Orford, Margaret (Rolle), Countess of
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- Orford, Margaret (Rolle), Countess of
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(1709 - 81), dau. of Samuel Rolle of Petrockstow, Devon; m. 1 1724 Robert, B. Walpole (d. 1751), 2 1751 Hon. Sewallis Shirley (d. 1765); suc. cos. 1760 as suo jure Bs. Clinton 1760; d. Pisa.
1733 - 45 Bologna ( - 28 Nov. 1733), Loreto, Rome (Nov. 1733; Jul. 1735), Florence (Aug. - Sep.), Lucca (2 Nov. 1735) [Naples] Rome (Jun. 1736), Florence (11 Jun. 1736 - ), Pisa (Aug. 1737 - ); Naples (1739), Florence (by 26 Dec. 1739 - Jun. 1740), Venice (Sep. 1741), Verona, Salo (Nov.), Padua (Dec. 1741), Florence (Jan. 1742 - 28 May 1745)
1755 - 69 Florence (22 May 1755 - 1761), Lucca (Nov.), Naples (Dec. 1761 - 1768), Florence ( - 23 May 1769), Turin
1771 - 81 Bologna, Florence (12 Oct. 1771 - 9 Nov.), Naples (Nov. 1771 - 17 Mar. 1772), Florence (by 29 Mar. 1773), Rome, Naples (Apr. - Jun.), Florence (19 Jun. - 13 Nov.), Capua ( 15 Nov.), Naples (Dec. 1773 - Mar. 1774), Florence (17 Jun. 1774 - summer 1776), Naples (Nov. 1776 - Jun. 1777), Rome (Jun. 1777), Florence (Jul. 1777 - Dec. 1780), Pisa (Dec. 1780 - d. 13 Jan. 1781)
A strong-minded, free-thinking woman with intellectual pretensions, on bad terms with her husband and the Walpole family, Lady Orford lived on the Continent from 1733 and spent some thirty-six years in Italy. 'I am told', wrote Brinley Skinner (as she prepared to leave Bologna for Rome in November 1733), 'her ladyship receives great benefit by travelling'.1
During her first residence in Italy (as Lady Walpole), from 1733 to 1745, her independence attracted much comment. In Florence in August 1735 she gave 'heartily into all the diversions and customs of the Italians' and was 'so great an admirer of their language that even with people of her own country she never makes use of a word of any other'.2 Two years later she was still ignoring her compatriots, speaking Italian, learning Latin and playing 'la scavante. On dit que ce sera une seconde Reine Christine'.3 She is said to have solicited men,4 and a Neapolitan castrato, an English vicar, an Italian intellectual and an Austrian diplomat were her successive companions. Edward Allen, the British consul in Naples was embarrassed by 'the full fury of her passion' for the Rev. Samuel Sturgis.5 She flaunted her deism. By 1741 her character, wrote Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, was held 'in universal Horror. I do not mean from her Galantrys, which no body trouble'd their Heads with, but she had a Collection of Free thinkers that met weekly at her House, to the Scandal of all Good Christians'.6
In July 1735 she was in Rome, visiting the French Academy, where she impressed the Director, Vleughels, with her interest in engravings, enamels and medals, telling him that she was renting a palace in Rome and would return.7 She came to Florence in mid-August for six weeks and on 2 November she arrived in Lucca.8 In July 1736 Lord Essex was writing to her in Rome,9 but she had arrived in Florence on 11 June, having 'taken a house to which furniture has been sent from the Great Duke's Wardrobe'.(10) Billy Bristow [W.B.] was observing Lady Walpole's affairs at this time.(11) In October 1736 he confessed to being rather shocked by her at Leghorn and Lucca, where she had hired a house for the winter and was joined by a 'chevalier ... beau et bien fait' from England, doubtless Samuel Sturgis. Later, in June 1737, Bristow said she had previously spent some time in Naples with one Gaferelli, a Neapolitan castrato. In August he reported her alone at Pisa with Sturgis, having previously attracted the attention of the Vatican by the Deism she vaunted in Florence; the Grand Duke, however, died before enquiries could be made and meanwhile Lady Orford's friends had become objects of hatred. She was still with Sturgis in 1739. In Florence in December they called together on Lady Pomfret who in turn visited them 'in a very fine House',12 and they were in Florence again in April 1740, but the Sturgis affair was cooling by February 1741.(13)
She was in Venice in September 1741 and in November was living in Salo on Lake Garda with Pietro Barbarigo, son of the podesta of Verona.14 By January 1742 she was back in Florence (17:283) beginning her liaison with Count Richecourt (chief minister of the Regency in Florence in the absence of the Austrian Grand Duke): 'all the world saw her daily at his house', remembered Horace Mann (19:200) who at the time was very suspicious of them. By July 1742, again according to Mann (who as a close friend of Horace Walpole was not a disinterested witness), she was being neglected by Florentine society (17:462), though this had little effect. In February 1744 she moved into the Palazzo Franceschi in the Via de'Guicciardini (18:391). Then, following her father-in-law's death in March, she left Florence on 28 May 1745 with Richecourt's under-secretary, the Abb? Niccoli, to take possession of her English estate (19:46f.).
She returned to Italy in 1755 as the Countess of Orford. She arrived at Florence on 22 May 1755 (20:476n1), now enjoying a considerable income from her estates. Her husband had died in 1751, she had remarried within two months (the Hon. Sewallis Shirley) but by 1754 she had separated from her second husband.15 Richecourt had left Florence for Vienna in 1752 (20:252n5) and Mann, to his relief, was able to describe her behaviour as decorous; she now spoke well of the Walpole family and was received by society (20:479). She also continued to seek intellectual companionship. By October she was studying with the Abb? Giuseppe Buondelmonti and Dr Antonio Cocchi to become 'as great a proficient in medals as she is in other polite sciences'.16 She had already met Giulio Mozzi (1730 - 1813), the Florentine poet and mathematician, who remained her cavaliere servante until her death (21:70). Early in 1761 she asked Winckelmann (who adored her) to accompany her on a visit to Greece in the spring of 1761, but the scheme fell through.17 Lady Orford had negotiated the purchase of a house just outside Florence from the Salviati family in 1759 (21:310), but she was still not prepared to settle in one place. She had been in Lucca in 175918 and in November 1761 she was on her way from Lucca to Naples, intending to return to Florence the following May (21:550). Meanwhile in October 1761 she had presented G.B. Uguccioni, a senator and her quondam lover, with a splendid coach and horses for his wedding; they were duly rejected.19
Between 1762 and 1768 Mann made no mention of Lady Orford in his letters to Horace Walpole. James Martin saw her in Naples in January 1764,20 and Winckelmann said that by the time of the great eruption of Vesuvius on 19 October 1767, she had spent five years in Naples with Mozzi, living in a casino belonging to the marchese Berio; their house stood in the path of the oncoming lava and they were forced to flee.21 In 1768 Mann said Lady Orford had most elegant houses 'both in town and country' in Naples and two likewise in Florence (23:2). In May 1769 she set out from Florence for England 'to make a final settlement of her affairs there' (23:155) and Mozzi, then 'under a bad nervous disorder', accompanied her. After spending the winter in Aix they arrived in London in 1770 (23:120, 135n, 461).
They arrived back in Florence, via Paris and Bologna, on 12 October 1771, when they were met outside the city by Mann and entertained in his house.22 In March 1772 in Naples it was noticed that Lady Orford had 'had two or three fits of illness lately and begins to think she is not a Young Woman'.23 By March 1773 she had completed the purchase of the Villa Medici at Fiesole (previously leased from the marchese del Serre; 23:463n). By the end of the year she had had a road made up to the Villa (24:190n4), and when Henry Swinburne visited it in 1779 he pronounced it 'perhaps the best furnished in Italy for neatness and propriety, but too high, too much confined, and on a rock which reflects a burning heat in summer'.24
Lady Orford's final years were spent wintering in Naples with the summers spent in Florence, always with Mozzi.25 In April 1773 Lord Winchilsea had written that Lady Orford was going to Naples 'in order to dispose of everything there, & to settle entirely in Florence, some people say ye reason is yt the Chevar Modzi now he has got a great deal settled upon him is not so tractable as he used to be, & prefers Florence',26 but she did not renounce Naples (she was passing through Capua on 15 November 177327). Throughout this period she was vexed by her son's affairs; unstable, unwell and unable to maintain Houghton (the Walpole seat), he sold the pictures to Catherine of Russia in 1774 - but his mother no longer had the energy to return to England (23:468), even though Mann described her in September 1773 as rising every morning and maintaining 'a vivacity not common at her age' (23:512). In June 1777 she was taken ill in Rome while returning to Florence from Naples (24:312), but she had recovered by the autumn (24:330), though Mrs Frederick Hervey wrote in November that she had 'grown old in looks, tho' active as ever'.28 In December 1780 she had to renounce her journey to Naples through poor health (25:107) and went instead to Pisa, where she died on 13 January 1781. She was buried in the Protestant cemetery at Leghorn with a monument (see Francis Harwood).
Mann told Horace Walpole of her estates, her 'great effects both here and in Naples', with £33,000 at Hoare's bank and 16,000 Florentine crowns (about £4000; 25:12 - 13). All was left to Mozzi, and her will made no mention of her son. At her request she was buried in the Protestant cemetery at Leghorn,29 suggesting Father Thorpe was mistaken when he wrote in 1771 that Lady Orford was 'said to have been converted'.30
1. SP 98/34 (20 Nov. 1733). See Borroni 1983b. 2. Add. 27734, ff.30, 127 (Fane, 30 Aug., 4 Sep. 1735). 3. HMC 8th Report, 570 - 1 (W. B., 12 Oct. 1736). 4. Farington Diary (26
May 1796). 5. Montagu Letters, 2:213. 6. Ibid., 486. 7. Montaiglon, 9:187. 8. ASLU or 14. 9. Add.27735, f.218 (Essex, 16 Jul. 1736). 10. SP 98/36 (Fane, 12 Jun. 1736). 11. HMC Denbigh, 5:217. HMC 8th Rpt, 570 - 1. 12. Pomfret jnl.MSS (22, 26 Dec. 1739). 13. Montagu Letters, 2:213, 225. 14. Wal.Corr., 17:125, 196; further refs. cited in brackets. 15.
Montagu Letters, 2:484n. 16. HMC Hastings, 3:103. 17. Winckelmann Briefe, 2:82. 18. ASLU or 14, f.120. 19. Diario Fiorentino 1760 - 76 (BNF, NA 516), 21 Oct. 1761. 20. Martin jnl.MSS (2 Jan. 1764). 21. Winckelmann 1898, 3:354. 22. Gazz.Tosc. 23. Chichester-Constable MSS (G. Tierney, 17 Mar. 1772). 24. Swinburne, Courts, 1:250. 25. See Wal.Corr., 23:463, 537, 559; 24:19, 70, 145, 244, 260, 305, 312, 330 (and Gazz.Tosc.). 26. Winchilsea letters MSS (3 Apr. 1773). 27. ASN cra 1259. 28. Childe-Pemberton, 1:173. 29. Leghorn Inscr., 24. 30. Thorpe letters MSS (6 Nov. 1771).