Chapter 3: First Marriage

46 CHAPTER 3: FIRST MARRIAGE Lady Henrietta Herbert must have had plenty of time to question why she had been in such a rush to marry Beard. As was shown in the last chapter he was engaged on a very tight contract at Drury Lane. The earliest that he could expect to be released was at the contract’s end. This would be in late May 1740, more than a year after their wedding. She had many pressing matters to attend to, concerning her young daughter Barbara, her complicated finances, and her family relationships. To compound her distress, the liaison with a mere singer – one of the “singers of Roast Beef from between the acts at the theatres” in Horace Walpole’s evocative words1 – had shocked the whole town and led to her family shunning her. It must all have seemed so different at the beginning of their courtship. She was still only twenty-one when she is likely to have first seen Beard at the theatre, or in the Red Lion Square area of Holborn. She was a widow with a three-year-old daughter. She was still impressionable, and the liaison with an actor may have seemed like a daring adventure. For his part, Beard may have thought that his luck was in. To put it in perspective, he may have felt like Tom Rakewell in the series of Hogarth paintings of 1734, The Rake’s Progress, (issued as etchings a year later) which follows a young man in his quest for riches in the heart of London. Here was John Beard, aged twenty-three, suddenly in the company of the daughter of an Earl, and the widow of a Marquis’ son. He could be forgiven for thinking that there might be some fortune in it for him. Perhaps he need never sing again for his supper. In Hogarth’s second picture of the series2 the elegant Tom Rakewell is surrounded by a circle of London types that would have been very well-known to Beard: a dancing instructor, a fencing master, a huntsman with hunting horn, several middle-class tradesmen, tailors and wigmakers. Seated at a harpsichord is someone Beard now knew very well: Handel. He is only seen from behind, but the wig and the pose are very distinctive. On the music stand is a score to be sung by Senesino, Carestini, Cuzzoni, Strada, Negri and Bertolli. Looking at the etching of this painting, which was now easily available on the streets of London, Beard must have felt that he was witnessing his own dream coming true. insert Hogarth print ‘The Rake’s Progress’ Weddings between aristocrats and commoners were not unknown. Whilst it had always been accepted that the male aristocracy made liaisons, both official and unofficial, with popular actresses, it was certainly not the custom for the roles to be reversed. So far, only noblemen had got away with marrying actresses – not the other way round. The best recorded of these was Anastasia Robinson’s marriage to the Earl of Peterborough in 1722. She had sung in the first performances of six of Handel’s operas before leaving the stage. Another famous singer in her day was Lavinia Fenton, who was the first ‘Polly’ in The Beggar’s Opera. The besotted Charles Paulet, Duke of Bolton, went to virtually every performance, and was painted by Hogarth leering at her from the stage box in his famous painting of the Newgate Prison scene. At the end of the first run of the opera, in 1728, she left the cast to become Paulet’s mistress. On the death of his wife in 1751 she eventually achieved her goal and became his Duchess. Lady Henrietta’s story has to be told now, as it will help to explain how this young widow came to be in London in 1738, without her child, and in a position to begin a liaison with an actor. In order to understand the implications of her subsequent marriage, and the 1 Letter of Horace Walpole, February 24th 1743, quoted in Deutsch Handel a Documentary Biography p. 560 2 ‘Engravings by Hogarth’, ed. Sean Shesgreen, New York, 1973, ‘A Rake’s Progress’ Plate II, , p. 29 47 consequences it had for Beard, it will be necessary therefore to describe, in some detail, the life of Henrietta before this date. In so doing, we enter the sometimes shadowy world of the Roman Catholic aristocracy. These were the noble families who had never abandoned the old religion, and continued to support the Jacobite cause. For this reason it can often be difficult to ascertain precise dates, especially of births and marriages which were carried out privately and secretly. We can immediately see an example of this in the confusion surrounding the date of Henrietta’s birth. Henrietta Waldegrave Henrietta Waldegrave – or Harriet as she was often known - was born on the 2nd January 1717, the only daughter of James (later Earl) Waldegrave and his wife Mary Webb. She was probably born in Flanders, like her two brothers, where her Catholic parents were living ‘in prudent exile’. The date of Henrietta’s birth can be clearly found in several sources, notably in the pedigree kept by The College of Arms. However, other writers have confused the issue and stated that she was born in 1719, and caused the death of her mother3. They further claim that this was the cause of her father’s later indifference and hostility towards her. This is all untrue: her mother certainly did die in childbirth, but Henrietta was not the child. On Saturday 17th January 1719, The Original Weekly Journal reported that “The same evening [January 15th], the Lord Waldegrave’s Lady miscarried, at his Lordship’s Lodgings in Bow- Street, Covent-Garden.” A week later, the same newspaper announced “On Wednesday Night dy’d the Lord Waldegrave’s Lady, a Roman Catholick. She was Daughter of Sir John Webb, and Sister to the Dowager Countess of Derwentwater.” 4 It was a miscarriage that caused her mother’s death. The confusion seems to have arisen because both events took place in January; but they were two years apart. Surprisingly, for a Catholic, Mary Waldegrave was buried in Westminster Abbey. The Abbey records show that she ‘died in childbirth aged 23’ and was buried in the central aisle of the nave. The decision to allow such a burial has always been the prerogative of the Dean of Westminster. At the time, this was Francis Atterbury, who was known to be a Jacobite sympathiser.5 It also appears that Waldegrave was in London, because he was one of the patriotic Catholic peers who were trying to negotiate a ‘modus vivendi’ with the Hanoverian regime. Presumably Atterbury was also involved in these negotiations, and permitted the burial as a gesture of goodwill. Following the death of her mother, Henrietta and her two brothers went to live with their paternal grandmother at the family seat in Navestock, Essex. Her grandmother, who had been a widow for many years, was born Lady Henrietta Fitzjames, an illegitimate daughter of James 2nd by his mistress Arabella Churchill. The Waldegrave family, therefore, were actually very closely related to the deposed monarch. Henrietta’s father, for example, was a first cousin of Bonnie Prince Charlie, the Young Pretender, albeit by an illegitimate line. 3 The correct date is also given in Burke’s Peerage. The source of this inaccuracy is the ‘Waldegrave Family History’ compiled by the then Countess c.1975, and kept in the Waldegrave private papers at Chewton House. It has been quoted many times since, and also appears in the new edition of the DNB. This has now been corrected for the on-line version. 4 Mary Webb’s elder sister, Anna-Maria, had married the 3rd Earl of Derwentwater, James Radclyffe. He was involved in the rebellion of 1715, which intended to install James 2nd’s son on the throne, and was beheaded on Tower Hill on 24th February 1716, when all his honours were forfeit. 5 In 1722 Francis Atterbury, Dean of Westminster & Bishop of Rochester, was committed to the Tower for complicity in an attempt to restore the Stuarts. He was deprived of all his offices, and banished the kingdom. He left England and settled in Paris, where he died in 1732. (see DNB) 48 However, after his wife’s death, three years later in February 1722, Waldegrave scandalised his family by renouncing his Catholicism and declaring himself a Protestant: an act that was seen as a betrayal by other Catholic peers. He swore the oath of allegiance to the Hanoverian crown, and was soon rewarded with a post in the household of King George I. Diplomatic appointments in the government of Robert Walpole then followed: as Ambassador in Vienna and Paris. His close Jacobite connections seem not to have compromised his position, and must have been considered of less importance than his potential usefulness and contacts in the Catholic courts of Europe. Consequently he spent most of his life after 1725 abroad, and can have seen virtually nothing of his children. He was created an Earl in 1729, and ensured that his sons followed his example and abandoned Catholicism by sending them both to Eton for an Anglican education. Lady Waldegrave made no objection to her grandsons being brought up as Protestants, but she did insist that her granddaughter Henrietta should continue to be brought up in the old Faith. Whilst in her care Henrietta had begun to learn the things that a young lady should be accomplished in, playing card games and taking lessons on the spinet.6 There were probably dancing lessons and French lessons too.

Load more