The Duchess Countess: The Woman Who Scandalized A Nation, by Catherine Ostler
Catherine Ostler's biography of Elizabeth Chudleigh, Duchess of Kingston, offers a sympathetic view of a woman at the centre of a Georgian scandal. Prosecuted for bigamy, she had to stand trial in the House of Lords in 1776, have her name bandied about in newspapers and made the subject of malicious gossip - all because she had secretly married one man, and not confessed it before, 25 years later, marrying another.
Many other high-ranking women were subjected to such orgies of public scandal in this period, including the Countess of Grosvenor, Lady Worsley and of course Elizabeth Craven. Divorces were always brought by husbands on grounds of the woman's adultery and provided an opportunity for the public to revel in voyeuristic, self-righteous gossip and prurient tittle-tattle, with a strong misogynistic drift. Bigamy cases were rarer, but of a similar nature. The last and greatest of these scandals was the divorce trial of Queen Caroline in 1820. The Kingston case was quite near the throne, the Duchess having been a maid of honour, and close friend, of Augusta Princess of Wales, mother of George III.
The name of the Duchess of Kingston became a by-word among prigs and prudes, and when Elizabeth Craven returned to England in the company of the Margrave of Anspach in 1790, the diarist Mary Berry compared the two women, declaring herself avid for more gossip and scandal. There is no doubt that turning women with marital problems into a form of public entertainment, reviled and pilloried, was one way of controlling them, a process in which other women took part.
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| Elizabeth Chudleigh in her youth by Joshua Reynolds |
On the principle that we can judge the soundness of a book by seeking out what it says on a topic we know well, I homed in on the one reference to Elizabeth Craven and am sorry to say that it's inaccurate (p.328). Craven was not in St Petersburg in January 1780 with the Duchess of Kingston. She was in England putting on plays and had not yet left her husband. The name "Berkeley" must refer to her mother, the Countess of Berkeley, who had been one of the Duchess's fellow maids-of-honour to the Princess of Wales. She is mentioned earlier in the book. The two had evidently remained pals and the errant Duchess could have invited Lady Berkeley to visit her. It was not until 1788 that Lady Berkeley was reported as having gone blind.
This may shed light on Elizabeth Craven's wish to go to Russia in 1786. If her mother had visited St. Petersburg, this could have sparked her curiosity, and made her expect a friendly welcome at the Russian court. It's probably true that the much-talked of travels of Elizabeth Chudleigh and those of Lady Mary Coke, on the Continent, might have stimulated Craven's wanderlust.
The Duchess of Kingston had a liking for Rome, where she met the Pope, borrowed the villas of cardinals and flirted with Catholicism - all of which only increased the prejudice against her in Protestant England.
Baroness d'Oberkirch associated the two women in her Memoirs, in which she promised the reader "singular disclosures respecting those celebrated Englishwomen, Elizabeth Chudleigh, Duchess of Kingston, and Lady Craven, later Margravine of Anspach."
Many reviews say this biography is "brilliantly written". Ostler, who has done immense amounts of research into the story, can sometimes write well but she can also be rather long-winded, making points over and over again, and providing so much background material that at times she appears to be writing a social history of the 18th century instead of a biography of one person. Like most modern books this needs editing, as it contains typographical mistakes, badly jumbled sentences and many grammatical errors. Ms Ostler, who studied English at Oxford, is still capable of writing "she had showed" instead of "she had shown"; "attributed with" and "different to". She writes that Thoresby "burned to the ground in a fire". Well, what else would it burn in? And later, "She [Elizabeth] left Genoa in three feluccas".
She actually tells us, about a third of the way through the book, that Elizabeth's mother, daughter of a Mr Chudleigh and wife of Colonel Chudleigh, was "known as Mrs Chudleigh". I think that holds the record for superfluous information.
The book's strength is that Elizabeth Chudleigh lived in fascinating times, which provide unlimited material for juicy gossip. She was a celebrated hostess and beauty whose tragedy is that she bungled her marital affairs severely. Not only did she blunder when young into a hasty, secret marriage with a wildly promiscuous man, Augustus Hervey - which might be called an error of youth - but after having been ignored and abandoned by him for decades she went back to the clergyman and persuaded him to sign a marriage register proving the union had taken place, a document she left in the care of another person. She was well past her youth and this was a serious misjudgement if she ever wanted to marry somebody else -- which, when she met the Duke of Kingston, she did. He was devoted to her and there is no doubt she loved him, and was faithful to him.
How did Elizabeth Chudleigh, with every advantage of beauty, breeding and royal favour, make such a complete mess of her marital affairs? Despite her social charm, in the chess-game of life she had no strategy, and she let her short-lived passion for Hervey become her downfall. Doubtless she suffered a lot, giving birth in secrecy to a child who died after a few months, and never acknowledged by Hervey as his wife until, after a career as a Lothario, he decided to divorce her.
Nevertheless in the end she came up trumps. When after the Duke's death, her bigamous past led to an ugly confrontation over property and inheritance rights, she refused to be beaten. Stripped officially of her title, she seized everything she could from the Kingston estates, piled it on a ship, and sailed away to Russia where she found another royal patron in Catherine the Great. The Empress protected her, recognized her rank and even gave her an estate on the Neva.
It was a spectacular way for a woman to defy all the rules of a male-dominated society, and a proof of female solidarity.
Elizabeth Chudleigh loved finery, ostentation and display, loved to hob-nob with royalty, and it seems loved to be talked about -- hence her youthful exploit appearing at a masquerade in a costume that made her look virtually naked. This attention-seeking went horribly wrong when at the age of over fifty, a widow in poor health, she was forced to undergo public trial. However, in the end she showed a certain sort of stubbornness, boldness and determination not to be defeated even by that calamity, which is admirable.
So is her magnanimity when, in her last years, she forgave the relatives who had started the prosecution against her and even left them generous bequests. All this is impressive and makes her worthy of a book.
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| Miniature portrait of Elizabeth Chudleigh c.1755 from V &A. |
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