Improper Pursuits: The Scandalous Life Of Lady Di Beauclerk

Carola Hicks

Editions

Review

Daughter of a duke, lady-in-waiting to Queen Charlotte, feted by Garrick, painted by Reynolds, adored by Horace Walpole (who considered her to be a considerable artist), she was scathingly dismissed by Samuel Johnson with the words, “The woman’s a whore and there’s an end on’t”.

Well born but impoverished, Lady Di Spencer (yes, the name’s the same) shook the aristocratic world into which she was born when she left her first husband Viscount Bolingbroke and ran off with another swell, Topham Beauclerk.  Thereafter firmly beyond the pale to all but the most liberal-minded of the day, Lady Diana Beauclerk pursued a career as an artist, painting portraits, providing innovative pottery designs for Josiah Wedgwood and even decorating rooms, in order to offset the extravagances of both spendthrift husbands and many children from both liaisons.

Scandal continued to dog her life when a son from her first marriage eloped with a daughter from her second, and she was seldom out of the gossip sheets and cartoons, lampooned as a scarlet woman.

Author Carola Hicks has produced a well-researched record of an interesting woman and in doing so gives us a vivid account of late 18th century mores, as we encounter most of the eminent artistic, literary and political figures of the time. - review by Stewart Grimshaw