The Duchess

[CatAshtrophy]

I just came back from watching the movie "The Duchess" today with Kiera Knightly. It was better than I thought it would be. I recommend it.

Has anybody else seen this movie?

[Syrilla]

The film was lovely to look at.  However, it lacked depth.  The Duchess's life was so much more exciting and interesting than they even hinted at.  I was disappointing.

[CatAshtrophy]

I didn't know anything about her before the movie, so I didn't have any expectations going into it besides what I had seen from the trailers. I want to read more about her now though.

[groomporter]

I'm interested to see the movie. Since I sell games from the past, I've read a couple biographies of the Duchess of Devonshire because of her gambling connections. (I've been slowly working on a little history of gambling and gaming halls in Regency and early Victorian London)

At the age of 18 Georgiana Spencer (1757-1806) married the Duke of Devonshire and was suddenly thrust into the flurry of high society on the same day that her new husband's mistress gave birth to his child. Protocol of the time demanded that a new wife of her station make visits to every "notable" person in society, going from house to house making polite conversation with the important, so they could observe the new Duchess of Devonshire. A biography written by Amanda Foreman suggests that Georgiana made about 500 of these visits in her first few weeks of married life.

In spite of her youth, she became immensely popular, and became the model of fashion for the elite section of the upper class called the "Ton," as well as a friend of Marie Antoinette. In fact, among several fashions she seems to have originated, it was she who is credited with taking the women's tall hair styles of the time even more ridiculous levels. By using pads of horse hair and wigs she piled it to heights of 3-feet, and was the first to start adding additional decorations to it like birds and models of sailing ships.

In a time when gambling was one of the primary entertainments of all classes of society, it is not surprising that under the stress and temptations of the wealthy, this young woman became a compulsive gambler, amassing huge debts which not only threatened her inheritance, but the estates of her husband as well.

At the time, it was not uncommon for the upper classes to have gambling parties where they would hire a professional gambler to run the table, so if there was any question about the honesty of the game, the guests were betting against the professional, not their hosts. Georgiana's biographies suggest that as a hostess, she sometimes had a special arrangement with the professional gambler, that the wagers she was making were secretly 2, or 3 times the stakes that appeared on the table. Or, even more scandalous, she may have gotten a cut of the professional's winnings at the end of the night.

The woman with the dice cup in the illustration below is believed to be Georgiana, and if I recall, the woman standing may have been her sister.


Devonshire house was also a center of Whig politics, a place for politicians of the day to meet socially and indeed they did, many meetings were achieved under the informal auspices of a Devonshire house party. Georgiana was also the first woman to campaign for an candidate in an election in 1784, Charles Fox, and she was lampooned in political cartoons of the time as trading kisses from tradesmen in return for their votes.

[The Lady Mercedes]

Good book, good movie!