock of Fox’s hair. That was a clear sign that the young woman would look favorably upon his suit. It is understandable how the young woman could have a crush upon him. He was one of the most well-known men in all of England.

Marrying an heiress such as she would secure the financial future of the 38-year-old Fox, who was mired in debts.

The very notion terrified Elizabeth, and when Fox got wind of his Liz’s distress he wrote her a beautiful love letter. Here’s part of it:
I love you more than life itself indeed I do, and I can not figure to myself any possible idea of happiness without you . . . any trifling advantage of fortune or connection as weighing a feather in the scale against the whole comfort and happiness of my life. Even if you did not love me I could not endure the thought of belonging to any other woman, but my Liz does love me and will make me happy by living always with me.

He begged her to marry him. As much as she loved him, she declined. She was afraid marriage to her would ruin him and would destroy the love they shared.

She finally consented to marry him, providing it was a secret ceremony, and they tell no one. They wed on September 28, 1795. It was seven years before they ever revealed that they had married.

She had grown accustomed to meeting only his male friends because her “station” prohibited her from being accepted by respectable females. In most cases, that same ostracism would have been expected to continue even after their marriage became known. But because Fox was so beloved by so many, most of his aristocratic friends and relatives embraced the woman he had honored with his name.

Because of Elizabeth’s sweet nature, his family grew to love her.
Few marriages between parties from such diverse stations ever succeeded, but Mr. and Mrs. Fox enjoyed a happy and harmonious marriage until his death in 1806.

He once wrote to his nephew, Lord Holland, “You were never more right than in what you say of my happiness derived from her.”

His dying words were, “dearest, dearest Liz.”

She lived on at St. Anne’s Hill and died at 92.

Words written to a dying Keats

I have been reading Anthony Holden’s excellent biography of Leigh Hunt titled THE WIT IN THE DUNGEON: The remarkable life of Leigh Hunt, Poet, Revolutionary, and the Last of the Romantics (2005). When I finish it, I shall review it for The Quizzing Glass.

Though Hunt was a well-respected author during the Regency and later, his works have not found the place in English literature that are held by his friends John Keats, Persy B. Shelley, and Lord Byron.

Yet when I came across this letter Hunt wrote to Joseph Severn, who was close to the dying Keats in Rome, I fully understood why his contemporaries admired Hunt’s writing. The following is one of the most poignant pieces of writing I’ve ever read:

If he [Keats] can bear to hear of us, pray tell him – but he knows it already, and can put it into better language than any man. I hear that he does not like to be told that he may get better; nor is it to be wondered at, considering his firm persuasion that he shall not recover. He can only regard it as a puerile thing, and an insinuation that he cannot bear to think he shall die.

But if his persuasion should happen to be no longer so strong upon him, or if he can now put up with such attempts to console him, tell him of what I have said a thousand times, and what I still (upon my honour, Severn) think always, that I have seen too many instances of recovery from apparently desperate cases of consumption not to be in hope to the very last.

If he cannot bear this, tell him – tell that great poet and noble-hearted man – that we shall all bear his memory in the most precious part of our hearts, and that the world shall bow their heads to it, as our loves do.

Or if this, again, will trouble his spirit, tell him that we shall never cease to remember and love him; and that the most skeptical of us has faith enough in the high things that nature puts into our heads to think all who are of one accord in mind or heart are journeying to one and the same place, and shall unite somewhere or other again, face to face, mutually conscious, mutually delighted.

Tell him he is only before us on the road, as he was in everything else; or whether you tell him the latter or no, tell him the former, and add that we shall never forget that he was so, and we are coming after him. The tears are again in my eyes, and I must not afford to shed them.Keats was never told any of these things Hunt wished to impart to him. The letter was dated 8 March 1821. Keats had died in Italy on February 23. He was 25.

Christmas novella now available

My G-rated Regency Christmas novella titled Christmas at Farley Manor is now available for $.99 at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other ebook retailers. It’s another of my marriage-of-convenience stories. Here’s a blurb:

It wasn’t to be a real marriage. . .
Harry Tate is an army captain of some means who is almost certain to die when he returns to Spain on the morrow. Elizabeth Hensley is a destitute beauty he’s only too happy to help.

Two years later. . .
When they meet again at his ancestral home, Harry is now Viscount Broxbourne, bent on showing his wife how much he wants her to be his real viscountess by Christmas.

This is a lovely story, tender and romantic, with a dashing hero and a beautiful heroine. A very satisfying read. – Linda Sims, Amazon UK reviewer

Product Description
Regency Christmas novella
Approximate length: 21,000 words (about 100 pages)
Heat Index: sweet

Lady Spencer: An Aristocratic Mother

Those of us in the present-day often mistakenly believe that aristocratic mothers from the Regency era could not possibly have loved their children as we do today. After all, a wet nurse nursed their babies; a nursemaid virtually raised their children; the children did not even eat at the table with their parents until they left the school room.

When researching Emily, Lady Cowper, I was shocked that she would leave the country for months at a time and not even see her children. But she was not unique. Many aristocratic women of the Regency era did the same.

Surprisingly, though, many of these women were truly affectionate mothers. Maternal bonds, after all, are likely the strongest in the world.

One of the most devoted of Regency-era aristocratic mothers was the first Lady Spencer.

The former Georgiana Poyntz (1737-1814) married the first Earl Spencer (1734-1783) in 1755. As the sole heir of his grandmother, Sarah Churchill, the first Duchess of Marlborough, he was one of the richest men in the kingdom.

Theirs was a love match from the beginning, and I’ve never found a word to dispute the couple’s devotion to one another. This was especially remarkable, given that adultery was rampant in aristocratic England at the time (and given the fact her two surviving daughters were famously adulterous).

Though the couple had five children, only one son and two daughters survived to adulthood. She was astonishingly close to her children.

Her oldest, Georgiana, would become betrothed to the 5th Duke of Devonshire when she was just sixteen; they wed on her seventeenth birthday. Lady Spencer was enormously proud of her beautiful, trendsetting firstborn, who became the toast of London society. She was equally as prostrate over her daughter’s vices, namely an addiction to high-stakes gambling. Though the young duchess had married a peer even richer than her father, her gambling kept the pair deeply in debt.

Lady Spencer wrote to her daughter every day, and rarely did one of her epistles fail to admonish Georgiana over her gambling.

Lady Spencer was also very close to Harriet, the younger daughter, despite that she’d been sent away to a French convent when she was a child to remove her from the English winters which adversely affected the sickly child. Lady Spencer did send her own mother to help look after Harriet during the years she had to live in France.

Even though Harriet lived to be sixty, she was plagued with ill health, which caused her mother much worry. When writing to others about Harriet when Harriet was in her thirties, Lady Spencer would refer to her as “my baby.”

After the daughters had presented their aristocratic husbands with heirs, they turned to lovers, and both “secretly” gave birth to illegitimate babies. It is not known if Lady Spencer ever knew of Harriet’s illegitimate children, but she did learn of Georgiana’s.

When Harriet was thirty she suffered a stroke from which she later recovered. However, Georgiana used her sister’s ill health to help cover up her own banishment to the Continent to “secretly” give birth to her love child by Charles Grey, later prime minister Earl Grey. When Lady Spencer heard her daughters were fleeing to the Continent because of a setback in Harriet’s health, she raced to be with them. Despite that the pious Lady Spencer was no doubt sickened and disappointed when she came to understand why the pregnant Georgiana was being forced to go to the Continent, nothing would do but that she, too, accompany them.

They were gone for two years.

Lady Spencer was also a devoted grandmother, especially to her daughter’s children. She and Harriet’s only daughter, who later became the infamous Lady Caroline Lamb, adulteress with Lord Byron, were uncommonly close – despite that Lady Caroline was always a difficult child. Harriett, Lady Bessborough, had brought her two youngest children with her during their two-year banishment, and during that time Caroline begged to sleep with her grandmother. Lady Spencer would withhold the privilege of sleeping with her when Caroline misbehaved – which was often.

When Caroline became engaged to William Lamb, who became prime minister Lord Melbourne after Caroline’s death, he knew he had to go to St. Albans to ingratiate himself with Lady Spencer, the grandmother to whom Lady Caroline was so especially close.

Lady Spencer lost the husband she adored when he was only forty-nine, and her son became the 2nd Earl Spencer. He was always a source of pride. He and his wife, Lavinia, were every bit as pious as Lady Spencer, and he also took public service seriously and held cabinet positions. Like his mother, he was a philanthropist.

He also kindly provided his mother with one of his estates (at St. Albans) for the remainder of her life.

Lady Spencer would also faithfully write to her daughter-in-law, despite that she could not like her. Lavinia made no secret of her dislike of her husband’s sisters – not a practice calculated to win her mother-in-law’s affection.

Harriett was as prolific a letter writer as her mother. When she would go stay with her aging mother at St. Albans, her correspondence is filled with mentions of chapel and Scripture reading seven days a week.

Her good living enabled her to live much longer than either of her daughters.

I like to think she’d have approved of the mothering skills of her great, great, great, great, great granddaughter, Princess Diana. And she would likely have been indulgent to Prince William and Prince Harry, too.

New Release: humorous romantic Regency mystery

Book 1 in my Regent Mysteries, With His Lady’s Assistance, is now available as an ebook at all outlets that sell ebooks.

Here’s a short description:

The prince regent recruits Wellington’s best spy, Captain Jack Dryden, to find out who’s trying to murder him. But in order to mix in the highest echelons of English society, the exceedingly handsome spy must feign an engagement to the prodigiously plain spinster Lady Daphne Chalmers. As this unlikely couple’s investigation deepens, so does their attraction to one another.

Reviews:

This is a highly enjoyable read. There is mystery, humour and romance – a winning combination. I eagerly await the next installment. – Linda Sims, Amazon UK Reviewer

With His Lady’s Assistance is a delightful blend of humor, romance, and
mystery, a romp through Regency society, sprinkled with appealing characters and colorful figures from British history.  Protecting the eccentric Prince Regent from an unknown assassin has never been so entertaining. – Kay Hudson, In Print

Common English Surnames

For this week’s blog I’ve gone through my nineteenth-century Burke’s Peerage to compile a list of what I consider to be quintessentially English surnames.

During the years I’ve been writing novels set in Regency England, I have had a habit of giving most of my characters two-syllable British-sounding surnames. For example, my heroes have had names like Wycliff, Radcliff, Sedgewick, Allen, Pembroke, Warwick, Rutledge, and Agar. All of these names were proper British names. My perusal of surnames from nineteenth-century Britain seemed to justify that the most common names in the country, indeed, consisted of two syllables.

Some more common two-syllable names revealed in my recent examination include Wraxall, Balfour, Fletcher, Sempill, Stanhope, Crauford, Hervey, Mostyn, Sullyard, Stewart, Talbot, Sinclair, Seymour, Selkirk, and Cooper.

Frequently Used Suffixes

I also discovered a proliferation of common prefixes and suffixes of common English surnames. Let’s examine the suffixes first because, in my opinion, they’re just so veddy, veddy British. We’ll start with those names ending in ley – a nice segue from two-syllable: Berkeley, Audley, Rowley, Worsley, Stanley, Wrottesley and Bexley. There’s also Annesley.

Another common suffix in British surnames is ton – many of these, too, are found in
two-syllable names. You’ve got Morton, Stanton, Barton, Seton, Bolton, Buxton, and
Swinton. Three-syllable names ending in erton include Pemberton, Egerton, Wolverton, and Ollerton.

A variation of the ton suffix, which appears to be even more common, would be surnames ending in ington. You’ll find Repington, Wilmington, Skeffington, Huntington, Lymington, Livingston, Barington, Ridlington, Kensington, Worthington, and Haddington.

A frequently used suffix in English last names is bury. Here are some examples:
Shrewsbury, Tilbury, Salisbury, Ramsbury, Queensbury, and Amesbury.

 Common Prefixes

Some of the common prefixes I found in English surnames were Ash, Ban, Bar, Beau, and Fitz. With Ash,I found Asburnham, Ashbrook, Ashburton, and Ashtown. Notice the common suffixes here. We’ve shown the ton, but all of these (ham, burton, brook, and town) can be found in many British names.

For Ban, there are Bannerman, Bangor, Bantry, and Banfield. I found field to be another common suffix. Names beginning with Bar include Barham, Barrow, Barlow, Baring, and Barnwall. With Beau, there was Beaumont, Beauchamp, and Beauvale.

A commonly used prefix is Fitz, and it’s not just used with Irishmen (which I tried to avoid in this work). These names include Fitzroy, Fitzharding, Fitzherbert, Fitzgibbon, Fitzwilliam, and Fitzgerald. (During the Regency era the Royal Duke of Clarence, who eventually ruled as William IV, gave the name Fitzclarence to the ten illegitimate children he had with the actress Mrs. Jordan. Almost all of these children were eventually awarded their own titles or, in the case of females, married titled men.)

Not exactly a prefix, surnames beginning with St. are common in Great Britain. These include St. John, St. George, St. Vincent, St. German,St. Claire, and St. Maur.

There were many names which have become associated with places: St. Paul, Bristol, Boston, Brisbane, Scarsdale, Portsmouth, Southhampton, and the aforementioned Wilmington. Others are names of  our common nouns and adjectives, such as Wood, Young, Cooke, Hunter, Butler, and Cotton.

Some other one-syllable names are Hay, Poyntz, Vaughan, Steele, Wynn, and Forbes.

Aristocratic Family Names

I’d like to sidestep here to insert a little information about a handful of aristocratic family names. First, the Howard family. Howard blood can be found in most of the noble families of England. The Howard name,though, stays with the Dukes of Norfolk, whose family seat is Arundel Castle in the South, as well as with the Earls of Carlisle, whose family seat – during the Regency era – was in the North at the magnificent Castle Howard (setting for Brideshead Revisited).

Another of the powerful families is the Cecil family. One branch of the Cecils resides at Hatfield House and is headed by the Marquess of Salisbury, and the other was headed by the Marquess of Exeter who made his home at the palatial Burghley House.

Here are some more of the title/family names. The Dukes of Richmond hailed from the Lennox family; the Dukes of Bedford carry the surname Russell; the Dukes of Devonshire are from the Cavendish family; the Dukes of Marlborough have the Churchill surname; and the Earls of Chesterfild were from the Stanhope family.

I found a few sort of silly names I might like to use with, say, the goofus suitor: Throckmorton, Pottinger, or Croome.

I have saved a handful of my favorite British surnames for last. These include Feversham, Beresford, the previously mentioned Bexley (or any name with an x, like Huxley),Cadogan, De Vere, Montague, Fortescue, and Vane. Don’t they sound wonderfully English?

Brides of Bath, Book 4 Releases Oct. 1

Many fans of my Brides of Bath series have been emailing me to ask when the fourth and final book of the series will be released. I’m happy to announce the book — now titled TO TAKE THIS LORD — is scheduled to come out Oct. 1. The first three books came out late May and early June and have been very popular.

Book 4 was published in 2004 in mass market paperback with the title AN IMPROPER PROPOSAL, which had nothing to do with the book. The editors had retitled it to give it a sexier feel.

I’m happy to say it got some pretty stunning reviews when it was originally published. Here are some of them:

Reviews of this book:

“does a wonderful job building simmering sexual tension between her opinionated,
outspoken heroine and deliciously tortured, conflicted hero.” – Booklist

 “5 Stars – highly recommended.” – Huntress Reviews

“Bolen’s writing has a certain elegance that lends itself to the era and creates the
perfect atmosphere for her enchanting romances.” – Romantic Times

“sexual tension sizzles.” – Happily Ever After

“an emotionally compelling novel that kept me reading well after midnight.” – In Print

 “a pleasant completion to the Brides of Bath series.” –The Best Reviews