On the morning of June 7, 1774, Georgiana Spencer turned 17 and married William Cavendish, the Fifth Duke of Devonshire, in a small ceremony at Wimbledon Parish Church. By nightfall, she was the Duchess of Devonshire, mistress of one of the wealthiest estates in England. The match had been arranged by her mother, Lady Spencer, who had been planning it since Georgiana was eight years old. The bride brought a dowry of £20,000 and the weight of the Spencer family name.
The groom brought a dukedom, eight country houses, roughly 200,000 acres, and an annual income estimated between £60,000 and £80,000. The Duke was nine years her senior, quiet to the point of strangeness, and more comfortable discussing dogs and cards than conversing with his new wife. He did not take her hand when they arrived at Chatsworth. He went upstairs, leaving the teenager alone in the painted hall.
She wrote to her mother that night saying she was happy, but the letter’s careful handwriting suggests otherwise. Her marriage would remain cold and distant for the rest of his life. Within a year, Georgiana had become the most famous woman in London. She introduced the ostrich feather to society, sparking a continent-wide fashion craze, and later popularized the poof, a towering hairstyle built on wire frames and decorated with everything from model ships to miniature windmills.
She was painted by Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Gainsborough, and Maria Cosway, and her image was reproduced across Europe. She also transformed Devonshire House into the unofficial headquarters of the Whig opposition. Charles James Fox, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Edmund Burke, and the Prince of Wales all moved through her salons. She corresponded with Marie Antoinette, exchanging dress sketches, though the two women would never meet.
The marriage was complicated by an arrangement that began in 1782 when Georgiana met Lady Elizabeth Foster, known as Bess, in Bath. Bess was 23, separated from a violent husband, and without money. Within months, she had moved into Devonshire House. She soon became the Duke’s mistress while remaining Georgiana’s closest friend.
The three traveled together, shared bedrooms in hotels, and wrote to one another in the same letters. Bess bore the Duke two illegitimate children, Caroline St. Jules and Augustus Clifford, who were raised at Devonshire House as foundlings. Georgiana bore the Duke three legitimate children: Georgiana Dorothy in 1783, Harriet in 1785, and William George Spencer Cavendish, called Hart, in 1790.
Georgiana’s gambling debts grew steadily from her first year of marriage. By 1784, she had admitted losses of £100,000, a sum equivalent to roughly £15 million by retail prices and far more by relative earnings. She kept two sets of accounts, borrowed from friends, family, her own coachman, and bankers, and concealed the true scale of the debt from her husband. When the Duke discovered part of the problem, he paid what she told him about and considered the matter closed.
In 1784, Georgiana entered national politics. During the Westminster election, she canvassed for Charles James Fox alongside her sister and other Whig ladies, walking the streets of Covent Garden and asking tradesmen for their votes. She became known as the butcher-kissing Duchess after Tory caricaturists depicted her exchanging kisses for promises. Fox won his seat by 236 votes, but the attacks on Georgiana’s reputation were lasting.
She never canvassed in person again. In 1791, Georgiana began an affair with Charles Grey, a young Whig politician and future prime minister. By autumn she was pregnant. The Duke summoned her and laid out his terms: she would go abroad immediately, would never see Grey again, and the child would be given to Grey’s family.
She would also lose access to her three legitimate children until she agreed. She left England in October 1791 and gave birth to a daughter, Eliza Courtney, in Aix-en-Provence on February 20, 1792. The child was taken from her within days and sent to Grey’s parents in Northumberland. Georgiana spent nearly two years in exile across Switzerland and Italy, reading reports of Eliza’s health in letters forwarded by the Duke.
She learned of Marie Antoinette’s execution while abroad and could not speak for a day. She returned to Devonshire House in October 1793. Her two-year-old son did not recognize her and clung to Bess. The Duke met with her privately for ten minutes and set the terms of her return: she would never mention Grey, never contact Eliza, and resume her social duties as though the exile had been a health tour.
She would see Eliza only a handful of times at carefully staged family gatherings. She never told her daughter the truth. Eliza learned her parentage from Grey in the 1830s and kept the secret until her death in 1859. In 1796, Georgiana’s right eye began to swell and ulcerate.
Physicians treated her with leeches, blistering, and bloodletting, none of which helped. The eye eventually ruptured in August, leaving her permanently blind in it with a drooping lid and a scarred face. She remained in darkened rooms for months and later wore a veil in public. Portraits from this period were staged from her left side.
Tory printmakers mocked her injury with caricatures she never publicly acknowledged. Her health deteriorated permanently. She suffered chronic headaches, fevers, and jaundice. On March 27, 1806, she went to bed at Devonshire House with a fever.
She died at 2:20 in the morning on March 30, 1806, at the age of 48. Modern medical historians believe she had an undiagnosed liver abscess. After her death, the Duke discovered the true scale of her debts. The final figure was roughly £150,000.
He paid quietly over five years, selling some properties and drawing down cash reserves, completing the payments only weeks before his own death in 1811. Bess remained at Devonshire House after Georgiana’s death and married the Duke on October 19, 1809. She became the Fifth Duchess and held the position for less than two years before he died of a stroke in July 1811. The Cavendish estates survived Georgiana’s lifetime but were gradually dismantled by death duties in the twentieth century.
Devonshire House was sold in 1920 and demolished in 1924; its gates now stand at the entrance to Green Park, and its wine cellar became part of Green Park Underground Station. Hardwick Hall was given to the Treasury and transferred to the National Trust. Several paintings were surrendered to the National Gallery. Chatsworth was saved by the 11th Duke and his wife Deborah Mitford, who opened it to the public and rebuilt its finances.
The Gainsborough portrait of Georgiana was stolen from a London dealer in 1876 and missing for 25 years, kept under the bed of the American criminal Adam Worth. It was recovered in 1901, sold to J. P. Morgan, and returned to Chatsworth in the 1990s.
It hangs today in the state drawing room, where most visitors pass it without knowing who she was. Georgiana left behind thousands of letters now held in the Chatsworth archives, the British Library, and other collections. They show a woman who was wittier and sadder than her public image suggested. Her three legitimate children lived into the nineteenth century.
Hart, the Sixth Duke, paid off the last of his mother’s debts in the 1830s and died in 1858. Bess died in Rome in 1824. Eliza Courtney died in 1859, having kept her parentage secret all her life.
