Faults there were, and material faults too, on both sides. Sir Godfrey’s indifference to her tastes, his gloomy and at times sullen disposition, his violence of temper, his fits of depression which were the ultimate cause of his unhappy end, and his love of gambling and dissipation, cannot have nurtured, and, in fact, speedily blasted a youthful affection which might have flourished in a more congenial soil. He can never have properly fathomed the character and temperament of the girl to whom he was united. Had he married a nonentity, who was ready to sit at home and trace out a colourless existence, obedient to his beck and call, all might have been well. But his wife was not one of these. She was essentially a woman of action. Her ambitions could not be confined to any particular groove, and her spirit would not allow her to stoop to a position of dependence. Her increasing knowledge of the world and its ways taught her to believe herself a victim to her fortune, and, regarding her husband as the cause, her respect for him became diminished and the recollection of the kindly side of his nature was swallowed up in her grievances. Thus it is that her references to him in her Journal are tinged with even more than a feeling of dislike. Throughout her life she was accustomed to speak out her thoughts with an almost brutal frankness, and her allusions to Sir Godfrey in these pages are sometimes inclined to be hysterical and perhaps more severe than circumstances always merited.
For he too had much to contend with. Once abroad, the memory of her unhappy life in Sussex recurred with double force, and the possibility of a return to England, even for a few months, became a nightmare. She loved the bright sun and blue skies more dearly from the contrast of her gloomy recollections of the northern climate, and a growing taste for art and literature fanned her reluctance to undergo again the thraldom of an existence at home. Here was indeed an unpleasant position for a man whose whole interests were centred in England. Was he to leave his wife continually alone in a strange country to follow her own devices, or was he at all risks to assert his authority and take her back with him by force? It was a situation which was likely to have but one ending.
In her solitude she craved for someone to love and cherish her, and one whom she might love in return. ‘I strive to repress, but often feel a strong desire to be dependent upon another for happiness’; but it was not till 1794 that the ‘other’ appeared upon the scene. Devoted friends she had had, but none had touched her heart before she met Lord Holland.
Henry Richard, third Lord Holland, was born in November 1773. His father, Stephen, second Lord Holland, died the year after his son’s birth, and his mother, a daughter of John, first Earl of Upper Ossory, only lived until 1778. He was brought up by his uncles, Charles James Fox and Lord Ossory; while his only sister, Caroline Fox, five years his senior, remained under the charge of their aunt, Lady Warwick, and their great-aunt, the Duchess of Bedford. He had been educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, and went abroad in 1791. He spent some time in Spain, and in the course of his travels arrived at Florence in February 1794. There he made Lady Webster’s acquaintance; friendship ripened into mutual attachment, and both before and after Sir Godfrey’s departure for England in 1795 much of his time was spent with her. In April 1796 Lady Webster started for home from Florence, accompanied by Lord Holland, and reached England in June. She met Sir Godfrey at his house in Albemarle Street, but shortly after took rooms in Brompton Row, and went to live there. In November a son was born—Lord Holland’s—christened Charles Richard Fox.
Sir Godfrey had taken into consideration the question of a divorce as early as July 1796, but was not actually prevailed upon to commence proceedings until the following January. In those days this necessitated a case before the Civil Court and also an Act of Parliament. There is no need to go into the transactions further than is necessary to throw light on the allusions in the Journal. Though he was the injured person, and was therefore justified in making his own terms, Sir Godfrey’s conduct throughout the negotiations shows an indecision of purpose, almost verging at times upon insanity. At one moment he would refuse to go on with the proceedings at all; at the next he would state that he still adored Lady Webster, and for her sake would only be too ready to expedite matters, and would not even sue for damages. At another he wished to fight a duel with Lord Holland, not for running away with his wife, but because he had offered to buy a picture of her, by Romney, which belonged to Sir Godfrey. The case finally came up before Lord Kenyon in the Civil Court at the end of February, with a condition attached that Lady Webster should give up her whole fortune to Sir Godfrey for his life, keeping only 800l. a year for her own use; besides a claim of 10,000l. damages against Lord Holland, which was modified by the jury into 6000l. This settlement the judge described during the negotiations as iniquitous. But Sir Godfrey seemed prepared to drop the case unless he obtained these terms; and as there seemed to be little chance of securing the recognition of the court, a bond was given to him, signed by the Duke of Bedford, Charles Ellis, Sir Gilbert Affleck, and Lord Holland, guaranteeing that these conditions should be religiously observed, if he continued the proceedings. This was accepted, and though minor difficulties arose as to the payment of past debts, &c., the divorce was successfully carried through the courts and both Houses of Parliament.
In April 1796 Lady Webster wrote to Sir Godfrey announcing the death of their daughter, Harriet, who had been born in June 1794. In her letter she stated that the child had sickened of measles at Modena, and had died of convulsions consequent upon that disease. In all this there was not one word of truth. Harriet, who afterwards married Admiral Sir Fleetwood Pellew, was perfectly well all the time, but was concealed by her mother, in order to avoid being deprived of all her children whenever the time for the inevitable rupture with her husband arrived. The girl was handed over to the custody of an English nurse, Sarah Brown, and was brought safely back to England some time later. It was not until 1799 that Lady Holland, as she was then, determined to restore her to her father. In the Journal she mentions that scruples, and the fear of involving Lord Holland in difficulties on her behalf, had led her to decide to pursue this course. She allows that she was very loath to make the sacrifice, and it is probable that the knowledge that Sir Godfrey had somehow received information of something being wrong had more to do with her determination than anything else. At the time he had no inkling that everything was not as she had stated. Shortly after the divorce, however, facts were brought to his notice which led him to take action. A commission was appointed to investigate into the whole circumstances, and the grave, we believe, was actually opened; for so thoroughly had the matter been arranged in the first instance that a mock funeral had taken place, and a kid had been buried in the coffin instead of the child. Fear of discovery would therefore have influenced her wish to make a clean breast of the deception, before it was too late.
After Sir Godfrey’s death Lady Holland made a vigorous effort to gain access to her children. Her request to be allowed to see them was refused, as Sir Godfrey’s brother-in-law, Mr. Chaplin, stated that he had been expressly enjoined, in the event of the former’s death, to see that the children had no communication with their mother. The matter was taken before the courts in 1801, but the judge’s award does not seem to have given her any satisfaction.
After their marriage the Hollands remained in England until 1802, when they were compelled by the unsatisfactory state of their son Charles’s health to winter abroad. It was during these five years that Lady Holland laid the groundwork of those distinguished gatherings for which Holland House was, in after years, so justly famed. We have already seen that the subsequent glories of their salon were as much due to Lord Holland as to his wife; but in the early days of their marriage her personality, her beauty, and the brilliancy of her conversational powers undoubtedly attracted many of the men of culture and learning by whom they were surrounded. Feminine society was almost wanting in that circle. She received much kindness from members of Lord Holland’s family, but with this exception and that of a few of her former friends, the Duchess of Devonshire, Lady Bessborough, and others, she was nowhere received in society. To a woman of her ambitions this treatment cannot but have been very galling, though it was only what she had to expect; and perhaps to this fact may be traced some part of that bitterness of manner with which her name is so generally associated.
She possessed to the full the gift of drawing out her guests. Conversation never flagged at her table, and however diverse were the sentiments of those who met under her roof, they felt that they were there able to fraternise on neutral ground. Especially as she grew older her desire to rule grew stronger, and her opinion on any subject was not to be lightly contradicted. ‘Elle est toute assertion, mais quand on demande la preuve, c’est là son secret,’ said Talleyrand; and it was characteristic of the means she employed to state a fact or clinch an argument. Her methods of government were essentially tyrannical. Macaulay thus describes his first visit to Holland House: ‘The centurion did not keep his soldiers in better order than she kept her guests. It is to one, “Go,” and he goeth; and to another, “Do this,” and it is done’; and numerous are the records left by her contemporaries of the insults and abuse from which the habitués were never immune. Yet within that cold exterior, with all her arrogance of demeanour and harshness of speech, beat as warm a heart as ever beat in woman’s breast. To her dependents she was kindness itself, her old friends were never forgotten, and many a struggling writer had reason to bless the assistance she bestowed on his efforts unasked.
Her views on religion were indefinite, and her belief in the principles of Christianity was probably not deeply seated. Atheism, however, she would not tolerate, and Allen’s allusions in her presence to his disbelief in the Godhead would always receive instant reproof. Superstitious she was, to a certain degree, but she seems to have thrown off many of her fancies later in life. ‘She died with perfect composure, and though consciously within the very shadow of death for three whole days before she crossed the dark threshold, she expressed neither fear nor anxiety, and exhibited a tranquillity of mind by no means general at the time’ (Rogers and his Contemporaries). Yet to the end she was never entirely free from fears of her own health, and her dread of storms, and especially thunder, was almost ludicrous. Macaulay relates how she would even have her rooms shut up in broad daylight and the candles lit, to prevent her from seeing the lightning, which she dreaded so much.