She could not utter a word nor take a step without it being reported in every newspaper her approval was enough to make an artist fashionable or play successful. The combination of intelligence, beauty and wealth made her endlessly fascinating to the public. Thomas Gainsborough's celebrated portrait of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, from the collection at Chatsworth. This apparently led Georgiana to assume that the Duke’s wooden reserve disguised a sensitive heart. Lord Spencer was a shy man in public but adoring and tender to his wife in private. She probably thought herself in love with the Duke because he bore a superficial similarity to her father. Georgiana was an ingénue who loved parties and believed in romantic love. The Duke was world-weary and worldly-wise, with a mistress and an illegitimate child tucked away in the country. The Duke was notoriously inhibited while Georgiana’s social aplomb had already made her a success in London and an intimate friend of Marie-Antoinette in France. However, gossips questioned the match from the outset. He was eleven years her senior and one of only a handful whose wealth exceeded the Spencers’. She was seventeen years old when she married the 5th Duke of Devonshire in 1774. Ady Georgiana Spencer, socialite and leading political hostess of the 18th century, held court over a circle of influence and fashion at Devonshire House in London.
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