Julie Flavell - The Howe Dynasty: The Untold Story of a Military Family and the Women Behind Britains Wars for America

Langar Hall, 1792

THE
Howe
DYNASTY

THE UNTOLD STORY OF
A MILITARY FAMILY
AND THE WOMEN BEHIND
BRITAINS WARS FOR AMERICA

Julie Flavell

For Andy, who always finds a way

CONTENTS

MAPS

ILLUSTRATIONS

Black-and-White Illustrations

Color Plates

THE
Howe
DYNASTY

G rafton Street in early December 1774 was one of Georgian Londons newest developments for the very rich. A terrace of handsome brick houses, the pale Tuscan columns of the doorways stood out through the gloom of an English winter afternoon. Eighteenth-century London remained one of the worst-lit capital cities in Europe, but candlelight shone from the windows of the streets prosperous dwellings. At Number 12, the Honorable Caroline Howe was writing, as usual, in her snug drawing room. Callers came and went at Number 12 on their way to or from the royal court, Parliament, a card party, or a club, all bearing news that was suitable or not for inclusion in whatever letter was in progress. Caroline did not write with a view to posterity and publication, like her contemporary, the famous memoirist and wit Horace Walpole. Her letters were spontaneous, purposeful, and altogether private.

On this particular afternoon, Caroline was composing a hurried note to her closest friend, Lady Georgiana Spencer. Just a few casual sentences evoke her daily life at the center of Georgian Londons most fashionable set:

I really shall have no writing time today, I have for the first time these ten days played half a dozen Games of Chess. It has been with Dr. Franklin. Lord Spencer came in, I was dressing yesterday when he was so good to call, he seems well & in spirits, & is to meet me at the Play to see Garrick in Hamlet.

Lady Spencers husband, handsome, moody John, 1st Earl Spencer, who would escort Caroline to the play, was one of the wealthiest men in Britain. He and Lady Spencer were the parents of Georgiana Cavendish, the celebrated Duchess of Devonshire, whose lifestyle of compulsive gambling and high fashion lent glamour to the Whig politics she espoused.

Caroline Howes opponent at chess that day was an entirely different matter. Benjamin Franklin, premier spokesman in London for the American colonies, was notorious for supporting the colonial resistance to British rule that would break out into the American War of Independence in less than five months. He was not a man polite London expected to call, for he was under a cloud of suspicion for stirring up trouble in the colonies. But Lady Spencer required no explanation. She knew that the chess games were a front designed by Caroline to cover highly secret negotiations with the American in a last-minute quest for peace, negotiations that involved her brothers, Richard Admiral Lord Howe and General William Howe.

Benjamin Franklins journal is the only surviving record that these talks ever took place. They are also the context for Caroline Howes sole appearance, until now, in history books. Franklin would write of her, I have never conceived a higher opinion of the discretion and excellent understanding of any woman on so short an acquaintance. He was displaying his usual acumen, for Caroline was in reality more than a hostess; she was closely involved in her brothers careers, and never more so than in their behind-the-scenes meetings with Franklin himself.

The Franklin talks marked the beginnings of an aura of mystery that would cling to Carolines brothers throughout the years that they served together as British commanders in chief in the American Revolution between 1776 and 1778, and beyond. How had Britain suffered its only defeat in modern times to an army of unprofessional provincials? Richard and William Howe had both achieved hero status twelve years earlier in the Seven Years War of 17561763, yet the nations finest military and naval commanders seemed unable to outfight the rebel General George Washington, a tobacco planter from Virginia. The Howes were known to have pro-American sympathies; had they done less than their duty in suppressing the rebellion?

The suspicions, with their unmistakable insinuations of treason, began during the war and have persisted in the almost two and a half centuries since. Contemporary Britons saw the Howe family as intensely private, an iconic English military dynastystoical and self-contained. The whole race of Howes, as Horace Walpole put it, were undaunted as a rock, and as silent. The noted Howe trait of silence provided fertile ground for the conspiracy theories that proliferated as the nation reacted to the stain on British honor.

Historians have concurred with the stereotype, pronouncing the eighteenth-century generation of Howes to be inscrutable. The two major twentieth-century studies of the Howe brothers joint American command have labeled them difficult subjects, reticent men who were involved in complex, covert transactions. The destruction of the family papers in a house fire in the early nineteenth century seemingly set the seal on that verdict.

And yet the correspondence of their sister, the Honorable Caroline Howe, with Lady Georgiana Spencer forms one of the most extensive private collections of letters in the British Library. Past historians of the careers of Richard Admiral Lord Howe and General Sir William Howe have virtually ignored these manuscripts, only dipping into them to spotlight events in the lives of Carolines brothers. After all, what relevance can letters between two women have for understanding the motives of military men?

In what has been called the systematic privileging of masculine interests over feminine, it is too often assumed that the sphere of women and the drawing room is insignificant, while battlefields and high politics are important. The result is that selective use has been made of Carolines letters where they relate to the public business of the brothers, but she, the primary correspondent, has been presumed to be extraneous. The voice of the writer, so clear and so decisive and knowledgeable, is overlooked in the narrow quest for the political and military matters of men. It is an attitude that would not have been shared by Caroline or her brothers.

Historian Mary Beard has written powerfully that womens voices have been excluded from public spaces down the centuries. But that does not mean that they have been excluded from private spaces. Within her family, Carolines was a voice of authority. Consequently, her letters lead us directly into the conduct of the interests and affairs of the Howe dynasty, because Caroline herself was actively involved in its promotion and preservation.

The Howe women were a conspicuous example of that Georgian phenomenon, the politically involved aristocratic woman. Caroline was born to a family whose women had a tradition of managing the dynastic fortunes. She grew up under the tutelage of her aunt, Mary Herbert Countess Pembroke, who served as a Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen Caroline between 1727 and 1737. It was the countess who launched the military careers of Carolines brothers George, Richard, and William Howe, all of whom would achieve the status of national heroes while they were still young men, serving in America, France, Italy, and Flanders. Caroline watched her mother, Charlotte Viscountess Howe, play cards with the mistress of King George II, and politics with his prime minister, the Duke of Newcastle, promoting the careers of her sons in a world where determined women found a way to wield power in the service of their families. In her turn, Caroline, during the reign of prudish, awkward King George III, engaged in her own drawing-room politics, moving deftly between a straitlaced court and a London high life that was becoming scandalously amoral.