The reputation of Lady Elizabeth Christiana Foster Cavendish (1757–1824), Second Duchess of Devonshire, has been compromised by the complex relationships she developed within the Cavendish family. Early Italian correspondence records her 1782 entry into the Cavendish family as a Grand Tour travelling companion, tutor, and mentor of the Duke’s illegitimate daughter, Charlotte William and later of her daughter, Caro George, in 1792–1793. She chronicles other stays in Italy between 1786 and 1788, taken to conceal the births of Cavendish children. After Georgiana died in 1806, her marriage to Cavendish disrupted family harmony and London’s social equilibrium. To escape public scrutiny, Elizabeth left her Picadilly home for Rome, where she hosted a conversazione for an international community at Palazzo Spada and joined Cardinal Ercole Consalvi, Vatican Secretary of State (1757–1824) in excavating the column of Phocas in the Roman Forum. She also translated and published the Italian illustrated edition of Horace’s fifth satire. Her political achievements included the restoration of diplomatic relations between the Vatican and the British royal family. In Rome, the formerly compromised social status of Elizabeth Cavendish in London was elevated to a highly privileged and respected place in Anglo-Italian culture.