Improper Pursuits: The Scandalous Life of an Earlier Lady Diana Spencer [Hardcover]

Carola Hicks (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 19, 2002 | ISBN-10: 0312291574 | ISBN-13: 978-0312291570 | Edition: 1st

With these words to Boswell, Samuel Johnson dismissed Lady Di Beauclerk, the wife of one of his closest friends, a woman of the highest rank, the daughter of a duke, who had forsaken her reputation, her place in society, her children, and her role as lady-in-waiting to the Queen for love.

Born Lady Diana Spencer in 1735, the eldest child of the third Duke of Marlborough, she was expected rigidly to follow a traditional path through life: educated in the fashion considered suitable for a girl, and married to a man of the appropriate rank for a duke's daughter. But finding herself in a desperately unhappy marriage to Viscount Bolingbroke, Lady Di overturned convention. She left her husband, maintained a secret relationship with her lover, Topham Beauclerk, hid the birth of an illegitimate child, and eventually helped to support herself by painting.

Lady Di Beauclerk was a highly gifted artist who was able to use her scandalous reputation as an adulteress, aristocratic woman to further her career as a painter and designer. She painted portraits, illustrated plays and books, provided designs for Wedgwood's innovative pottery, and decorated rooms with murals. Championed by her close friend Horace Walpole, whose letters illuminate all aspects of her life, she was able to establish herself as an admired artist at a time when women struggled to forge careers.

Carola Hicks provides an enthralling account of eighteenth-century society, in which Lady Di encountered many of the most eminent artistic, literary, and political figures of the day. Improper Pursuits is an absorbing study of a singular life.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Anyone looking for a frothy read won't find it here; though there is scandal in the life of Lady Diana Spencer Bolingbroke Beauclerk, Hicks buries it in a flood of historical detail. The first Diana Spencer (1735-1808) served as a Lady of the Bedchamber in the court of George III until she got pregnant during an adulterous affair. Even more scandalous, her oldest Bolingbroke son left his wife after embarking on an incestuous affair with her oldest Beauclerk daughter; the couple had three children and escaped to Paris. But there was a more serious, substantive side to Lady Di's life. Her second husband ran with an artistic crowd that included James Boswell, Samuel Johnson and Joshua Reynolds; she herself was a glamorous painter who did design work for Josiah Wedgwood and endeared herself to Horace Walpole, whose unrequited love for her made him her greatest champion. It's great raw material, but Hicks, who teaches art history at Cambridge University, gives equal weight to all her facts, and so her narrative falters. Readers must slog through minutiae about 18th-century painting supplies and obstetrical practices, condoms (they were made of linen and came in three different sizes) and rouge ingredients. The resulting book is likely to weary anybody but serious history buffs. 8 pages of b&w and 8 pages of color photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Hicks is an art historian at Cambridge University whose earlier works focus on church architecture, stained glass, and medieval art motifs. For her first biography, she quite naturally turns her attention to an 18th-century artist who shares direct lineage and a name with the late Lady Diana Spencer. Like Lady Di, the former Lady Diana, born in 1735, was something of a truant. She divorced her husband, gave birth to an illegitimate child, and then married her lover. She was also an artist and was discussed in letters by her friend Horace Walpole. This book is perfectly well researched, as one would expect from such a fine historian, but it is also slightly dense and academic. Unfortunately for Hicks, the personal names in the Spencer line repeat themselves, as do those of their social milieu; this becomes infuriatingly convoluted to the uninitiated. Further, one has to wonder whether writing a biography of the earlier Lady Diana Spencer is not just a matter of "cashing in." This book will have limited popular appeal, perhaps only to devotees of British aristocracy and their more colorful rascals. Gail Benjafield, St. Catharines P.L., Ont.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press; 1st edition (June 19, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312291574
• ISBN-13: 978-0312291570
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #785,727 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not quite a biography..., January 27, 2004

By 

Leslie Reissner "Sprocketboy" (Ottawa, Ontario, Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Improper Pursuits: The Scandalous Life of an Earlier Lady Diana Spencer (Hardcover)

This interesting but uneven book is purportedly about Lady Diana Spencer, an 18th Century English aristocrat who suffered through two unhappy marriages (the first ended through the scandal of divorce). She made a minor reputation for herself as an artist at a time when society ladies did not work. As a biography, the book is not a success since we learn very little about the character of Lady Di, her likes and dislikes, her goals and accomplishments. But as a portrait of British nobility, "Improper Pursuits" is often fascinating. Society was filled with venal, brainless and irresponsible young men, obsessed with gambling and exemplified by Lady Di's first husband, Lord Bolingbroke, nicknamed "Bully" on the one hand. On the other hand are the creative and intellectual giants, including Dr. Johnson and the ever-present James Boswell, Garrick and Sheridan, who were friends with Lady Di's second husband, Topham Beauclerk. The highly eccentric Horace Walpole flutters through the book, charming and likeable and maddening in equal parts.

As the author describes this society, it was clearly male-dominated and little space was left where women could flourish equally. Carola Hicks makes a mighty effort to bring women into the story, describing the household and social skills they were required to learn (and nothing further) but they are so overshadowed by the men that there is a feeling of desperation as the author tries to flesh out the story and throws in everything but the kitchen sink. For example: where did upper class ladies buy their paintbrushes in London? Nonetheless, many of the characters she describes are fascinating and a particular London in the time of George II and George III is nicely delineated. Lady Di remains as two-dimensional as her own drawings of cherubs, though. After reading "Improper Pursuits,"the reader realizes that the subject of the book will be more remembered for her friends than for herself.