While Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire has become a renowned figure of the eighteenth-century to those studying the period in the twenty-first century, her sister has become lost behind her famous reputation. Born on 16th June 1761, Henrietta Frances Ponsonby, Lady Bessborough was the third child and second daughter of Lord and Lady Spencer.
In 1780, Lady Bessborough married Frederick Ponsonby, later the third Earl of Bessborough, a third cousin of the Duke of Devonshire’s. Earl Bessborough was three years Lady Bessborough’s senior and she entered her marriage with ‘a very high opinion of him’ although she wrote that ‘I wish I could have known him a little better at first.’[1] The marriage had the support of both of her parents, who Lady Bessborough described as being ‘the happiest of creatures’ in 1781 at the news of their youngest daughter’s marriage.[2]
While historians, such as Amanda Foreman, have argued that the Duchess of Devonshire entered her marriage under the belief that she was in love, it is clear from Lady Bessborough’s correspondence that she did not marry under the same belief.[3] Writing to Miss Shipley ahead of her wedding, Lady Bessborough described how he had ‘a better chance of being reasonably happy with him than with most people I know.’ [4] This detached approach to matrimony presents a clear difference between the two sisters’ attitude.
While the Bessborough marriage has since been viewed as an unhappy relationship, it did result in the birth of four children. John William Ponsonby was born in 1781, followed by another son, Frederick Ponsonby in 1783. Five years after her marriage, Lady Bessborough gave birth to a daughter Caroline Ponsonby, who later became Lady Caroline Lamb after marriage. Their final child, William Ponsonby, was born in 1787.

During her life Lady Bessborough conducted three extra-marital affairs, the first beginning in 1784 with Charles Wyndham. Lasting over a year, the relationship almost concluded in an elopement, which was stopped by the involvement of her mother and brother. By 1787 Lady Bessborough began her second affair with the playwright and politician Richard Brinsley Sheridan, with the relationship being discovered by Lord Bessborough in 1789. Lady Bessborough concluded the adulterous relationship following her husband’s detection but started her final and longest affair in 1794 with politician Granville Leveson-Gower. Lasting until Leveson-Gower’s marriage to her niece, Lady Harriet Cavendish, on 24th December 1809, the affair resulted in the birth of two illegitimate children; Harriet and George Arundel Stewart.
Like her sister, Lady Bessborough became involved in political campaigning, becoming heavily involved in the political campaigning for the Whig Party during the Westminster Election in 1784. Referred to as the ‘Kisses for Votes Campaign’ by contemporaries, the campaigning by the Whig political hostesses resulted in both the newspapers and caricaturists of the age targeting the Duchess of Devonshire, with some believed that she had exchanged kisses for votes, with this being used by the Tories to discredit her character. It has, however, since been claimed that Lady Bessborough, as Amanda Foreman terms her, ‘the true culprit’ of the event.[5] While her sister stopped campaigning after the negative publicity, Lady Bessborough continued to publicly campaign in future elections with also providing political advice to both the Whig party and Leveson-Gower for the rest of her life.
‘Her release from great agony was almost a relief at the moment and as for the future I have not dared to look for it,’ wrote William Ponsonby to his sister two days after the death of his mother.[6] The pain Lady Bessborough suffered from during a sudden illness is now believed to have been caused by a serious bowel infection such as cholera or dysentery. Lady Bessborough died on 11th November 1821 in Florence, and was buried in the Cavendish vault in All Saints’ Derby, beside her sister who had died earlier in 1806.
Lady Bessborough was the focus of my undergraduate dissertation and in the next couple of blog posts I will be exploring further aspects of her life, including her marriage, the extra-marital affairs she conducted, and her political involvement.
References
[1] Letter from Lady Harriet Spencer to Miss Shipley, November 1780 In: Bessborough, Earl of ed. Lady Bessborough and her Family Circle, Butler & Tanner, London, 1940 p31
[2] Letter from Lady Harriet Spencer to Miss Shipley, November 1780 In: Bessborough, Earl of ed. Lady Bessborough and her Family Circle, Butler & Tanner, London, 1940 p31
[3] Foreman, Amanda Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, Harper Collins Publishers London, 1999, p18.
[4] Letter from Lady Harriet Spencer to Miss Shipley, November 1780 In: Bessborough, Earl of ed. Lady Bessborough and her Family Circle, Butler & Tanner, London, 1940 p31
[5] Gleeson, Janet An Aristocratic Affair, p489
[6] Letter from William Ponsonby to Lady Caroline Lamb, 13th November 1821 (CS6/559)