of Adm. Lord Hugh Seymour, on 18 May 1818. Before his marriage to Georgiana, Lord Cholmondeley had had a mistress, Madame St-Albin, and with her had one daughter, Harriet Cholmondeley. He inherited Houghton Hall in Norfolk from his great-uncle Horace Walpole in 1797 but preferred to live at Cholmondeley Castle in Cheshire, which had been rebuilt in 1801-04 to his design. He was friends with the disreputable courtesans Gertrude Mahon, Grace Elliott and Kitty Frederick. According to the betting book for Brooks's, a London gentlemen's club, Cholmondeley once wagered two guineas to Lord Derby, to receive 500 guineas upon having sexual intercourse with a woman "in a balloon one thousand yards from the Earth." It is unknown whether the bet was ever finalised. Lord Cholmondeley died at age 77 in April 1827, and he was succeeded in his lands, estates and titles by his eldest son George. Lady Cholmondeley died in 1838. Eighteenth-century English Studies professor and Guggenheim Fellow Arthur Sherbo nominated Lord Cholmondeley as the likely real-life inspiration for the character of Rawdon Crawley in William Makepeace Thackeray's satirical novel Vanity Fair. Notes References Debrett, John, Charles Kidd, David Williamson. (1990). Debrett's Peerage and Baronetage. New York: Macmillan. Lodge, Edmund. (1877). The Peerage and Baronetage of the British Empire as at Present Existing. London: Hurst and Blackett. OCLC 17221260 External links Houghton Hall Cholmondeley Castle Metropolitan Museum of ArtOil painting of Mrs. Grace Dalrymple Elliott by Thomas Gainsborough (British, 1727–1788), which was "apparently commissioned by her lover, the first Marquess of Cholmondeley, and was exhibited at the Academy in 1778." |- 1749 births 1827 deaths Knights of the Garter Lord-Lieutenants of Cheshire Members of the Privy Council of Great Britain George 1 People educated at Eton College