Fane had a murky private life, which he concealed for many years from all his immediate family except his younger brother and confidant Vere. During his service in Ireland in 1793 he formed ‘a strong attachment’ to Isabella, daughter of Hamilton Gorges, Member for county Meath, 1801-2, and the wife since 1791 of Edward Cooke, the powerful under-secretary at Dublin Castle and later under-secretary at the colonial and foreign offices. As Fane explained to Vere in 1814, Gorges had ‘sold’ her to Cooke for £1,500, thereby condemning her to ‘the sort of miserable life that was to be expected’ in the circumstances:
As she considered it nothing less than prostitution living with a man she hated, and loving another, she told her husband so, and insisted upon separating from him. He detained her in his house above a twelvemonth, combating this resolution: but finding he could not prevail, at last a regular separation took place, and she went to England to live with some relations there. I believe the world invented a story of my having run away with her; for which there was no more foundation than what I have told you. For several years after this, although we were in the constant habit of meeting and spending weeks together, such was her strength of mind, that our intercourse continued, as it had been, perfectly innocent. At last, however, in 1801, in an unlucky hour, passion got the better of prudence; and the consequence was, in nine months a child ... Since then we have lived together as man and wife, and have had six children, four of whom are alive: three boys and a girl.
One of the boys died young. The surviving children were Henry Fane (1802-85), who became a cornet in his father’s regiment in 1822 and retired as a half-pay lieutenant-colonel in 1838; Arthur Fane (1809-72), who took holy orders, and Isabella Fane (1804-86), who died a spinster. Fane kept ‘utter silence’ about these ‘domestic affairs’ to avoid causing ‘vexation’ to his mother until ‘the interest of my children’ made it necessary to enlighten her. He was also influenced by a sense of delicacy towards Mrs. Cooke’s family (her sister was married to the son of the archbishop of Tuam and she was ‘in several ways related to all the Beresfords’) and by sympathy for ‘the unfortunate dropsical secretary’ Cooke, ‘to whom I should be sorry to add one pang more than I have already occasioned’. Although Fane praised Mrs. Cooke as ‘the best of mothers’, to whom their children were ‘more attached than I should have thought it possible’, she later became alienated from them as a result of what Arthur termed ‘incompatibility of disposition’, which ‘renders reciprocal love out of the question’. When Fane was knighted Mrs. Cooke, who since 1794 had held the patent office of housekeeper and wardrobe keeper of Dublin Castle, worth £600 a year, styled herself ‘Lady Fane’. She lived with him in a rented cottage on the Avon estate, which he managed for his mother.
Fane, whose beautiful sister Harriet was the wife of Charles Arbuthnot* and the celebrated confidante of the duke of Wellington, had served with great distinction as a cavalry commander in the Napoleonic wars. Yet he had blotted his copybook by declining to join the army in Flanders in 1815 and so missing Waterloo.
I may explain, that I am no politician; and I hope I may add (without saying too much) that I should not be found wanting in temper, or in firmness, if placed in the situation I covet.
He was passed over for Sir John Byng*.
In March 1829 Wellington as premier appointed Fane surveyor-general of the ordnance, at £900 a year. He was sent down to Sandwich to fill a vacancy on the government interest.
No man living could be a more sincere and staunch Protestant than himself, but ... that question had now become ... political and not ... religious ... and the measures proposed by the government were calculated to protect the interests of the Protestant church, and to promote the welfare of all classes of society.
He was opposed at the last minute by an anti-Catholic Tory, but he easily prevailed in a truncated poll.
The opposition ... is such as, were I to meet it, would involve me in an expense which would be most inconvenient to me; and ... therefore I have notified to ... [Joseph] Planta* my objection to standing for that place ... I am, however, extremely desirous of continuing to serve under your administration, and shall do what I can to procure another seat, though I am not very sanguine in my expectations of success, excepting through government aid.
He was brought in on the treasury interest for Hastings.
He was in the government minority on the civil list, 15 Nov. 1830, and left office on the change of ministry. He took a fortnight’s leave to attend to ‘public business’, 23 Nov. 1830. Two months later the Irish viceroy Lord Anglesey warned the new prime minister Lord Grey against the possibility of Wellington’s urging him to appoint Fane to the Irish command: he was ‘capable enough; but high, assuming, a complete creature of the duke of Wellington, and he would be a complete spy from the enemy’s camp’.
A year later he applied to the Grey ministry for the governorship of the Cape of Good Hope:
I have no desire to place myself in competition with any officer of senior standing in the army to myself, whose services may give him an equal claim for employment; but ... I solicit to be considered, only, before my name is passed over to the advantage of a junior ... I commanded the cavalry of the British contingent in France during the greater period of our occupation of that country ... I am the only general officer, I believe, who belonged to the staff of that army who has not subsequently had the advantage of some profitable military employment; or who has not had some military employment over and above his regiment.
He was again ignored when the vacancy occurred.
He made a good impression in India. Macaulay found him to be ‘a fine, spirited, soldierlike man’; and Mrs. Fanny Parks described him as ‘a magnificent looking man with a good soldierlike bearing; one of imposing presence, a most superb bow and graceful bearing’.
You cannot think how popular my father is as commander-in-chief. It is said of him he has the interest of the army so thoroughly at heart and that ere long it will begin to recover the great injuries done it by that plague spot of India, Lord William [Cavendish] Bentinck*.
Miss Fane in India, 118.
Fane’s nephew Henry Edward Fane, another of his aides, wrote home:
I fear that we none of us properly respected him till he came to this country, and see the good he does and is doing every day, the work he does and the interest he takes and talent he displays in even the greatest trifle that comes through his department; which is no small quantity of work in an army of three hundred thousand men.
Fane mss 6/3/17.
During 1836 and 1837 Fane personally inspected every station under his command. The following year he prepared an army to go to the relief of Herat, besieged by the Persians, but he entirely disapproved of the governor-general Lord Auckland’s aggressive policy, which precipitated the first Afghan war. He tendered his resignation, but in January 1839 the home government ordered him to remain until a suitable successor was found. He directed the offensive operations in Scind that year, but his health was breaking, and on his repeated requests to be relieved Sir Jasper Nicholls was appointed in his stead in August 1839.
In his will of 7 Feb. 1828 Fane had left the Fulbeck estate to his son Henry, his household goods at Avon to Lady Fane and small annuities to his children Arthur and Bella. He revoked Arthur’s legacy in 1833 following his marriage to a Wiltshire heiress.
Fane left India on 1 Jan. 1840, after recovering from a serious illness and applying in vain for a baronetcy for his elder son in recognition of his own public services. He cherished hopes of reaching England alive, but his health soon collapsed.