Countess Louise Friederike Auguste von Alten was born in 1832 in Hanover. A great beauty & wit, she married the Duke of Manchester & cut a swathe through English political society
I first came across her through a volume of her correspondence with Lord Clarendon, the great Liberal Foreign Secretary, with whom she had a close & gossipy relationship, though she was a convinced Tory
I came across her again in The Diaries of Lady Frederick Cavendish, though I did not realise it because her connection with the family was never mentioned
Lord & Lady Frederick were unable to have children. Their sadness was added to, in some small way, because any son of theirs would have been heir presumptive to the dukedom of Devonshire since Lord Frederick’s brother Spencer, the eldest son, showed no sign of marrying & settling down
Reading this at the turn of the 21st century I leaped to the obvious, but erroneous, conclusion of our age
Imagine my surprise therefore when one day, in the quietness of the library, I was checking for an obituary in The Illustrated London News for 1892 which also carried a major splash about the marriage of the Duchess of Manchester to the Duke of Devonshire. She had been widowed for just on 2 years, & Spencer had inherited the title just one year earlier
Although their long devoted liaison had been common knowledge, (hence Lady Frederick’s certainty that her brother-in-law would never produce an heir), there was no adverse press comment on their marriage except for the fact that neither had told family in advance. They simply slipped out one morning & got married in Hanover Square
Related post: Lady Frederick Cavendish
