HIDDEN AWAY AMONG THE archives of Lambeth Palace, the ancient residence of the Archbishops of Canterbury, is a collection of letters from the eighteenth century. The volume itself is relatively nondescript, but inside the front cover is a lock of hair. This is dark brown, almost chestnut in colour, and the years have not faded its lustre. It has apparently no connection with the letters contained within; the only clue to its provenance is given in the inscription beneath, which reads: ‘Lady Suffolks hair’.
Henrietta Howard, later Countess of Suffolk, was the mistress of King George II. Described variously as ‘the Swiss’ (because of her apparent neutrality), the ‘Cloe’ of Pope’s poem who was ‘so very reasonable, so unmov’d’, and by Swift as a consummate courtier who packed away her ‘private virtues . . . like cloaths in a chest’, she remains as much an enigma today as she was for her contemporaries. The impression of passivity and mildness that she conveyed belied a complex and fascinating character.
Henrietta was in fact far more than the mistress of a king. She was a dedicated patron of the arts; a lively and talented intellectual in her own right; a victim of violence and adultery; and a passionate advocate for the rights of women before the dawn of feminism. Her wit and intelligence shone through in a society that still viewed any evidence of ‘learning’ in women as unseemly. Her attacks on the injustice of marriage found expression in the letters she left behind, but more importantly in the actions that shocked her contemporaries and echoed the views that only started to gain ground with the ‘Bluestocking’ movement a generation later. Henrietta was a woman of reason in an Age of Reason. The mark that she left on the society and culture of early Georgian England was to resonate well beyond the confines of the court, and is still in evidence today.
Traces of Henrietta’s remarkable life can be found in a host of different places: from the archives at Lambeth to her exquisite Thames-side villa, and from the verses and works of art that she inspired to – above all – the lively, witty and often scandalous letters of her voluminous correspondence. The latter lay neglected among the Hobart family papers until the nineteenth century, when they were discovered by a Victorian antiquary and passed to the British Library as being of sufficient interest for the nation to enjoy. It is these letters, more than any of the other historical sources, that provided the inspiration for my book. They give a fascinating insight into the glittering world of Georgian high society – its poets, playwrights, intellectuals and princes. They capture a forgotten age; an age of cultural enlightenment, high society, immorality and excess, and the gradual demise of monarchical – and male – predominance. They tell the story of a nation through the lens of a remarkable woman.
When all of these traces of Henrietta’s past – the letters, memoirs, poetry and buildings – are pieced together, they reveal a life that was captivating as much for the dramatic events that it contained as for the character of the woman who lived it.