Alas, I am gone before you could know me, but I lov’d you, I nurs’d you nine months at my breast. ‘It contains the only present I can make you – my blessing, written in my blood …. ‘As soon as you are old enough to understand this letter it will be given to you,’ she wrote hopefully to her two-year-old son. She tried to find words that would provide them with comfort and advice long after she was gone.
The baby was due in a few days and in the time she had left Georgiana composed letters of farewell to each of her children, in case of her death. Bess and the six-year-old Caroline St Jules were the only people with her the others had pressed on t Nice on account of Harriet’s health. A new will, dated 27 January 1792, lay hidden amongst her possessions next to a life insurance policy for £1,000. Although only thirty-four, she feared that her life had run its course. Georgiana lay in an airless, shuttered room in a house near Montpellier, waiting to give birth. Excerpts from the Book Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire: ElizaĮxtract from the book Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire by Amanda Foreman
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