Georgiana Shipley

Of all the members of the of the famous Hurstmonceux family the most remarkable is Georgiana, mistress of Hurstmonceux Place

Georgiana Shipley was a younger daughter of the Bishop of St Asaph and a cousin of that other Georgiana, the beautiful Duchess of Devonshire, into whose circle of admirers drifted Francis Nare-Naylor, the handsome, cultured, but reckless eldest son of the canon of Winchester, a friend of Fox and a conspicuous figure in the brilliant life of 18th-century London.

The lovely Duchess introduced him to her still lovelier cousin, and, in spite of the opposition of the bishop, encouraged their meetings. When the reluctant bishop at last received Francis at his house he saw him arrested for debt while out in the family coach, and indignantly washed his hands of him. Francis returned disguised as a beggar, and in 1785, with an allowance of £200 a year from the Duchess of Devonshire, the young couple eloped.

On this income they lived in comfort abroad. At Bologna Georgiana found her chief friend in Clotilda Tambroni, a famous Greek scholar, one of the few women professors of the age. There four children were born to them.

The death of the canon having brought Hurstmonceux to Francis tin spite of the plots of a scheming stepmother to rob them of it), he and Georgiana hurried home, leaving three of their children with Tambroni. The habits contracted in Italy accompanied Georgiana back to England. She kept unconventional hours; she rode about her park and in the village in a white robe on a white ass, and she went to church accompanied by her white doe, which rested at the end of her pew.

Her two delights were correspondence with European scholars, and the painting of pictures which were to show her children what Hurstmonceux had been before its destruction by the canon's second wife. The painting ruined her sight, and into her life there came now another distressing disturbance, for one day a dog killed her deer near the gate of the church, which so upset her that she left Hurstmonceux and could never be persuaded to return.

Now Weimar became her home. There, in spite of blindness, she was happy in the company of Goethe, Schiller, and other geniuses who gathered about her at the court of the Grand Duchess. Her health continued to fail, and she removed to Lausanne, there to die "full of faith, hope, and resignation," 21 years after her flight with her impoverished lover.

At her death her husband sold his home for £60,000, and Hurstmonceux knew the Hares no more. He died at Tours in 1815 and, like Georgiana, was brought to rest in these scenes they had known so long.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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