Status Updates From Georgiana: Duchess of Devon...

‘He had ordered Georgiana to renounce Grey and have the baby adopted as soon as it was born. If she refused he would divorce her and she would never see her three children again. She did not hesitate even though she had no guarantee that the Duke would not change his mind and divorce her anyway. But Grey could not forgive her choice and when she tried to make him understand his replies were savage.’

‘The Duke regarded himself as an injured man. He required two things of Georgiana: not to gamble away the family estate, and to produce an heir, and she seemed to be incapable of performing either one. He was also furious that she had been deceiving him about her debts for the past two years. But his habit of shutting out unpleasant thoughts spared Georgiana a repetition of the scenes at Chatsworth.’

‘silently pleading for Georgiana’s forgiveness for a far greater betrayal than the co-opting of her friends: she was three months pregnant with the Duke of Devonshire’s child.
Her letter crossed with one of Georgiana’s, bringing the news that she too was three months pregnant. When Bess counted the weeks she realized angrily that their babies could have been conceived within days or even hours of each other

‘The Morning Post was the first to run the story about her kissing voters on 31 March: ‘We hear the D—s of D—grants favours to those who promise their votes and interest to Mr Fox.’ Thereafter it ran vicious stories almost every day. It concentrated on three themes: she was selling her body for votes, she was Fox’s mistress, and she was betraying her rank and sex by her undignified behaviour.’

‘perhaps she no longer saw any reason to remain faithful to her adulterous husband. Nothing is certain except that Georgiana shared her contemporaries’ horror of breaking the patriarchal bloodline. It was an unwritten rule in eighteenth-century society that a wife should present her husband with a legitimate first son, whatever she chose to do afterwards.’