Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire (part two)

Vulgar History Podcast

Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire (part two) 

February 3, 2026

Hey everyone, it’s Ann here. Just before we get into today’s episode, I wanted to let you know about a fundraiser that I’m doing. I’m selling T-shirts and hoodies that say “Rebel,” and all proceeds from these sales will support the Women’s Foundation of Minnesota. You can support this fundraiser at VulgarHistory.com/Minnesota, that’s VulgarHistory.com/Minnesota, until February 8, 2026. Thank you, and enjoy the episode. 

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Ann: Welcome to Vulgar History, a feminist women’s history comedy podcast. My name is Ann Foster, and we are in our Regency Era. We’re talking about all the scandalous people who lived in that little early part of the 1800s. So, it’s like Jane Austen era, Bridgerton era. Honestly, we think of it as this kind of nice, polite time where everyone’s just attending balls and arranging marriages. And if you listened to last week’s episode, we were talking about Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. Last week, we talked about the first part of her life, which was a lot of unhappy marriage, a lot of hats, a lot of drugs, a lot of gambling, and part two is going to be more of all of those things. I’m joined again by Amanda Matta. Welcome, Amanda. Welcome back. 

Amanda: Hello. Thank you for having me once again. 

Ann: There’s so much we’re going to get into. Georgiana’s life was wild in part one, but it gets yet more wild in part two, because she was holding on until she had a son. She had to have a legitimate heir, and there couldn’t be any question about the paternity of that child. But now that she’s had a son, she can do some more stuff, which she’s going to do, which we’re going to talk about. 

But first, there’s a painting I want to discuss with you, and I love that we both had the same painting that we wanted to discuss. The painting is from her Georgiana, part one, era, earlier in her life, but it’s so cool. We have to talk about it. 

Amanda: Yeah, and it’s not the Gainsborough painting, which I think it’s even funnier that we both had this other one in our notes, which just speaks to how iconic it was. But yeah, it’s from 1775, and I did not know it existed until I did this research. But it shows Georgiana and two of her besties in the guise of the three witches from Macbeth; they have pointy hats, they have a cauldron. It’s fabulous. 

Ann: One of them is flying. 

Amanda: Yeah, she is, isn’t she? Yeah, so it’s Georgiana, she is throwing things into the cauldron; Elizabeth Lamb, who is, we learned, the mother-in-law of Caroline Lamb, another scandalous figure from this era or a little later; and Anne Damer, who is a sculptor, sculptress. 

Ann: Anne Damer, we’re going to learn more about her. I forget if it’s next month or the month after, but there will be an Anne Damer episode, and she was historically very good friends with a woman who was her lifelong companion. She was a sapphic sculptor, and I love that she was in this painting. 

Amanda: It’s so good. Of course, Georgiana… You know that account where, I think it’s parody of trad wife content, there’s the mom who only ever shows her face from that very specific three-quarter angle? That’s what Georgiana is giving in this portrait, which I’m sure was the artist’s choice and not hers. But I also love her little dainty witch’s hat perched on top of her pouf. 

Ann: The whole concept of it, I think I first came across this painting when I was researching Anne Damer, and I was just like, “She’s with Georgiana? Of course she is. That hat. Of course that’s Georgiana.” 

Amanda: What are you doing here? 

Ann: But just kind of like three besties… I don’t even know. It feels very contemporary to me to just like, “Hey, let’s dress up as the Powerpuff Girls,” or let’s dress up as whatever. You and your friends, “Let’s just do a photo shoot for fun.” 

Amanda: Yeah, totally spies. 

Ann: “Let’s hire…” Is this portrait, it’s not Gainsborough? It’s somebody else. 

Amanda: No, it’s somebody else. It’s at the National Portrait Gallery, it’s by Daniel Gardner. 

Ann: “Let’s hire this portrait artist to paint us like the three witches from Macbeth.” Not as like, “Let’s paint us as three muses of Greek history,” or as whatever. It’s such a funny picture, and I love it so much. And it really speaks to Georgiana, it was just like—

Amanda: Well, apparently, I was reading, too, that these three women all would get together at Althorpe, which is where Georgiana grew up, and do amateur theatrical productions of Shakespeare. 

Ann: Okay, this might be like a picture of a thing that they did. 

Amanda: Maybe, but also it could have just been for the drama. Like, I don’t know if they ever actually staged Macbeth. They just had a theatre at their disposal, much like Marie Antoinette did, where they would pretend to be famous actresses. So, there was that. 

Ann: I love this painting so much, and I love that Anne Damer is in it, partially because, like, I’d never heard of Anne Damer before I started researching Caroline of Brunswick – who I wrote a book about, called Rebel of the Regency, that everybody should pre-order – but Anne Damer was one of Caroline of Brunswick’s ride-or-dies. Like, when everybody abandoned Caroline of Brunswick, when she was eschewed from all of society, Anne Damer was just like, “That’s my girl, and stuck by her side. I am a lesbian sculptress who lives in Strawberry Hill, and I’m ride or die.” So, I’m like, all about Anne Damer. So, I’m excited that she and Georgiana were friends, because Anne Damer was a real one. Like, she was a good person to have on your side. She was, like, head on her shoulders. There was a lot of bitches around Georgiana, but Anne Damer was, like, a cool person. 

Amanda: Well, and all three of these women, the other one is Elizabeth Viscountess Melbourne, so they all had, like, political influence, too, and for Georgiana, she would have been kind of up and coming in that area. But I guess painting them as the witches was a subtle way of, like, commenting on how they influenced men in power, because the witches in Macbeth are the ones that encourage him to seize power, and all three of the women here are supporters of Charles Fox, which I think is cute. [laughs] You’re saying he’s Macbeth in this situation, I guess. 

Ann: There’s all these layers to it. I love it. I wonder if part of it is sort of like, “Yeah, we know we’re being criticized for doing this, but we’re owning it.” 

Amanda: But, I mean, they don’t, I mean, they’re not throwing gross stuff, like, eye of newt or, whatever, baby’s fingers into the cauldron. They’re throwing, like, lavender, and Georgiana has a very dainty little slipper peeking out from under her dress, and I guess it’s Anne Damer has, like, all of these astrological symbols on her dress, which is very, like, 2012 Tumblr core of her. 

Ann: Yeah! 

Amanda: But it’s… I love it. I don’t know how many more ways I can say, I love it. 

Ann: Exactly. It’s exactly like what you said, like, Tumblr. It feels very contemporary to me. Together with your besties, and have this portrait done. It’s like, yeah, lots of Élisabeth of Vigée Le Brun painted lots of women as lots of Greek, you know, goddesses and stuff. But just, like, this is just such a, like, silly thing. 

Amanda: This is more hardcore, yeah. [chuckles]

Ann: It’s just kind of like, it’s not just like we’re presenting ourselves as these, you know, patrons of whatever. It’s just like, “Yeah, we’re witches. Fuck you.” Like, I love it. 

Amanda: Yeah. “We’re so charming. We hold the reins of society, and what are you going to do about it?” Yeah. 

Ann: “We’re witches, and we’re also hot. We’re hot witches. Here’s what’s up.” 

Amanda: Yeah, I love it. I noted on the National Portrait Gallery’s website, just a tidbit, “It was accepted by the government in lieu of tax,” which means at some point, I’m guessing it was the Devonshire family, it could have been either Anne Damer’s family or Melbourne’s family, though, that owned it, couldn’t pay somebody’s death duties and had to give this painting to the nation as a result. So, indebted aristocracy is the reason we know that this painting exists. 

Ann: So, it was maybe, like, a private painting, and now we know— It was just kind of like, “Let’s just have a funny polaroid,” but now it’s just like, “Oh, we have to donate this to the National Portrait Gallery.” Okay. 

Amanda: Yeah. The gallery website says because the composition has no parallel in the artist’s body of work, it’s assumed that the women were the ones suggesting that we made this picture. So, like, they would have commissioned him to do this. So, it is, like, a private inside joke, almost, just like the nicknames we talked about Georgiana having for people in her life. 

Ann: Georgiana was such a good time. 

Amanda: Yeah, sounds like it. 

Ann: Like, everybody loved her because everybody should, because she sounds great. 

So, where we last left her, I mean, listen to part one, y’all. But we left her, she had had a son, she has three kids, she’s got Little Gee, she’s got Harryo… 

Amanda: She kind of has four, but also kind of six, if you count Bess’s and her husband’s illegitimate children. 

Ann: The nursery is very full of children and not all of them… A lot of them share at least one parent. All of them share one parent, all of them. 

Amanda: [laughs] It’s a blended family. 

Ann: So, she had the children, and then what happens? What happens is she is able to take a lover because she’s had a son. 

Amanda: Yes, and she’s in good company. Again, women of the era did this, but only after you had kind of fulfilled your marital duties, or if you came up from being kind of a courtesan. We’re going to talk about Emma, Lady Hamilton, eventually, you and I, she was another one of this era who was famous for her affair with, spoiler, Lord Nelson. But there was also Lady Jersey and Lady Melbourne, who was in that portrait with Georgiana, Lady Melbourne was. So, there’s a lot of women in this era having affairs with men who were not their husbands. Some husbands were okay with it, some were not. Georgiana’s sister, Harriet, who had a very unfortunate marriage, she had an affair that did not go well. I don’t know how far down that road you want to go. 

Ann: I think we won’t get too much into Harriet’s story because I might do a whole episode about her later. 

But something I wanted to mention that also happened in this era is… So, Georgiana has been besties with Prinny, George, the Prince of Wales. We talked last time a bit about how she became sort of like an advisor to George, the Prince of Wales, AKA Prinny, because Georgiana is like, she’s all up in the— Again, as much as we don’t want to talk about Whigs and Tories, she was all about Whigs and Tories and she was very knowledgeable about the politics of it all, and I respect that about her, and I will not talk about it because I’m not interested in that. Anyway, so she was involved with George, the Prince of Wales. Like, they got along, and part of that, I think, is just like, he liked to party, she liked to party, they were both in debt all the time. 

Amanda: He was connecting her to creditors. Yeah, like, you have to be friends with him in that situation. 

Ann: So, I talk about this in my book, Rebel of the Regency, this is where Georgiana comes into my book. So, Prinny was in love with this woman called Maria Fitzherbert who was a widow.

Amanda: Oh, yes. She’s in my book, too. I write a little bit about her in my forthcoming book. 

Ann: Yeah! Your book, which is about… What’s your book? 

Amanda: So, my book – it’s forthcoming next spring, so it’s at the editor right now – but it’s called The Royal Tea: A Commoner’s Guide to the British Monarchy. So, I go through every area of life, in regards to the royals, and it’s just nonfiction, kind of like a guidebook. And I have a whole chapter on scandals, so I got to do some research on Maria, and that was crazy! I didn’t know half of that stuff. [laughs]

Ann: I will… Well, you know, not to spoil either of our books, but I’ll just say how Georgiana comes into it is that Prinny, George, the Prince of Wales, was obsessed with this woman, Maria Fitzherbert, who was a widow, so she was technically available to be with him, to marry him, except for she was Catholic. At that time, and you know about all this from your recent royal work, but like, there’s various legislations that said like, the heir to the throne of Great Britain cannot marry a Catholic woman. If they do, then they disinherit themselves, effectively. But then also, what the rules were at that time were that if the heir to the British throne was going to get married, he had to get his father’s permission. So, he knew that his father would not give him permission to marry Maria Fitzherbert because she was Catholic, but he wanted to be with her. And she, in a true, like, Anne Boleyn adjacent way, was like, “I will not be your mistress. I will only be your wife.” 

Amanda: Which is her right. 

Ann: Yeah! Yeah. But it’s like, he’s not going to disinherit himself from the throne, because… No. So, what he does, which is the same thing that the character Will does in an episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, effectively. 

Amanda: Yes. [laughs softly] 

Ann: Is that he pretended to marry somebody so that he could sleep with her. So, what Prinny does is he’s like, “I want you to marry me,” and she’s like, “Well, no, I don’t know if I want to do that.” And then Prinny, he had a habit of faking suicide attempts to get his way. 

Amanda: Yeah. “Guess I’ll die,” yeah. 

Ann: So, then he wrote a letter… Anyway, Georgiana gets involved with this because Prinny claims to have tried to kill himself, and then he’s like, “I’ll go through with it unless I can see Maria Fitzherbert,” and somehow Georgiana gets called upon to, like, accompany them both because she’s Prinny’s friend or something. So, she’s in the room witnessing this, but I think she was called because Prinny wanted a witness. And what he said was just like, “Maria, if you don’t marry me, I will kill myself.” And Maria is like, “Okay, well, don’t do that, buddy. Okay, I’ll marry you.” And then Georgiana lends them a ring, and that kind of is their betrothal thing. And then this becomes a secret, because if anyone finds out that this is happening, then he will be disinherited. So, it becomes a secret marriage. 

Amanda: Secret, sexy marriage. 

Ann: Super secret, I’m going to say not-sexy marriage. 

Amanda: Not-sexy marriage, yeah.

Ann: Super secret. We do have a fun, ongoing thing on this podcast of super-secret, sexy marriages. But this one is… Prinny is involved, so it is not sexy, and it is also manipulative and pretty gross. Anyway, so he marries Maria Fitzherbert. Georgiana is one of the only people that knows they’re actually married. Nobody else can know because he will be disinherited. 

Amanda: She would have loved that! To be the one person, like, the witness. She would have loved that. Good for her.

Ann: Yeah. So, she’s involved just in that aspect of it. So, I wanted to mention that because it just shows how close she is to him. The whole thing… This is like, we won’t get into this in this because we’re just focusing on Georgiana, but eventually, Prinny becomes the regent because his father, George III, just becomes incapable of leading the country. But there’s a previous scare where it seems like George III and Prinny is going to be the regent, so Georgiana is in such close proximity to the person who might be effectively the king, that she’s got his ear, that she’s influential, like, this just shows how up there she is. 

Amanda: Yeah, definitely. And of course, because of this, there were rumours she was having an affair with the Prince of Wales, also because he was having affairs with many people himself, but I don’t think that was true. 

Ann: I’m pretty confident that that wasn’t true. I read… There’s a whole book that I read for mine, I didn’t read the book, but it was a book about the mistresses and wives of every British monarch, and it was a list of all of them and evidence for all of them, and what were their alleged children? And Georgiana was not listed there. Like, people said that she had an affair with him, but it’s like, we know who he had affairs with, and it was these 35 people. 

Amanda: Sure. [chuckles] 35. 

Ann: I think it was something like 35. 

Amanda: Wow. 

Ann: Anyway, Georgiana was busy with other people, which we’ll get to. 

Amanda: Yes! 

Ann: So, what happens is she has a son, the French Revolution happens, she leaves France, she’s back in England. And okay, we’ll pick up from there. What’s next for Georgiana? 

Amanda: Well, okay. So, once she’s gotten the baby-making taken care of, her husband is now free to pay off some of her debts because he can mortgage his estate. I think she gets, like, financial benefits from producing a son as well, which is crazy. But it would have been written into her marriage contract. But now she’s also free to kind of enter… I like to think of it as, like, her self-actualization era. So, she’s trying on all these different things before she has her son – collecting crystals, gambling, writing – but in this latter half of her life, she is still kind of doing all that, but it’s less frantic, I would say, and she’s also now free to take on lovers of her own. 

So, before the big one that most people focus on, there was allegedly the unmarried Duke of Dorset (which I don’t know a lot about), that she is thought to have also had an affair with. And then people also talked about Charles Fox, that’s still kind of a question mark. Even Amanda Foreman kind of refers to it at some points, like, she might have been his lover as well as his political patron in many ways. But that’s a big question mark. Again, I don’t know where I fall on that. 

Ann: Who we do know, confirmed, her lover is: Earl Grey. 

Amanda: Earl Grey, Charles Grey. Seven years younger than her, so she’s a cougar. 

Ann: We’re talking about Earl Grey, and I need to pause to have a conversation about Earl Grey. 

Amanda: Let’s do it. 

Ann: Because I love Earl Grey tea, I’m currently drinking Earl Grey tea. I am always excited— Honestly, excited is the right word, whenever I’m reading something in history, and I realize, like, “Wait, this thing, this phrase I’ve been saying, that’s a person,” like the same way when I found out, like, the Earl of Sandwich.

Amanda: I was just thinking sandwich. 

Ann: I’m like, “Sandwich? Like sandwiches? Oh! That’s where sandwiches come from!” So, Earl Grey tea has got a contentious history, who invented it, but certainly his family is credited. He is the Earl of Earl Grey tea. His wife might have invented it. So, you tell me the Earl Grey tea history that you’re familiar with, and then I’ll tell you everything I learned.

Amanda: Okay, yeah. So, this comes from research I actually did for the Pennsylvania Tea Festival a couple of years ago. It’s a very fun event in September every year, near where I live. 

Ann: I am obsessed with how many festivals— You just went to a butter carving festival! 

Amanda: Okay, the Pennsylvania Farm Show, please, put some respect on the farm show. Yeah, we have a lot of weird festivals here in PA. 

But I did this talk on the royal history of tea, and so in researching that, the Earl Grey connection comes up a lot. Nobody really knows how it got its name, but it’s kind of agreed now that Earl Grey loved Earl Grey tea and made it popular, but probably didn’t invent it. 

So, the guy who did would be Sir Joseph Banks, who, I don’t know if you’ve ever talked about on this podcast. But if you do talk about, like, the science of the Georgian era, he comes up a lot. He was the imperial botanist to King George III, and he’s the person who first suggested growing tea in India, which Britain had colonized at this point. So, he has a lot of really strange ideas about how to grow tea in India, including importing it from China, because he doesn’t really realize that India has its own native tea plants, which is funny in and of itself. But he also proposes, at some point, that the British East India Company invests in an alternative supply of tea because China is monopolizing it. Like, how dare they? This thing that they’ve grown for centuries. 

Anyway. So, in this quest to come up with a new pipeline for tea to import to Britain, because it’s very popular at this point, he kind of gets turned onto this blend that, in China, grows next to orange blossoms. For that reason, in China, a lot of blends of tea are flavoured with orange. The problem is, it’s hard to import that to Britain, so instead, he substitutes bergamot oil, which is not native to China; it’s grown in Europe. But Banks finds this to be, like, the closest substitute for the neroli oil that comes from orange plants in China. So, it’s a colonial substitution, but it creates what we now think of as the Earl Grey blend. 

Banks was supposedly a very close friend of Charles Grey, who loved the blend, helped to spread it and made it popular. So, Banks is said to have named it after him as, like, a thank-you gesture for, I would assume, getting him a return on his years of investment in the tea trade, because this was not cheap. This was, like, 30 years of work and colonialism, trying to set up tea plantations in a country that already had its own native tea production. A lot of work and effort went into this, so I think that’s why he named it Earl Grey, in honour of his friend. 

Ann: Well, and this is him, this is he, the Earl Grey, who Georgiana is about to embark on a very considerable love affair with, is that Earl Grey. 

Amanda: Popular guy. 

Ann: But also, it’s the sort of thing, like, you know, I’m always learning new things. I had finished my book, my book was submitted, and I read the Amanda Foreman book, and I’m just like, “Oh! Now I know more about Earl Grey.” He was in my book because he just shows up as, like, a political guy. 

Amanda: He’s the prime minister. 

Ann: Yeah, exactly. And that was where I was like, “Earl Grey? From Earl Grey tea?” 

So, what I need to tell you is this is a small advertisement for a business I just discovered – unpaid advertisement, if you want to clear that, just a place that I’m now obsessed with. So, I’m from Halifax, Nova Scotia, but this store does have a website, it’s called the Teapothecary. You would be obsessed, Amanda. So, it’s a woman, who I think is our soulmate, who researches tea blends from history and then recreates them and then sells them. 

Amanda: Oh, my! I’m bookmarking this right now. 

Ann: No, exactly. So, I visited there when I was last visiting Halifax, Nova Scotia. Again, they have a website is TeapothecaryTea.com. 

Amanda: Sense and SensibiliTeas. [squeals excitedly]

Ann: Yeah. Oh my god. So, she has two strains. One of them is like historical recreations of teas, and one of them is like teas inspired by literature. So, I do have an… I didn’t bring it with me, but I do have the Dorian Gray Earl Grey tea, which is, like, “A sinful Earl Grey tea.” But I also have with me, I have the Grey’s Mixture. I’ll just show you the Grey’s Mixture, and then she has, like, little historical fun facts on the back of all the teabags. So, it says: 

Earl Grey comes from a criminal and sordid past. The first known appearance came in the 1830s when two tea merchants sued one another over the rights to sell this new tea blend. It’s being sold as an expensive Chinese tea, but was, in fact, a forgery. The flavour came from the addition of bergamot and a number of other ingredients added to lower-quality tea. The merchants succeeded in getting this tea banned, but it was not long before it reappeared under the name Grey’s Mixture and eventually Earl Grey.

Amanda: Oh! So, it was a copyright battle, too. That’s interesting. 

Ann: So, this is the Grey’s blend; they also have the Dorian Gray. 

Amanda: That’s fun. 

Ann: There’s also Lady Grey tea as well. 

Amanda: I love Lady Grey. 

Ann: The one inspired by Thomas Jefferson’s plantation, MonTeacello is the name of the blend. 

Amanda: [chuckles] That’s fun. 

Ann: I want to show you this one as well, this is their RoyalTea, Queen Victoria’s favourite tea. 

Amanda: Oooh! 

Ann: It’s like, we don’t love Queen Victoria, but… 

Amanda: She also did love tea. 

Ann: She did. She loved Darjeeling. Anyway. So, “As the queen was an admired trendsetter, the rage for Darjeeling with lemon soon took hold.” So now, you too can drink tea, like RoyalTea. 

Amanda: That’s fun. 

Ann: I visited this store, and I was just like, I am obsessed with this store. The entire concept of just, like, recreating tea from history, I’m just like, could not be more Ann core, possibly. 

Amanda: Love. 

Ann: So, I’ve been trying to find a way to bring this up in the podcast, and I just did. [laughs] 

Amanda: It’s like tailor-made. Fabulous! 

So, yeah. Georgiana gets to have an affair with Earl Grey. 

Ann: So, you know what? She’s probably drinking Earl Grey tea. She’s probably drinking tea with bergamot if she’s hanging out with him. 

Amanda: It might have been a little early, just from what I know about the history of tea. Like, at this time, like Twinings in London would have been the only place you could have gone to drink it, because it doesn’t become… Like, it’s a novelty at this point. It doesn’t become, like, a mainstay until Victoria, pretty much. It’s her friend, her bestie, the Duchess of Bedford, who introduces afternoon tea because she complains that she gets “a sinking feeling” in the afternoon, because dinner was so late in this era, but lunch was a little too early. So, it’s what I like to compare to, like, the 3:00 p.m. slump, where you just need a little something. 

Ann: So, the whole concept of a British afternoon tea comes from this. Wow! 

Amanda: Yeah. And she was Victoria’s Lady of the Bedchamber, so that’s kind of where it becomes part of British culture. So, Georgiana probably she probably would have had tea, but most likely not the Earl Grey blend. She was having the real thing, you know? The real Earl Grey. But like, it would have been more… It was advertised as a health drink at this time. So, the more you know. 

Ann: Actually, speaking of, because this is… We warned you last time, there will be tangents, but I was really excited— Because Earl Grey, like, that’s my beverage, that’s what I drink. That’s the only tea I drink, I’m all about it. I love a London fog moment, like, anything Earl Grey is… So, the fact that Earl Grey is in the story, I’m excited. 

But speaking of the medicinal properties: Georgiana, health problems. She has migraines throughout her whole life, which is… And she’s living in a time, like, god knows, even now, migraines, no one really knows. You can’t fix it. You can treat it, but back then, it’s like, “We’ll treat it with leeches. We’ll treat it with bloodletting.” That’s what was happening. And so, she’d have to take to her room in the dark. She had migraines, like we understand them now. 

Amanda: She eventually, like, didn’t she lose the sight in one of her eyes because of her headaches? 

Ann: We will get to the eyeball. 

Amanda: The eyeball stuff.

Ann: That’s later in her life, but she does have health problems. So, I think perhaps this is part of why she’s turning to opium, right? 

Amanda: Yeah. Various points of pain in her life that she’s trying to quell. And at this point, she’s done the baby-making thing, so she has another outlet available to her, which is affairs. We know for a fact she had this one. 

Ann: Thank god, because her husband is still… No, sure. Just to remind everybody from last time, in case they forgot… 

Amanda: Her husband sucks.

Ann: Her husband sucks and hates her. And she just wants love, she just wants affection. So, she finds somebody who likes her, who is Earl Grey, who is at this point, you said, what, 17 years younger or something? 

Amanda: Seven years younger, yeah. 

Ann: Seven years. 

Amanda: So, not too bad. Yeah, his career, he’s active for another 40 years after Georgiana dies. 

Ann: He’s an up-and-coming Whig, right? 

Amanda: Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Ann: She would never have an affair with a Tory, she’s very Whig-only.

Amanda: In the movie, he’s played by Dominic West, I think it is. He’s very cute in the movie. 

Ann: Dominic West! 

Amanda: I think that’s who it is. No! Not Dominic West, sorry. The other one, the younger one.

Ann: The one from Mamma Mia!

Amanda: Cooper? 

Ann: Dominic Cooper. 

Amanda: Yep. So, he’s, I assume, dreamy. He is an up-and-coming political figure, and she’s still active in politics at this time. So, she has an affair with him, and it goes really well… until she gets pregnant, not by her husband. 

Ann: The thing about this is, like, one would think, I had thought, it’s like, “Well, she could just pretend that her husband’s the father,” but it’s like, he knows and she knows they have not had sex in a really long time. 

Amanda: Yeah, because she’s done her job. She’s had a boy. 

Ann: Yeah, and he hates her. Like, why would they? He’s got Bess, he’s fine. 

Amanda: Yeah. Bess continues… Her second son with the Duke, let me find it here. So, Georgiana has her son in 1790. 

Ann: The two sons are, like, simultaneous, Bess’s son and her son, with the same man. I think they were potentially conceived the same week, like, when Georgiana and Bess look at the dates. 

Amanda: Yeah, they’re very close. Bess’s second son is named Sir Augustus Clifford; they call him Clifford or Cliff because that is one of the Duke’s subsidiary titles. So, they’re not being subtle about this at the same time, which sucks. 

Ann: At this time… Like, at first, initially, when Bess first got pregnant by the Duke, she kind of tried to hide it, she went into exile and all this stuff. But now she’s just kind of like, “Yeah, it happened again,” and Georgiana is like, “That’s cool. You’re my bestie.” Or like that time when all those Kardashian sisters all had babies at the same time, it’s like “We’re doing it together!” 

Amanda: Yeah, the pregnancy pact. Yes. That was, like, a real thing they tried to dissuade us from doing in high school, I remember. 

Ann: You’re from that era. 

Amanda: That’s how relevant it was to my era, yeah. 

Ann: Yeah. Well, these two had children by the same man, and they were both sons, and they’re born at the same time. But now Georgiana is pregnant again, and this is the issue because eventually, it becomes… Actually, it wasn’t this pregnancy because this becomes a whole thing. One of her other pregnancies, because Georgiana is such a trendsetter, people started wearing fake pregnancy bellies because she was pregnant. Like, she was so much like…

Amanda: Oh my gosh. 

Ann: “I heard Georgiana had a pregnant belly,” so they like that’s foam or whatever they had back then, like cork pads, to look pregnant. She was pregnant, and she looked so beautiful pregnant, everyone was just like, “Let’s do that, too.” Like, she still has that influence, it’s bananas! 

Amanda: That is. 

Ann: Delightful. 

Amanda: But she, with this pregnancy, though, she does not get to be the darling of society; she essentially gets exiled. The Duke sends her to France, where she is going to give birth, which means she is separated from her other children. This is like, Foreman calls it “the great tragedy of her life” because she loved her kids, she loved being a mom. And she says: 

The Duke essentially kidnapped her children in revenge for her love affair. His brutal assertion of male right forced Georgiana to redefine herself, and from that moment, her life was no longer about possibilities, but about consequences. 

It’s very poetic. 

Ann: Well, this is where I felt like, knowing this would be a two-part episode, I felt like part one, part two. The thing about her, I just want to mention, like, I forget how you phrased it there, but it’s the parental authority. We see this also in the story of Caroline of Brunswick, which I talk about in my book, Rebel of the Regency. 

Amanda: Well, and Bess in this same story, like, her husband had kept her children away from her. 

Ann: Yeah, this is part of what kept women in terrible marriages, it’s because husbands had entire control over the children. Like, yeah, the wife could leave the husband, but until, I want to say, the early 1900s, women had no rights to their children; the children were the property of the husband. So, like, all these husbands could do this, and it’s obviously horrible for anyone in this situation. 

In Georgiana’s story, it’s horrible for her, especially because she was so affectionate towards her children, she was so close to them. Like, again, if I just think back to, famously, Princess Diana. You see the videos of Prince Harry as a toddler, like, running towards her, and flinging her arms around him. It’s just like, she had such a tactile relationship with her children in a way that not a lot of mothers of her station would have had. So, it was even harder on her and the children to be parted because they were so close. 

Amanda: Definitely. So, Georgiana goes to France. She is convinced she’s going to die in childbirth, she is so afraid. I think part of that has to do with the fact that she’s away from her living children. So, she writes a letter, again, in her blood, to her baby son, what’s his name? William? Or Hart? She says to him in this letter: 

As soon as you’re old enough to understand this letter, it will be given to you. It contains the only present I can make you, my blessing written in my blood. Alas, I am gone before you could know me, but I loved you. I nursed you nine months at my breast. I love you dearly. 

Spoiler: She does not die in childbirth. But she was very afraid that she would never see her kids again. 

Ann: And she also… Her husband sent her to the continent, like, for all of this stuff. But the reason I believe that he said she was going was because her sister, Harriet, was ill, which she was often, and so, Georgiana was accompanying her. And then Bess also went along because it’s just like, when is she not there? So, it’s just kind of like, the three of them often. They have maybe Bess’s children with them, I feel like, or maybe some of Harriet’s… There’s so many children. Like Georgiana’s sister, Harriet, has children, Bess has children, Georgiana has children. Georgiana’s children, not with them. Some of the other kids, I think, are with them. Anyway. So, it’s the three of them just kind of in exile together, but ostensibly because of Harriet’s various health concerns, which I might, again, do an episode about later, although it’s really dark, but her husband seemingly kept trying to murder her, and she kept having health problems that happen when you’re being almost murdered by poison, constantly.

Anyway, so that’s the alleged reason. That’s the alleged reason that they’re on the continent. So, people in England kind of knew, or suspected, there were rumours or gossip about that Georgiana was having an illegitimate child, but it was not official knowledge. 

Amanda: Right. You brought up a good point, though, like, why didn’t they just pretend it was the Duke’s child? Everyone else wouldn’t necessarily know. But that must have just been the state of their relationship. And the fact that she was so… They talk about her being unaffected as a person, like, she is just so earnest and straightforward in all of her dealings. Like, maybe it was just never a possibility to pretend it wasn’t Charles Grey’s child, I don’t know. 

Ann: I think she’s also such a romantic. Like, I think she would have… I don’t think she had it in her to deceive anybody, except about her gambling debts, but I think she wouldn’t have wanted to claim that the child was anyone else’s except for Charles Grey’s, because she was all about him at this point. 

But what I find is interesting… So, she does not die in childbirth; they’re in Europe. And what I find interesting is during this era, it says, the book, Amanda Foreman’s book, The Duchess, says, “Georgiana had been free of the urge to gamble during her exile. She had been so preoccupied with other interests, especially her scientific studies, that the problem had never arisen.” I find that really interesting because she’s had this gambling problem for most, all of her adult life, starting when she was a teenager. But in this era, when she was, you would think, maybe the most distressed… Part of it could just be like, who is she surrounded by in England? Like, her mother also gambling, all her friends… 

Amanda: Her social circle. 

Ann: She couldn’t avoid being around people… But if no one around her was gambling, she could seemingly easily not do it. So, that’s interesting. 

Amanda: Yeah. And she, I think, tried to fill a hole of affection, and yeah, just having a good time with gambling when she was in Britain. But now, she’s on the continent, she’s in France, she’s separated from her children, so yeah, I don’t know, she probably wouldn’t have been looking to fill the hole in the same way. And she’s older, too. 

Ann: Yeah, true. And she’s travelling around. I think she did some, like… It says here, “She climbed to the top of Mount Vesuvius, she took boat trips around the island, she investigated ancient ruins.” Like, she kept herself busy, even as she was desperately missing her children. 

And we need to talk about— So, she has a daughter who’s named Eliza. This child, what is decided, is that this child would be given to Earl Grey’s parents to raise as his younger sister, his much younger sister. 

Amanda: Right. Yeah, so this is a condition of the Duke, eventually, letting Georgiana come home. He forbids her to return until the baby is placed elsewhere, and she agrees not to bring it back with her. But even so, it’s like, two years, she’s away for two years before she can come back home to her children. So, even though she did everything he supposedly asked of her, went away to have the baby, gave it to Grey’s family, she’s still gone for an extra year. She writes letters to her kids, so they’re allowed to have contact with her, but she isn’t allowed to return until she also renounces Charles Grey and says she won’t have an affair with him anymore. 

Ann: And that was basically his… Her shitty husband effectively says, like, “I will take you back if you renounce Charles Grey, if you will never have anything to do with your child.” 

Amanda: Which is so shitty! Because do we need to remind this man that his illegitimate children from other women live in Georgiana’s…

Ann: In their house! 

Amanda: Yeah, with her. 

Ann: Raising them. 

Amanda: Multiple other women have had multiple children, and they all are being raised by Georgiana. [laughs] 

Ann: And she’s such a… He’s doing this, I think, in part, because he knows that this will devastate her. Like, this is why this is his condition. He knows how much she loves children, he knows how much she loves her children, he knows how much this will affect her. So, it’s basically either stay with your child and be penniless and never see your other children, or abandon this one child and come back to your life you had before. It’s a hard decision, but she decides to estrange herself from Eliza and go back to her shitty husband. Because it’s a better option. Also, she has all these debts, right? She can’t… 

Amanda: [laughs] She’s the Duchess, people would start to ask questions. And I mean, she is eventually allowed to see Eliza, the child, as she grows up. She kind of is in her life as, like, a godparent or a favourite aunt would be. But Eliza doesn’t know Georgiana is her mom. I think everyone else knows, but Eliza doesn’t know. 

Ann: Eliza doesn’t know for a long time. 

Amanda: She learns after Georgiana dies that that was her biological mother, and eventually, she names her own daughter, Georgiana, and her second daughter is Elizabeth Georgiana. So eventually, she knows. And Georgiana also writes her poetry. There’s like, really lavish poems. One of them, she says, “Unhappy child of indiscretion, poor slumber on a breast forlorn, pledge of reproof of past transgression, dear, though unfortunate to be born.” So, that’s a really heartbreaking, like, tension. Like, I love this child, even though she was born out of really terrible circumstances all around, like, everyone was miserable because she came along. So, the psychological trauma, I guess, continues into the next generation in that way. 

Ann: And part of when she would go to visit Eliza as just this friend of the family, she would see that they were raising her in what was a more conventional parenting style, especially they were older parents, because they were her lover’s parents, they would be grandparent age. But they were raising her much more emotionally distant than the, like, Rousseau-ian way that Georgiana wanted to. So, she saw that her daughter was not getting the hugs and the affection that she would have given, so I think that was very distressing for her to see, that her child was not being raised the way that she would have herself. 

Amanda: Yeah, that’s a good point. But eventually, she gives up Charles Grey so she can go home to return to her other children. She writes at one point about giving him up. She says, “She had left her heart and soul. He has one consolation, that I have given him up for my children only.” So, I think she really loved him. 

Ann: Yeah. And he does get married, Charles Grey, to a woman also called Mary, and then Georgiana becomes great friends with her. 

Amanda: Yeah, they name one of their kids Georgiana as well. Grey marries a woman named Mary Elizabeth Ponsonby. They have 16 children together. 16! Ten boys and six girls, one of them is stillborn. So, that’s insane. 

Ann: And Mary Ponsonby, you know, god bless your inner organs from that experience. 

Amanda: And she was a prime minister’s wife. Oof! Couldn’t have been easy! 

Ann: And! And Lady Grey Tea. 

Amanda: Lady Grey Tea. 

Ann: That’s the lady. 

Amanda: It must be, right? 

Ann: Right? Yeah, and I think part of what I read about – just to get back to my favourite topic, Earl Grey Tea – I believe that she was such a well-renowned hostess. Like, she would serve the Earl Grey Tea at her parties, and that’s part of what popularized it was because people drink it at their house, and they’re like, “Oh, this is good. What’s this blend? Oh, it’s called Earl Grey! Oh! We’ll serve it at my house, too.” So, I think she was involved in the popularization of the tea. 

Amanda: Fantastic. So, yeah, Gee kind of, I mean, she parts ways with them for the short term, but you know, eventually, I think these are all people in the same social circle, the political stuff’s still linking them all together. So, when things cool down, it seems like they can still be in touch. But I mean, this is kind of the end of the Keira Knightley movie, when she ends her affair and goes home. She lives another 15 years. Like, she’s still got another couple chapters of her life story, which… 

Ann: This is very much a new era for her, and this is an era of her being less in the public eye. And the trouble she has raising her children, who she is reconnecting with after she was apart from them for two years, especially her son Hart, who’s a baby when she left. When she came back, he didn’t recognize her; he would scream when she tried to hug him. Eventually, it turns out he’d had a fever at one point in her absence, and it made him deaf, partially deaf. Nobody realized that at first, and so Georgiana blamed herself for not being there because maybe she would have noticed the fever, and she could have treated it. But especially he and her have a really rocky road to reconnecting because he doesn’t remember her, and he’s also got this disability now, and he doesn’t like being touched, but she’s a very touching person. 

So, I think she’s not so much of the, you know, starting trends and going out on the town and throwing parties, she’s much more just taking care of her children, slash, we mentioned before, she loves her crystals, she loves her minerals. She pivots, even in terms of politics, she’s still keeping up-to-date with stuff, but she’s not out there like, you know, rallying up the vote or anything. What she’s doing is: 

Filling her days with lectures at the Royal Academy, conducting chemistry experiments and studying mineralogy, the fossils and minerals she had acquired while abroad from the core of a collection to which she was continually adding. 

So, she just becomes… She embraces her woman in STEM. 

Amanda: Yeah! Well, STEAM, because she’s also writing her poetry. She even wrote a song for a play that becomes a hit, like a smash hit. So, it is a new era for her. I also want to note there were some sources saying she had a miscarriage during this era, but she is at home with the Duke, being a dutiful Duchess at this point. He has gout also, so she’s home caring for him. So, there is speculation that the relationship between them also takes on a new tone and, like, softens. But I think that’s only speculation. 

Ann: I think that what we will see as the story progresses is this is kind of the best their relationship ever is, when she’s taking care of him as he’s dealing with various illnesses, because all she’s doing is paying attention to him and not being a famous celebrity in the world. And he’s like, “I like this. I like this wife devoted only to me.” 

Amanda: [sighs] Fair enough. Do we think he has mommy issues? Do you think that’s what it is? 

Ann: He has various issues, it’s clear. His parents died when he was very young, I think. And there’s something about his role… He was sort of like Prinny. Prinny always wanted to join the army, but he wasn’t allowed to. I think this Duke wanted to do more than he was allowed to because he was the heir to this vast fortune, so I think he felt trapped by circumstances. 

Amanda: Yeah, we never said… He becomes the Lord High Treasurer of Ireland and the governor of Cork. He’s also the Lord Lieutenant of Derbyshire. And like I said in the first part, he’s invited to join the cabinet, but he declines every time. So, I think there you can see, he is doing his duty, but like nothing else, no more, no extra. 

Ann: He’s an interesting figure to me, compared to just people like Louis XVI or other husbands that I’ve talked about recently on the podcast, where it’s like, yeah, he’s not a good husband to Georgiana, but it’s not because he’s not interested in women, it’s not because he’s not interested in sex. There’s something going on with him internally. It seems like he and Bess have an okay relationship, and he treats her much better than he treats Georgiana. So, it’s like, yeah, I can’t get a handle on this guy, really. 

Amanda: Yeah. I don’t necessarily want to read a biography of him, but I wonder what would be in there. I want someone to give me the CliffsNotes of that biography. [laughs] 

Ann: I do want to make it clear that Bess is still on the scene. Obviously, Bess is never—

Amanda: Yes, very, very much so. 

Ann: Ever since she entered the story, she’s never not there. 

Amanda: No, she’s here. She’s also doing better because her estranged husband – so not the Duke, but the guy who abandoned her and kept her children from her for quite a while – he dies, and because they were still married, she gets a nice widow’s settlement. She also gets her two sons back, so they’re restored to her, and she is free to remarry. 

I found a little bit more about Bess than I had originally known. So, just like her best friend, Georgiana, is a duchess, she now wants to be a duchess. So, she first goes after the Duke of Richmond, whose wife has also recently died. I guess the Duke had also, like, always been infatuated with Bess. They kind of have a will they, won’t they, for like a year, even though they are mourning their respective spouses. They can’t get married right away, and by the end of that year, he isn’t really about it anymore; he doesn’t want to marry her. So, she strikes out the first time she tries to become a duchess, like her bestie, Georgiana. 

Ann: So, she’s just like… She’s never not striving. Bess is just the archetypal gold digger. 

Amanda: “I want more!”

Ann: What else can she do? She just wants like security and a home, and yeah.

Amanda: Absolutely.

Ann: I do want to mention, Georgiana, so she’s doing her own science experiments and stuff, you know, writing songs or whatever. But she also became a patron of promising scientists, just like in her earlier era, she’d been a patron of young actors, and one of her most notable successes was she sponsored this guy, Dr. Thomas Beddoes, whose institute she helped to establish, which resulted in the discovery of laughing gas. 

Amanda: Oh! I bet she loved that stuff. 

Ann: I bet. 

Amanda: [laughs] Wow, okay. I didn’t know that. 

Ann: And then, we mentioned the eye issue. So, this is around the time that she… I don’t know, I didn’t consult with any of my doctor friends about this. But she has migraines, that’s an ongoing thing that she’s dealing with in her life. And then also, she just gets a swollen eye. It’s the size of like… 

Amanda: It’s bad. 

Ann: It’s huge. It’s like, I don’t know, some sort of infection. And then the doctors gave her all kinds of like, horrific, olden times care. She could only stay in a darkened room; she couldn’t see light. 

Amanda: Yeah, at one point, in an attempt to increase blood flow to her head to counteract the inflammation of her eye, they squeeze her neck to the point that she’s, like, almost strangled to death, because that’s what medicine was doing at this time. It’s just gruesome. There is an article on Amanda Foreman’s website where she quotes IG Schraibman, who has written about this, and like, there’s some conjecture on what she would have been suffering from. So, they suggest that she had cavernous sinus thrombosis. Eugh! 

Ann: Whatever it was, she did eventually recover from it. Her eye went down to normal size, but she lost vision in that eye for good, and I think her vision in her other eye was affected. But this is also sort of like… She was like, “Oh my god, I’m so deformed. Nobody can look at me.” But people who saw her at the time were like, ” She looks fine.” 

Amanda: A tragic figure. 

Ann: Maybe it was a little sagging, but it’s like, “You look fine.” But, you know, for somebody who was such a glamorous figure, you know, to look even slightly different… So, she was just living a sort of quiet life. She got really involved in landscaping, like, botany on her various estates. 

Amanda: She gets back into politics, too. 

Ann: She does venture get back into politics. Yes. 

Amanda: Yeah, because the Whigs have been kind of out in the cold for two decades, and they’re kind of reforming at this time. So, she briefly gets back into politics. I don’t know much more than that. [laughs] 

Ann: Well, I think she just kind of like, she’s never not been involved in it. But this is where she gets back into politics, and that’s where her husband is just kind of like… he’s unhappy. He liked when all that she did was take care of him, and now that the attention is back on her and she has other hobbies, he starts treating her more cruelly because that’s his psychology. 

Amanda: Yeah. Also, in 1800, she gets to see Little Gee come out into society, so her oldest daughter. She marries Lord Morpeth in 1801, that is the son of the Earl Carlisle. So, Georgiana gets to see one of her children get married, and that’s the only one, sadly. 

Ann: Yeah, and in terms of coming out in society, like, this is the Bridgerton of it all. 

Amanda: It is, yeah. 1800, we’re in the Regency, right? 

Ann: No, we’re not. Still not.

Amanda: Not yet? Augh! Close. 

Ann: No. But the balls are being held, like, you have to go and meet Queen Charlotte and introduce yourself and stuff. And so, her older daughter, Little Gee, resembles her mother. I think Little Gee is much more Princess Diana personality. She’s tall and striking, but shy, where Georgiana is tall and striking and effervescent. 

Amanda: Like both the Duke and Duchess mixed together in Little Gee. Crazy how that works. 

Ann: Yeah, interesting! So, Little Gee makes her debut in society, and it’s like, “Wow, she’s striking.” But she like she’s not, you know…

Amanda: Not built for this world, yeah. 

Ann: But she finds a wealthy husband. And I think Georgiana, ever since the eye incident, and she’s always had migraines and stuff, she’s involved in politics, she’s kind of, you know, helping out behind the scenes, but she’s certainly slowing down, and I think that’s a lot of health-related. But, you know what’s not slowing down is her gambling debts. 

So, at some point in this kind of final era, she does come clean, asterisk, still not entirely, about how many debts she had, and her husband tried to pay off as many as he could. But she really, I think, sort of later in life, not that her life is long, but towards the end of her life, just she has sort of a religious breakthrough where she’s like, “I want to do better. I want to be better.” Like and I need to, sort of like in Alcoholics Anonymous, it’s like, “I need to make amends. I can’t just run away from my problems. I need to deal with them.” So, this is where she finally confesses what her debts are, and her husband, I think, helps to pay off some of them. 

Amanda: Yeah, I mean, like we were saying, they do kind of enter a new phase of their relationship at this point, to the point that after she passes away, he is called “Most deeply effective, showing more feeling than anyone thought possible.” So, I think clearly, in the end years of their marriage, they do… I don’t know, kind of renegotiate the terms of their relationship a little bit. Maybe her as, you know, a 17-year-old wife wasn’t his ideal woman, but as the mother of his children, both legitimate and illegitimate, he must have respected her, at least a little bit. 

Ann: And so, when she does pass away, do you know how old she was? 

Amanda: She was 48. 

Ann: Yeah. And I think it’s illness-related, just various… 

Amanda: Yeah. So, it was in 1806, and she had all these illnesses leading up to that point. Historians think that she died of an abscess of the liver, again, possibly a side effect of her years of hard living, catching up with her. She dies in Piccadilly at Devonshire House, the family’s townhouse. Thousands of people congregate in front of the house because this is the most famous woman of the era. It would be like if you knew where Princess Diana had died, right? Think about people leaving flowers at Kensington Palace, and it’s just this public moment of collective grief. 

Ann: Well, and especially because, like, she’s 46, she became famous when she was 16 or 18. Like, there are so many people who remember her at her prime, her peak fame, but then she’s never not been famous. 

Amanda: Right, yeah. Prinny says of her, “The best-natured and best-bred woman in England is gone.” It’s like, okay, Prinny. Thank you. 

Ann: Yeah. Thanks, Prinny. It means so much coming from you. Eugh! She passes away, and then I’m not sure how long after that, but you know who her husband marries is Bess Foster. 

Amanda: Surprise, surprise. Yep. So, three years after her death, Lady Elizabeth marries the Duke. Georgiana’s children are not happy about this. So, her kids, they get along with Bess’s children and the Duke’s other kids by whoever other… 

Ann: They were all raised together. 

Amanda: They were raised together, the kids all get along, but Georgiana’s children hated Bess. She always pleaded with them to “Give her a chance. She’s my best friend. Your dad loves her,” but they were not having any of it. 

When Bess marries the Duke, the script kind of flips. Historical records kind of show the Duke gave Bess’s daughter thirty thousand pounds as a dowry when she marries George Lamb, but only gives Harryo ten thousand when she gets married. So, there’s some weird, like, interfamilial stuff going on. However, Bess only gets to be married and be the Duchess for two years because the Duke dies in 1811. 

Ann: And then, I just want to mention, Bess does wind up in Rome is where she kind of lives her later years. 

Amanda: Yes. So, I have a couple of points on her later years. So, because she’s the second duchess of the 5th Duke, she fights to keep properties which she is not entitled to because there’s a new Duke now, it’s Georgiana’s son. She really, really tries to get some property for herself, and she also insists that her son, Clifford, has the right to use the Duke’s crest, like his coat of arms. She, I don’t know, she was a crafty one. She also goes public at this point with the paternity of her illegitimate children, which, again, people knew, but like, it hadn’t ever been confirmed to the point where she’s, like, airing dirty laundry to the point where the new Duke, Georgiana’s son, basically bribes Bess to leave England. So, this is why she ends up in Rome; she kind of just gets out of there. She lives in Rome for the rest of her life, she becomes a patron of the arts, and she has a torrid affair with a cardinal of the Catholic Church. 

Ann: Cardinal Consalvi. So, this is where she shows up in my book. I don’t know if she actually shows up, but she did show up in my research, and it confused me because in my book, Rebel of the Regency, I made the choice to always call people by, kind of, their first name. Like, to not… If a title moves from one person to another, I don’t refer to the new person as that former title, and that was partially because other authors don’t do this. I was reading a book that was talking about Caroline of Brunswick. She goes to Rome, she meets Cardinal Consalvi, and it says in the Duchess of Devonshire was so mean to her, and I was like, didn’t the Duchess of Devonshire die 20 years prior to this? It’s like, yeah, Georgiana died…

Amanda: The second. 

Ann: So, to call two different people in the same book, the Duchess of Devonshire, when one of them is so famous as the Duchess of Devonshire. 

Amanda: Yeah, right. 

Ann: So, that’s how I knew she was in Rome. And Cardinal Consalvi was very mean to Caroline of Brunswick, so that’s how I know about him.

Amanda: Interesting, so we cannot stan. Yeah, she is known also as an amateur archaeologist; she funds excavations of the forum. So, she and Georgiana were both women in STEM. Bess died in Rome, 18 years to the day after Georgiana; that’s how badly this woman wanted to be Georgiana. She dies on March 30, 1824. Rumour has it that she had a locket around her neck with Georgiana’s curls inside, as well as a hair bracelet next to her bed from Georgiana. 

Ann: Yeah. Their whole relationship is just so strange and sort of unfathomable. Lots of people today have lots of relationships that a biographer couldn’t necessarily dictate, but Bess was important to Georgiana.

Amanda: And the Duke! I mean, she gets buried with both of them in the Cavendish family vault because she’s the Duchess, and so was Georgiana. So, they’re all together, like for eternity. 

Ann: You know, I’m trying to think… A different version of the story would be like, and Bess kills Georgiana so she could marry him. 

Amanda: Yeah, it’s like, single white female. She just kind of infiltrated. 

Ann: Georgiana was just so nice. 

Amanda: Yeah, you can’t do that to her. 

Ann: Like, I think they did have a legitimate friendship. But everybody else didn’t like her and were so suspicious and thought her motives were so obvious, except for Georgiana, who was just like, “No, that’s just my friend!” It’s like, “She’s clearly trying to take over your life,” and Georgiana is like, “Well, it’s fine.” 

Amanda: This could be a horror movie as well as a black comedy.

Ann: The whole thing is… And that’s where I was kind of like, because there’s lots of readings of the situation, and part of it is this is a bisexual thing? Did they have a sexual relationship? Or like, the fact that Bess was sleeping with the husband, but Georgiana was also sleeping with the husband, like, it’s an unusual situation to try to understand. There’s certainly lots of people in history where there’s a husband with a wife and a mistress, but the wife and the mistress are never, like, intense best friends. 

Amanda: Living together. 

Ann: Happily! Seemingly loving each other’s company. That’s where people are just like, “So then they must have been also in love.” It’s like, I’m not to say what is up.

Amanda: I don’t think we can ever understand because we don’t live in this world, and yeah, I don’t know. But for all that, we can say Georgiana’s son is the one that becomes the next duke. Eventually, he tries to right some of the wrongs of the previous generation; he gives his illegitimate sisters their dowries, and he helps to settle Georgiana’s debts, and he’s even helpful to Bess’s children. It’s just Bess that he could not stand. But he helps Clifford become a baronet. So, yeah. [laughs]

Ann: Well, like you said earlier, I think in part one, after she dies, Bess’s— Or not Bess. Georgiana’s husband and son put out a public notice being like, “Hey, did Georgiana owe you money?” 

Amanda: It’s like, it would be an infomercial. Like “If you have been impacted by like, mesothelioma, you may be entitled to compensation,” except it’s Georgiana’s gambling debts. 

Ann: Yeah. So, they took care of that for her after that. But Hart, her son, in terms of just queer history, it seems like he never married, and he had various male companions and stuff. So, that’s where Amanda Foreman suggests, like maybe Bess— Or sorry. Why do I keep doing that? 

Amanda: [chuckles] You’re getting them mixed up now. 

Ann: Georgiana, they’re all one person. Georgiana felt like personality-wise, her son Hart was the most similar to her, and Amanda Foreman suggests maybe part of that similarity was Hart was queer and maybe Georgiana also was. 

Amanda: Oh-ho! That’s an interesting angle. 

Ann: Because he never married, he never had any children. He had male favourites and stuff. Also, she would have wanted him to become like the next big Whig sensation. 

Amanda: [laughs] The next big Whig! 

Ann: But because of his deafness, he was never able to… Like, he couldn’t go and debate in a room full of people. But he, like her, behind the scenes was just kind of supporting and stuff. 

And now is the time where we need to give Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, her scores in four different categories. 

Amanda: I forgot to do this ahead of time, so we’re going to do this on the fly. 

Ann: We’re going to do it live. Well, and I never prepare. I always just think of it as I do it.

Amanda: Perfect. 

Ann: So, the first category is Scandaliciousness. How scandalous was she seen by people in her time? 

Amanda: And it’s 1 to 10? 

Ann: It’s 1 to 10. My thought process is like, well, she did have an illegitimate child, and she was doing the political stuff, like there were people who found that scandalous. But then, not everyone knew about the illegitimate child, and not everyone found the political stuff scandalous. Like, she was so beloved by just the everyday person. It’s not just like, who’s this hussy? 

Amanda: And people wanted to accept everything she did, I think as evidenced in the fact that she was a darling for most of her time in the public eye, like, everyone in England loved her except for her husband. I want to say a 6 feels right? Possibly a 7. 

Ann: I feel like a 6 is appropriate. It’s funny because she did things that on another person would have been seen as scandalous, but because she was so well— 

Amanda: She just owned it. 

Ann: And she was so just sweet, people just loved her. It’s like, “Well, yeah, you’re addicted to gambling and opium. But like, who isn’t? That’s fine.” 

Amanda: Yeah, and there were other more scandalicious people doing other things at this time. So, it might be a case of relative, like, calm. I think 6. 

Ann: Yeah, I think 6 because she did do things that were scandalous, but she’s not out there intentionally trying to shock people. It’s funny, some of the scandalous stuff she did was just because she was so almost passive in a way. She was just like, “Oh, that’s fine. My husband’s mistress wants to move in with us? Oh, that’s fine.” 

Amanda: Things just happened to her. 

Ann: Her lack of action just made things a bit… 

Amanda: Yeah, I agree with that. 

Ann: So, the next category is the Schemieness. I don’t…

Amanda: Mm-mm. It’s a 1. How did she scheme? She orchestrated good political campaigns. Did she do anything else besides plan a good party? I don’t think so. 

Ann: No. Like, in terms of, even if she was schemey, she would have like, “Oh my god, I think I’m pregnant. I’m going to scheme to sleep with my husband, so he’ll think the child is his.” She’s just so upfront and honest… 

Amanda: Or like, help people during the French Revolution rather than just being there as some kind of disaster tourist. 

Ann: Yeah. And then she went back to England, and it’s like, “Oh, you could have arranged for some of your friends to be sent to England, but you didn’t.” She was not a schemey person, and that’s fine. 

Amanda: She didn’t have to be. 

Ann: So, in terms of Significance, I want to read you a passage. Just a sec. Okay, so in the epilogue, Amanda Foreman writes: 

Georgiana should be credited with being one of the first to refine political messages for mass communication. She was an image maker who understood the necessity of public relations, and she became adept at the manipulation of political symbols and the dissemination of party propaganda.

So, her influence with sort of going out and meeting and greeting with people, that kind of changed how politics operated. I think her just being a woman, being in the political sphere, kind of set up the scene for other people to do similar things later on. She sponsored the guy who invented laughing gas. 

Amanda: [laughs] Yeah. I’m thinking, too, there is stuff we can’t really measure, like Charles Grey was prime minister when the slave trade was abolished in Britain. But like, how much of his footing was based on the fact that Georgiana was in his orbit? We don’t know. It’s hard to quantify that. 

Ann: Yeah. She was behind the scenes, sort of just, like, she also sponsored people who became really successful performers, like Sarah Siddons, she was a patron of hers. Like, it’s hard to quantify because so much of what she did was behind the scenes, and then someone else did a thing. 

Amanda: She’s a little humble about it, too. 

Ann: Yeah. And like, without her support, a lot of these people wouldn’t have been successful. 

Amanda: Yeah, it’s hard to prove a negative. Eughh, like a 7 or an 8? I don’t know. Is that too high? 

Ann: No, I think we can make up some points here because, you know, she lost so many points in Schemieness. But I think her significance is… 

Amanda: She comes up a lot in just accounts of the era, too. 

Ann: She’s always there. Her involvement… Like, we did not focus on the politics of it all, but she was really important to the politics of just, like, finding the new people, and sort of finding the rising stars and grooming them to take over. I think her political influence is very significant in a way that I can’t quantify because I skipped a lot of those parts of the book. But I do know that the Whig party might have collapsed without her support, like both financial and also just her person skills. She was behind the scenes advising Prinny. I feel like she had an invisible influence on the whole…

Amanda: And she wrote a book. 

Ann: And she wrote a book, and she wrote a song that became a hit song, and she got everyone wearing ostrich feathers. 

Amanda: Poufs. 

Ann: The poufs! All the dresses. Brown, she invented brown. 

Amanda: There was also, like, a dance she invented, I think they said, a Devonshire minuet. So, I’m going to say 7 or an 8 and you choose. 

Ann: I’m going to say 8. I’m going to say 8 because her influence… She’s one of the most famous people from this time period, even if someone doesn’t really know what she did, like, somehow she just became a figure that… 

Amanda: She’s connected to all these things, yeah. 

Ann: Every biography of anyone from this era, she’s going to pop up in, somehow. Unless it’s Bess popping up being like, “I’m the Duchess of Devonshire.” It’s like, “No, you’re not. You’re in Rome.” 

Amanda: Get out of here, Bess! Stop trying to make fetch happen. 

Ann: Which is funny, the whole Gretchen Wieners of it all. Bess kind of had that Gretchen Wieners energy as well, but Georgiana did, too. 

Anyway, so Sexism Bonus is how much was she held back by her gender? And it’s like, she did accomplish what she did accomplish, but also just the fact that she was married off really young. So much of her first part of her life, her first era, was just because she was married so young and she did not have children right away, she was at loose ends, and then she started partying and gambling…

Amanda: To compensate. 

Ann: We see that she has these interests in science, and writing, and all these other things. Had she not been in a society where the most important thing she could do was give birth to a son, like, maybe she wouldn’t have amassed the gambling debts because she would have… 

Amanda: I mean, and she could have been the politician running the campaign and getting elected, rather than getting men elected, right? She could have been the prime minister because she had the social skills. 

Ann: Yeah! 

Amanda: Yeah. It’s up there. It’s, I think, a high Sexism Bonus. But that’s before we even get to being exiled from your children because you’ve had one child out of wedlock when your husband has had at least three, who, again, I can’t stress this enough, live in your house with you. So, there’s that. 

Ann: Yeah, yeah. 

Amanda: And she was a very privileged person, but the issues she rubs up against are almost all because of sexism. 

Ann: Exactly. I was just going to say that she was exiled, but then she was forced to not be connected to her daughter, to her illegitimate daughter…

Amanda: Or the lover. 

Ann: Or the lover. Yeah, all of her problems, you’re right, except for gambling debts, were based on… 

Amanda: Well, no, because even the gambling debts, I think, are a side effect of she can’t produce the male heir, and that’s like the only thing she is deemed important for in this world. It’s a high Sexism Bonus. 

Ann: I think it would be. We see when she was able to just do, like, her science experiments or her home redecorations, or the politics. It’s like, when she was able to just do what she was interested in, she thrived. 

Amanda: Everything she did, she did very well. 

Ann: Yeah, and it’s just that the society and the patriarchy was just kind of like, “But you know what you didn’t do well? Have a son.” Like, that was so important. So, I don’t know. How high would you go with that? 

Amanda: She does. I mean, she does subvert it because that’s, I think, why she is so successful in her fashion and messaging through her clothing, that’s her way of expressing herself. So, she does navigate it well, but I hate that she had to. 

Ann: Yeah. Well, for comparison, for instance, there’s an episode I have coming out in a bit that’s about Margaret Beaufort, who, like, the mother of the Tudor dynasty. 

Amanda: I have lots of feelings, complicated feelings. 

Ann: So, talking about her, where it’s just like sexism, she’s someone else where it’s like, if she had been the monarch… Well, the fact that she was married off at age 12, had a child when she was 13, almost died, and like, that colours everything, and she had to keep marrying husbands. So, it’s like, that got in her way in a specific way, but she was able to still work within the system. And I feel like Georgiana found ways to work within the system but…

Amanda: But how much easier would it have been if she could just go do the things without being hampered by that? 

Ann: Exactly. 

Amanda: Is it a 7 again? 

Ann: I was thinking, I was going to say 7. 

Amanda: It feels safe. 

Ann: And because it’s not… A 10 out of 10 in this category is like, Sophia Dorothea, the queen who was trapped in power for 25 years for having an affair. It’s like, that’s a 10 out of 10. Her life just stopped.

Amanda: Or like a Queen Boudica. who has to go fight the Romans because of all the horrors they inflicted upon her. 

Ann: Yeah. So, like Georgiana, she found ways to thrive, but she could have thrived.

Amanda: She shouldn’t have had to. 

Ann: She shouldn’t have had to, exactly. 

Amanda: I think 7. 

Ann: I like where this lands her, which is at a 22. 

Amanda: Okay, respectable. 

Ann: So, she’s a 22, and you know who has a 21.5, is Gabrielle de Polignac. 

Amanda: Amazing! 

Ann: So, she’s right there next to her. And she stayed in contact with her, like, they were long distance pen pals. When the Flight to Varennes happened and stuff, like, Gabrielle de Polignac was able to flee Versailles, and she and Georgiana were exchanging letters. They stay in touch. 

Amanda: Good for them. I like being your 21, 22 on the scale guest. It’s a comfortable place. It’s not as tragic as some of the other ones. 

Ann: Exactly. It’s people who, they had… Empress Sisi is a 21. I think she’s someone else who would have had a much better life if not for the like “Have a son!” of it all. Madame du Barry, 15. 

Amanda: Aww! [laughs] You tried. 

Ann: Yeah. So, thank you so much for this episode. I felt like the combination of the time and the place because it overlaps with the stuff that we’ve talked about before, the Versailles and everything, but then also the art element of it, and then the royal family element. I’m like, this is an Amanda episode. Like I needed you to be a guest. 

Amanda: Yes. I was so excited when you asked me to come on for this one, and I’m excited for the other one we’re going to discuss in a little bit. 

Ann: We will. That’s coming up in a few months. We mentioned before, but we’re going to do Emma Hamilton, who is also going to be a two-part episode, I’m pretty sure. 

Amanda: [laughs] There’s a lot there to dissect. 

Ann: Another person with eras. But yes, please remind everybody how they can keep up with you and follow you. 

Amanda: Yeah! So, I’m on Instagram and TikTok @Matta_Of_Fact. You can also find me on the twice weekly podcast Off With Their Headlines, that is royal news, but also dissecting the media around the royals, crazy headlines, the narratives, all of it. That’s really fun. That’s anywhere you get your podcasts, just search Off With Their Headlines. I also have a newsletter, The Fascinator, that’s on Substack twice a week as well. Again, royal news and commentary but I do some essays and stuff on there, too. So, yeah! I don’t have a preorder link for the book yet, but I’ll have more about that to share in a future episode. My book, The Royal Tea, T-E-A, of course, is coming out in spring 2027. 

Ann: And just to be clear, your book is about the history of the royal family and scandals, it’s not about the history of Earl Grey Tea. 

Amanda: No. Yeah, it’s history… I mean, I kind of think of it as like, a field guide to royal world. Like, anything you would need to know, any frequently asked question that I get about the monarchy, I have tried to answer in the book. So, it’s going to be really great, illustrated. Just a beautiful, packaged gift for anyone who either loves the monarchy or, like, hates that they’re fascinated by the monarchy, but can’t look away. Like, I’m trying to straddle that line. 

Ann: Well, and I think that’s what you do with your content as well. You’re being like, “Here’s what the royals are up to.” And it’s like, people watch you because they hate to follow it, but they’re interested, and people follow you because they love the royals. So, you’re just kind of like, “Here’s the facts and like feel how you feel.” 

Amanda: Here’s my thought on it, and you can make up your own mind. I’m not telling you how to feel. I get people, too, that say like, “I’m not interested in the royals, but the way,” not to toot my own horn, but “the way you break down the situation in the story is just so engrossing.” I think that’s a testament to, like, royalty itself, just sucking us in, no matter what era. But yeah, I mainly talk about the modern royals. But my background, like you mentioned in part one, is art history. So, the historical context and the characters are also fascinating to me. So, I love that I get to mash it all together in my commentary. 

Ann: I can’t wait until your book comes out. 

Amanda: I will get you a copy for sure. 

Ann: I won’t be the number one cheerleader, but I will be up there in the upper echelon of people, just like, talking about it constantly. 

Amanda: It’s going to be so good. You’re going to die. I’ll send you offline the illustrator that I think we’re going to get for it because it’s going to be so good. 

Ann: I’m so excited about the illustrations, that’s so great. My book has a little… My book, which I’ll talk about in a second, my book has portraits in the middle. It was really important to me to have a book that has the glossy, colour images.

Amanda: Yeah, I love those books. Yeah. 

Ann: Yeah, I was just like, I want that. And I think because so much of the Caroline of Brunswick story is about the visuals and how she harnessed that and the tabloid press, I just really wanted people to know…

Amanda: It’s important, I think. 

Ann: Yeah, the image making.

Amanda: And people… Your book is beautiful, by the way. I was a little amused when you said, like— I sent you a picture of it when it came to me in the mail, and you were like, “I think you’re the first person to get it, I’m so honoured!” But that era, the Regency, even if people don’t think they know anything about the Regency, they definitely do, and the visuals, I think, are what ground you in that time, whether it’s Bridgerton, or the portraits of, you know, George or the satire, like, whatever. I think the visuals are important. So, yeah, you did a great job. Everyone should go buy your book. 

Ann: Thank you so much. And to remind everybody, it’s called Rebel of the Regency: The Scandalous Saga of Caroline of Brunswick, Britain’s Uncrowned Queen, and it will be available in Canada, the US, the UK and Australia on February 10th. You can get all the information about it in your preorder; all the links are there at RebelOfTheRegency.com. And when you preorder it… It’s been interesting because I have this form that people fill out, they send me the receipt, and then I send them, like, which of the treats they want; they can get a free membership, Patreon or my Substack or the paper doll. And it’s been increasing in frequency. People are realizing it’s coming out. 

Amanda: They’re on it. 

Ann: They’re on it now more than they had been. So, you can do that up until February 10th, basically. You can send me a receipt and get your little treats. But also, please join me at the book launch event, which is going to be Friday the 13th. I love that it’s Friday the 13th. 

Amanda: My parents got engaged on Friday the 13th. It’s an auspicious day, I think. 

Ann: I think it’s an auspicious day. I also think it’s sort of like it would be weird if my event was like, Friday the 14th, because it is not a romantic book. 

Amanda: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You should dress up like one of the witches from Macbeth for your book launch party. 

Ann: Absolutely. 

Amanda: À la Georgiana. 

Ann: Yes! I’ll show up with an ostrich feather in my hat or something. But anyway. So, I’m going to be doing the launch in person here, where I live, in Saskatoon in Canada. So, if you’re here, come drop by McNally Robinson Bookstore, which is our independent bookstore, on Friday the 13th at 7:00 p.m. If you’re not here, it’s going to be live-streamed, so I’ll put the YouTube link in the show notes to this episode so everybody can participate from wherever you are in the world, and that’ll be really exciting. And then, I have another event in Halifax, Nova Scotia and further events coming up later when we’re out of like, blizzard season. Like, it’s not really… I’m doing these two cities because those are kind of my two hometowns. But once we’re out of… When it’s like, I don’t want to show up in, whatever, Philadelphia or somewhere, and it’s like, oh, guess what? All the flights are grounded because of snow! 

Amanda: Yeah, it’s risky. 

Ann: Later this spring, I’m hoping to go to other places. So, stay tuned for information about that. And otherwise, Amanda, thank you so much! It’s such a treat to talk to you. 

Amanda: I always enjoy it too. 

Ann: Georgiana… Everybody out there, like, let’s just invent our own accents. [Amanda laughs] Let’s just start pronouncing things in really interesting ways, that’s how we can keep her memory alive. Thank you so much for joining me. And to everybody, keep your pants on and your tits out. 

      —————

Vulgar History is researched, scripted, and hosted by Ann Foster. Editor is Cristina Lumague. Theme music is by the Severn Duo. Regency Era artwork by Karyn Moynihan. Social media videos by Magdalena Denson. Transcripts of this podcast are available at VulgarHistory.com by Aveline Malek. You can get early, ad-free episodes of Vulgar History by becoming a paid member of our Patreon at Patreon.com/AnnFosterWriter. Vulgar History merchandise is available at VulgarHistory.com/Store for Americans and for everyone else at VulgarHistory.Redbubble.com. Follow us on social media @VulgarHistoryPod. Get in touch with me via email at VulgarHistoryPod@gmail.com.

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