ECCENTRIC ENGLISHWOMEN :III. " BARONESS DESPENSER "
By CECIL ROTH
IN the first instance, it was the fault of Sir Francis Dashwood, I who, after scattering wild oats profusely as founder of the Hell Fire Club, passed a semi-reputable old age as politician and Baron Le Despencer. Aptly enough, he was joint Postmaster-General at the time of the birth of Rachel Fanny Antonina, of unknown maternity, in or about 1774 —five years, that is, after his long-suffering wife had died. When the elderly rake passed away, in 1781, without official progeny, he left the infant handsomely provided for. She was placed under the protection of county families of the highest status, and sent to France to be educated in a convent frequented only by the most exclusive society. The outbreak of the Revolution sent her and many of her companions scurrying home ; though not before she had given proof of the intellectual qualities which were to characterise her through life. To these, and the normal attainments of a blue-stocking of more than ordinarily deep tinge, she added (according to no less an authority than De Quincey) a face and figure of classical beauty.
It is not remarkable in the circumstances that she had a number of admirers, including the son of a certain noble earl, who sold out of the Guards on her account. She was twenty years old when, in 1794, she eloped with Matthew Allen Lee, whom she subsequently married. " Handsome Lee," he was called, having apparently nothing whatsoever to boast of besides his face and his fortune, which was considerable. A year and a half sufficed her to tire of the one and run through a considerable proportion of the other. They separated—a settlement of L t,000 being now added to her already large income. Henceforth, she was independent (her mother had committed suicide not long before) : and she methodically set about creating an impression in the world with her fortune, her beauty, and her ostentatious freedom of thought.
In 1796, she was at Manchester, where she visited the house of Thomas De Quincey's guardian at Greenhay and caused a profound commotion, not only by her impromptu performances on the organ but also by her agnostic views and her dangerous powers of disputation, in which she showed herself more than a match for the local clergymen. Her encounter with his guardian, according to De Quincey, " presented the distressing spectacle of an old, toothless, mumbling mastiff, fighting for the household to which he owed allegiance against a young leopardess fresh from the forests." But the principal sufferer was De Quincey's mother, who had a serious nervous attack at discovering (for the first time, apparently) that a person could deny Christianity, and at the thought of the havoc which her visitor's handsome footman might cause in the tender con- sciences of the female element in the servants' hall. Young Thomas, however, preserved a vivid recollection of the episode, and, years after, embodied it in Chapter IV of his Autobiographical Sketches—" The Female Infidel."
For the next few years, the Honourable Mrs. Lee (as she now called herself) flitted about the country, -thanging her residence and her friends with dizzy frequency, and enlivening an otherwise solitary life by a succession of unnecessary quarrels. She was not, of course, without her admirers. These included a young Oxonian named Loudon Gordon, who spent a good deal of his time on her doorstep. One evening (January 15th, 1804) a pathetic message from him (" Only see me, and treat me like a dog ") secured an invitation to dinner. With him, he brought his brother, the Reverend Lockhart Gordon, a married man who was still sympathetic to love's young dream. Lockhart was a pious young man, who would not eat without saying grace : but the next thing that the Honourable Mrs. Lee realised was that she was bowling along the Oxford Road in a postchaise, with her importunate lover and his clerical brother. She resisted all blandishments until a certain point, when she drew from her bosom a gold locket containing a camphor- bag, at which she gazed fondly. " This," she said, " has hitherto preserved my virtue." The window was providen- tially open, and she threw it out. " Now welcome, pleasure ! " she added, pointedly.
They were overtaken two stages out of Oxford. The two young men were arrested, on a charge of abduction, and brought up for trial at the Lenten Assizes. De Quincey was in Court, with many other undergraduates, for old association's sake, and noted that all those in academic costume had their caps smashed in by the staves of the constables (in ordinary life bargemen, and happy to have the chance of avenging past insults with impunity); Mrs. Lee, under pressure from her husband, was so unwise as to go into the box to give evidence : but her examination was stopped when, after other unfortunate disClosures, she intimated her disbelief in Christianity. In consequence, the Gordon brothers were acquitted, though severely cen- sured : while their "victim " was mobbed by the irate citizens.
It was no doubt in the hope of curing her irreligion that her friends now placed her in the household of a Gloucester- shire clergyman, " distinguished for his learning and piety." She, however, had her own opinions about this, considered that she was the victim of an insidious persecution, and made her escape. From now on she seems to have developed an exaggerated persecution mania Her husband committed suicide in 1808, and henceforth she was entirely her own mistress. She moved about from place to place, but every- where found herself surrounded by secret enemies and plots. Even at the hotels at which she took up residence the entire staff would turn against her within a short time, notwith- standing her studied amiability and condescension. Nothing apparently equalled the persistence of her enemies unless, perhaps, their ingenuity, which (if her anecdotes are to be believed) was remarkable, Yet this obsession set her thoughts running in a new channel. If she was surrounded by enemies, that no doubt explained why she had not succeeded to the title of her putative father. Henceforth, she became firmly convinced that the late Lord Le Despencer had been through a form of marriage with her mother : and after 18to she styled herself the Baroness Despenser. She had enough money. and aplothb to carry it through. She disPensed patronage in a lordly fashion, insisted on being called by her full title, and entered into superciliously benevolent relations with indigent members of her father's family.
These included her presumptive sister-in-law, Lady Anne Dashwood, who, on her arrival from the Cape of Good Hope with her husband, asked for a loan of the trifling sum of Lio,000. The Baroness (" of course, on principles of reason, and of justice") refused to accommodate her : and the inevitable quarrel ensued, which was enshrined by the sufferer in a couple of enigmatical pamphlets. (" An Investigation into the Conduct of Lady Anne Dashwood," &c.) • For the Gordon episode had directed the heroine's activities in the direction of literary expression. She began with A Vindication of Mrs. Lee's Conduct Towards the Gordons, written by herself (1807). This was followed, not long after, by Memoirs of R. F. A.—an autobiographical frag- ment written in a laudatory third person, which would be more valuable did it deal less with personal grievances and convey names in a more intelligible fashion than by the use of asterisks. But her magnum opus was published in 1808, under the pseudonym Philopatria : An Essay on Govern- ment. It seems to the modem reader a jumble of common- places, but in its day had quite a remarkable success. It ran through at least five editions within two years, and was highly commended by so discriminating a critic and sparing a reader as William Wordsworth. This success emboldened her to extend the scope of her literary activities. She engaged a Hebrew tutor, Haim Vita Bolaffey, who had taught the sacred tongue at Eton, and composed A General Epistle to the Hebrews, of uncertain import, in the language of the Bible (London, 182o). Subsequently, she wrote a number of Hebrew commentaries, which have unfortunately perished. It is regrettable that she and her Rabbinical tutor ultimately quarrelled—a circumstance which gave rise to a further eruption of acrimonious pamphlets from either side. One need hardly add that the Baroness' personal secretary, Mr. Marshall, likewise engaged in an elaborate " conspiracy " against her, and received similar commemoration.
She was in the midst of these controversies when she died, in 1829, leaving behind her an obituary in the Gentleman's Magazine, material for a column in the Catalogue of the British Museum library, and an enduring claim to a place (unless some post-mortem conspiracy deprives her of it) in the illustrious roll of English woman eccentrics.
[Next week's article in this series will be on Onida, by Rose Macaulay.]
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