Harriet Arbuthnot
Harriet Arbuthnot (née Fane; 10 September 1793 – 2 August 1834) was an early 19th-century English diarist, social observer and political hostess on behalf of the Tory party.
Born into the periphery of the British aristocracy, her parents were Henry Fane and his wife, Anne, née Batson; she married a politician and member of the establishment, Charles Arbuthnot.
[5] The young Harriet spent much of her childhood at the family home at Fulbeck Hall in Lincolnshire, sited high on the limestone hills above Grantham.
Her widowed mother delegated the arrangements for the marriage of her 20-year-old daughter to her elder son Vere, who was considered qualified in these matters as he worked at Child's Bank.
[citation needed] It seems that Vere Fane and his mother were not initially prepared to settle enough money on his sister to satisfy her future husband, causing the prospective bridegroom to write to his fiancée: "How can you and I live upon £1000 or £1200 and Fane [her mother] finds it so impossible to live upon her £6000 that she can offer you no assistance whatsoever?
[9] Marriage to such a pillar of the establishment as Charles Arbuthnot opened all doors to his young new wife, who, as one of the 14 children of a younger son of an aristocratic family possessed of no great fortune, would otherwise have been on the periphery of the highest society.
[citation needed] When remarking in her diaries on other women who shared their affections with great men of the day, Arbuthnot displayed a sharp, ironic wit.
Of Wellington's one-time mistress Princess Dorothea Lieven, wife to the Imperial Russian ambassador to London from 1812 to 1834, she wrote "It is curious that the loves and intrigues of a femme galante should have such influence over the affairs of Europe.
Wellington had been appointed the British Ambassador to the Court of the Tuileries, and the city was crowded with English visitors anxious to travel on the continent and socialise after the Napoleonic Wars.
Wellington, ensconced in the Hotel de Charost (recently vacated by Napoleon's sister Princess Pauline Borghese) and fêted by the whole of Restoration Paris,[16] had already found himself a close female companion, Giuseppina Grassini.
[12] The story of a "ménage à trois" between Mrs Arbuthnot, her husband Charles, and Wellington, widely speculated upon, has been rejected by some biographers.
[18] However, it has been said that the unhappily married Duke enjoyed his relationship with Mrs Arbuthnot because he found in her company "the comfort and happiness his wife could not give him.
[11] Whatever her knowledge and access, however, it appears she was unable to influence the Duke, but even his refusal to bring her husband into the Cabinet in January 1828 failed to shake the intimacy of the trio.
An indication that their relationship was platonic and accepted as such in the highest echelons of society can be drawn from the Duchess of Kent permitting Wellington to present Arbuthnot to her infant daughter, the future Queen Victoria, in 1828.
Arbuthnot noted that the young princess was "the most charming child I ever saw" and that "the Duchess of Kent is a very sensible person, who educates her (Victoria) remarkably well.
Wellington and Arbuthnot often travelled together, and a visit to Blenheim Palace they shared in 1824 provoked a scathing entry in her journal concerning Wellington's fellow duke the 5th Duke of Marlborough, of whom she wrote: "The family of the great General is, however, gone sadly to decay, and are but a disgrace to the illustrious name of Churchill, which they have chosen this moment to resume.
