John, Duke of Bedford, was a widower of thirty-seven when he married Georgiana, remembered as the most graceful, accomplished, and charming of women. The duke had then five sons, the youngest of whom was Lord John Russell, and the eldest Francis, the present duke. By his second duchess, Georgiana, the duke had also a numerous family. She survived until 1853. The designs formed by the duchess to marry Lady Georgiana to Pitt first, and then to Eugène Beauharnais, rest on the authority of Wraxall, who knew the family of the Duke of Gordon personally; but he does not state them as coming from his own knowledge. "I have good reason," he says, "for believing them to be founded in truth. They come from very high authority."
Notwithstanding the preference evinced by the Prince of Wales for the Duchess of Devonshire, he was at this time on very intimate terms with her rival in the sphere of fashion, and passed a part of almost every evening in the society of the Duchess of Gordon. She treated him with the utmost familiarity, and even on points of great delicacy expressed herself very freely. The attention of the public had been for some time directed toward the complicated difficulties of the Prince of Wales's situation. His debts had now become an intolerable burden; and all applications to his royal father being unavailing, it was determined by his friends to throw his Royal Highness on the generosity of the House of Commons. At the head of those who hoped to relieve the prince of his embarrassments were Lord Loughborough, Fox, and Sheridan. The ministerial party were under the guidance of Pitt, who avowed his determination to let the subject come to a strict investigation.
This investigation referred chiefly to the prince's marriage with Mrs. Fitzherbert, who, being a Roman Catholic, was peculiarly obnoxious both to the court and to the country, notwithstanding her virtues, her salutary influence over the prince, and her injuries.
During this conjuncture the Duchess of Gordon acted as mediator between the two conflicting parties, alternately advising, consoling, and even reproving the prince, who threw himself on her kindness. Nothing could be more hopeless than the prince's affairs if an investigation into the source of his difficulties took place; nothing could be less desired by his royal parents than a public exposure of his life and habits. The world already knew enough and too much, and were satisfied that he was actually married to Mrs. Fitzherbert. At this crisis, the base falsehood which denied that union was authorised by the prince, connived at by Sheridan, who partly gave it out in the House, and consummated by Fox. A memorable, a melancholy scene was enacted in the House of Commons on the 8th of April, 1787,—a day that the admirers of the Whig leaders would gladly blot out from the annals of the country. Rolle, afterward Lord Rolle, having referred to the marriage, Fox adverted to his allusion, stating it to be a low, malicious calumny. Rolle, in reply, admitted the legal impossibility of the marriage, but maintained "that there were modes in which it might have taken place." Fox replied that he denied it in point of fact, as well as of law, the thing never having been done in any way. Rolle then asked if he spoke from authority. Fox answered in the affirmative, and here the dialogue ended, a profound silence reigning throughout the House and the galleries, which were crowded to excess. This body of English gentlemen expressed their contempt more fully by that ominous stillness, so unusual in that assembly, than any eloquence could have done. Pitt stood aloof; dignified, contemptuous, and silent. Sheridan challenged from Rolle some token of satisfaction at the information; but Rolle merely returned that he had indeed received an answer, but that the House must form their own opinion on it. In the discussions which ensued, a channel was nevertheless opened for mutual concessions—which ended eventually in the relief of the prince from pecuniary embarrassments, part of which were ascribed to the king's having appropriated to his own use the revenues of the duchy of Cornwall, and refusing to render any account of them on the prince's coming of age. It was the mediation of the Duchess of Gordon that brought the matter promptly to a conclusion, and through her representations, Dundas was sent to Canton House, to ascertain from the prince the extent of his liabilities; an assurance was given that immediate steps would be taken to relieve his Royal Highness. The interview was enlivened by a considerable quantity of wine; and after a pretty long flow of the generous bowl, Dundas's promises were energetically ratified. Never was there a man more "malleable," to use Wraxall's expression, than Harry Dundas. Pitt soon afterward had an audience equally amicable with the prince.
From this period until after the death of Pitt, in 1806, the Duchess of Cordon's influence remained in the ascendant. The last years of the man whom she had destined for her son-in-law, and who had ever been on terms of the greatest intimacy with her, were clouded. Pitt had the misfortune not only of being a public man,—for to say that is to imply a sacrifice of happiness,—but to be a public man solely. He would turn neither to marriage, nor to books, nor to agriculture, nor even to friendship, for the repose of a mind that could not, from insatiable ambition, find rest. He died involved in debt—in terror and grief for his country. He is said never to have been in love. At twenty-four he had the sagacity, the prudence, the reserve of a man of fifty. His excess in wine undermined his constitution, but was source of few comments when his companions drank more freely than men in office had ever been known to do since the time of Charles II. Unloved he lived; and alone, uncared for, unwept, he died. That he was nobly indifferent to money, that he had a contempt for everything mean, or venal, or false, was, in those days, no ordinary merit.
During the whirl of gaiety, politics, and matchmaking, the Duchess of Gordon continued to read, and to correspond with Beattie upon topics of less perishable interest than the factions of the hour. Beattie sent her his "Essay on Beauty" to read in manuscript; he wrote to her about Petrarch, about Lord Monboddo's works, and Burke's book on the French Revolution,—works which the duchess found time to read and wished to analyse. Their friendship, so honoured to her, continued until his death in 1803.
The years of life that remained to the Duchess of Gordon must have been gladdened by the birth of her grandchildren, and by the promise of her sons George, afterward Duke of Gordon, and Alexander. The illness of George III., the trials of Hastings and of Lord Melville, the general war, were the events that most varied the political world, in which she ever took a keen interest. She died in 1812, and the duke married soon afterward Mrs. Christie, by whom he had no children.
The dukedom of Gordon became extinct at his death; and the present representative of this great family is the Marquis of Huntley.