Why does a man join the army? The answer was probably more obvious in the 18th century than now, but in 1793 Thomas Graham was 45. The son of a Perthshire laird and of a daughter of the Earl of Hopetoun, and having inherited a good fortune, in 1774, he had married the beautiful Mary Cathcart, daughter of Baron Cathcart and of Jane Hamilton, herself the daughter of Lord Archibald Hamilton, all scions of Scots whiggery.
It was evidently a love match. On the same day, Mary’s elder sister, Jane, had wed too. Their father wrote: ‘Jane has married, to please herself, John, Duke of Atholl, a peer of the realm; Mary has married Thomas Graham of Balgowan, the man of her heart, and a peer among princes.’
And so he proved. The Grahams spent the next 18 years as model country gentleman and lady, improving Balgowan, and later Lynedoch, their Perthshire estates, shooting and hunting and reading, as well as making the season’s visits to Edinburgh and London.
They also went to Brighton, where in October 1777 Mary met Georgiana, née Spencer, wife of the 5th Duke of Devonshire. ‘Mr and Mrs Graham came the same day as the duke and duchess,’ wrote the Countess of Clermont to Georgiana’s mother at Althorp. ‘She is a very pretty sort of woman, the duchess likes her above all things; they are inseparable, which is no bad thing. I wish she had half a dozen more favourites.’
The reason, of course, was ‘the duke’s freezing civility’ towards his duchess. This review is not the place to speculate on the form the inseparability took, but there is no evidence that it was sapphic. Besides, Mary was at Brighton for her health, for the sea-bathing. Indeed, when they returned to Balgowan, Graham had a plunge-bath built to continue the prescribed cure.
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