Emma; or, The Unfortunate Attachment: A Sentimental Novel

Introduction 1 beware then how you chuse, for your first preference makes your destiny Emma; or, The Unfortunate Attachment WHEN GEORGIANA SPENCER MARRIED the duke of Devonshire on June 4, 1774,1 she fulfilled her mother’s greatest hope and fear. “My dread is that she will be snatched from me before her age and experience make her by any means fit for the serious duties of a wife, a mother, or the mistress of a family,” her mother wrote in January 1774 (Masters 12). Despite her belief that she was facilitating a love-match, Lady Spencer’s prophecy proved correct. “Lady Georgiana’s marriage was one de convenance,” her niece Lady Caroline Lamb wrote with typical hyperbole . “Her delight was hunting butterflies. The housekeeper breaking a lath over her head reconciled her to the match. She was ignorant of everything .”2 In fact, Lady Georgiana received an “exemplary education”3 from her mother. She was a proficient musician, poet, and writer who knew her future husband as early as 1765 and 1766, for he visited Althorp House on frequent occasions (Masters 12). The difference between Lady Georgiana and her husband is perhaps best shown by a perfunctory note the duke wrote shortly after their marriage. “I am going to sup in St. James’s Place and have sent you the carriage that you may come in it if you like it.” On the back, Lady Georgiana allowed her high spirits to overflow in verse. J’aime, je plais, je suis contente, Tout se joint pour mon bonheur. Que peut on plus, je suis amante 2 Emma; or, The Unfortunate Attachment Et mon Amant me donne son coeur. Il est si digne de ma tendresse, Il est mon amant, mon ami. Loin de lui rien ne m’interesse Et tout m’enchante auprès de lui. [I love, I please, I’m full of joy, All things conspire toward my happiness. What else is there to do? For I’m in love, And my beloved gives his heart. He is so worthy of my tenderness, He is my lover and my friend. I care for nothing when away from him And everything charms me when with him]4 The duchess turned the duke’s prose into poetry, as if she could speak for the two of them. But Lady Georgiana’s more reticent husband seemed oppressed, at times, by her high spirits. On one occasion, when she sat in his lap in front of company, he pushed her aside and walked out of the room.5 Lady Spencer, who witnessed this event, wrote countless letters advising her daughter on how to handle the fifth duke. “When a husband will speak his wishes a wife who loves him will find it by no means difficult to sacrifice her inclinations to his,” her mother wrote on April 14, 1775. “But where a husband’s delicacy and indulgence is so great that he will not say what he likes, the task becomes more difficult.”6 Lady Spencer tried to make her daughter more attentive, urging her to learn “his sentiments upon even the most trifling subjects” (Bessborough 22). HISTORICAL BACKGROUND The object of all this concern came from one of the first families in England. He could trace his ancestry to William Cavendish, who had been fortunate enough to marry Bess of Hardwick, the richest woman in Elizabethan England after Elizabeth I. Sir William Cavendish advised Henry VIII on the dissolution of the monasteries. He was her favorite husband and the only one by whom she had any children. Bess of Hardwick had fallen out with members of her own family, and bequeathed her enormous wealth and estates to the Cavendishes. Her son, William Cavendish, inherited Chatsworth, Hardwick, and Oldcotes, in Derbyshire, while Welbeck went to another son, the ancestor of the duke of Portland (Masters 16). The defining moment of the Cavendishes’ political fortunes came on June 30, 1688. The fourth earl of Devonshire joined [3.141.244.201] Project MUSE (2024-04-26 11:23 GMT) Introduction 3 seven Whigs and Tories in inviting William of Orange (William III) to take the throne from the Catholic James II, a man they believed intent on curbing parliamentary privileges. Upon William’s arrival in England, the fourth earl accompanied him through the Midlands, suppressing resurrections in Derbyshire and Chesire; for his labors, William III granted him the dukedom of Devonshire in 1694, the same...