Henry Frederick's epitaph, if it had been written by the same hand, would have been much more scathing. His Duchess survived him a score of years—unhappy years of solitude and neglect, a Princess only in name—harassed and shamed by her eldest sister, Elizabeth, a woman of coarse tastes and language, a confirmed gambler and cheat, whose failings, which she tried in vain to conceal, brought shame on the Duchess.
The fate of Elizabeth—one of the "three beautiful Luttrells"—is among the most tragic stories of the British Peerage. When her Duchess-sister died she drifted into low companionships, was imprisoned for debt, and actually bribed a hairdresser to marry her, in order to recover her liberty. On the Continent, to which she escaped, she fell to still lower depths—was arrested for pocket-picking, and for a time cleaned the streets of Augsburg chained to a wheelbarrow, until a dose of poison set her free from her fetters.
If, a century ago, Edmund Power, of Knockbrit, in County Tipperary, had been told that his second daughter, Marguerite, would one day blossom into a Countess, and live in history as one of the "most gorgeous" figures in the fashionable world of London under three kings, he would certainly have considered his prophetic informant an escaped lunatic, and would probably have told him so, with the brutal frankness which was one of his most amiable characteristics.
The Irish squire was a proud man—proud of his pretty and shiftless wife, with her eternal talk of her Desmond ancestors; proud of two of his three daughters, whose budding beauty was to win for them titled husbands—one an English Viscount, the other a Comte de St Marsante; and proudest of all of his own handsome figure and his local dignities. But he was frankly ashamed to own himself father of his second daughter, Marguerite, the "ugly duckling" of a good-looking family, and with no gifts or promise to qualify her plainness.
But the squireen was probably too full of his own self-importance to waste much thought or regret on an insignificant, unattractive girl, though she was his own child. He loved to strut about among his humble neighbours in all the unprovincial glory of ruffles and lace, buck-skins and top-boots, and snowy, wide-spreading cravat. He was the king of Tipperary dandies, known far beyond his own county as "Buck Power" and "Shiver-the-Frills"; and what pleased his vanity still more, he was a Justice of the Peace, with authority to scour the country at the head of a company of dragoons, tracking down rebels and spreading terror wherever he went. That he was laughed at for his coxcombry and hated for his petty tyranny only seemed to add to the zest of his enjoyment of life; and he saw, at least, a knighthood as the prospective recognition of his importance, and his services to the King and the peace.
Such was the father and such the home of Marguerite Power, who was one day to dazzle the world as the "most gorgeous Lady Blessington."
As with many another "ugly ducking" Marguerite Power's beauty was only dormant in these days of childhood; and before she had graduated into long frocks, the bud was opening which was to grow to so beautiful a flower. If her father was blind to the change, it was patent enough to other eyes; and she had scarcely passed her fourteenth birthday when she had at least two lovers eager to pay homage to her girlish charm—Captains Murray and Farmer, brother-officers of a regiment stationed at Clonmel. To the wooing of Captain Murray, young, handsome, and desperately in earnest, she lent a willing ear; but when thus encouraged, he asked her to be his wife, she blushingly declined the offer, on the ground that she was yet much too young to think of a wedding-ring. To the rival Captain, old enough to be her father, a man, moreover, whose evil living and Satanic temper were notorious, she showed the utmost aversion. "I hate him," she protested in tears to her father, who supported his suit; "and I would rather die a hundred times than marry him."
But "Beau Power" was the last man to be moved from his purpose by a child's tears or pleadings. Captain Farmer was a man of wealth and good family, and also one of his own boon companions. And thus, tearful, indignant, protesting to the last, the girl was led to the altar, by the biggest scoundrel in Tipperary—a "maiden tribute" to a lover's lust and a father's ambition.
The child's fears were more than realised in the wedded life that followed. Before the honeymoon had waned, the Captain began to treat his young wife with all the brutality of which he was such a past-master. Blows and oaths were her daily lot; and when his cruelty wrung tears from her, her husband would lock her in her room, and leave her for days, without fire or food, until she condescended to beg for mercy.
After three months of this inferno the Captain was ordered to a distant station; and, as his wife refused point-blank to accompany him, was by no means reluctant to "be rid of the brat" by sending her back to her home. Here, however, the child-wife found herself less welcome than, and almost as unhappy as in her wedded life; and, driven to despair, she left the home in which she had been cradled, and fared forth alone into the world, which could not be more unkind than those whose duty it was to shield and care for her.
How, or where, Beau Power's daughter lived during the next twelve years must always remain largely a mystery. At one time she appears in Dublin; at another, in Cahir; but mostly she seems to have spent her time in England. Over this part of her adventurous life a curtain is drawn; though some have endeavoured to raise it, and have professed to discover scandalous doings for which there seems to be no vestige of authority. We know that, by the time she was twenty, Sir Thomas Lawrence was so struck by her beauty that he immortalised it on canvas; but it is only in 1816 that the curtain is actually raised, and we find her living with her brother in London, where, to quote her sister,
"she received at her house only those whose age and character rendered them safe friends, and a very few others, on whose perfect respect and consideration she could wholly rely. Among the latter was the Earl of Blessington, then a widower."
Whatever may have been her life during this obscure period, when her charms were maturing into such exquisite beauty, it is thus certain that at its close she was moving in a good circle, and was as irreproachable as she was lovely. Of her rascally husband she had happily seen nothing during all those years of more or less lonely adventure; and the end of this tragic union was now near. One day in October 1817, the Captain ended his misspent days in tragedy. He had drifted through dissipation and crime to the King's Bench prison; and in a fit of frenzy—or, as some say, in a drunken quarrel—had flung himself to his death through a window of his gaol.
Thus, at last, the nightmare that had clouded the young life of the squireen's daughter was over, and she was free to plan her future as she would. What this future was to be was soon placed beyond doubt. The widowed Earl of Blessington had long been among the most ardent admirers of the lovely Irishwoman; and before Farmer had been many months in his prison-grave, he had won her consent to be his Countess. The "ugly duckling" had reached a coronet through such trials and vicissitudes as happily seldom fall to the lot of woman; and her future was to be as radiant as her past had been ignoble and obscure.
Seldom has a woman cradled in comparative poverty made such a splendid alliance. Lord Blessington was a veritable Croesus among Irish landlords, with a rent-roll of £30,000 a year; allied, it is true, to an extravagance more than commensurate with his revenue. He had a passion for all things theatrical, and an almost barbaric taste in the gorgeous furnishings with which he loved to surround himself; and this taste his wife seems to have shared.
When the Earl took his bride to his ancestral home, Mountjoy Forest, she revelled in her boudoir, with its hangings of "crimson Genoa silk-velvet, trimmed with gold bullion fringe; and all the furniture of equal richness." But she had had enough of Irish life in the days of her childhood, and soon sighed to return to London and to a wider sphere for her beauty and her social ambition; and before she had been a bride six months we find her installed in St James's Square, drawing to her salon all the greatest and most famous in the land, and moving among her courtiers with the dignity and graciousness of a Queen.
Royal Dukes kissed her hand; statesman basked in her smile; Moore sang his sweetest songs for her delight; and all the arts and sciences worshipped at her shrine, and raved about her beauty of face and graces of mind.
Sated at last with all this splendour and adulation, my Lady Blessington yearned for more worlds to conquer; and so, one August day in 1822, she and her lord set out on a triumphal progress through Europe, with a retinue of attendants, and with luxurious equipages such as a king might have been proud to boast. In France they added to their train Count d'Orsay, who threw up his army-commission under the lure of the Countess's beautiful eyes; and seldom has fair lady had so devoted and charming a cavalier as this "Admirable Crichton" of Georgian days.
"Count d'Orsay," says Charles James Mathews, the famous comedian, who knew him well, "was the beau-ideal of manly dignity and grace. He was the model of all that could be conceived of noble demeanour and youthful candour; handsome beyond all question; accomplished to the last degree; highly educated, and of great literary acquirements; with a gaiety of heart and cheerfulness of mind that spread happiness on all around him. His conversation was brilliant and engaging, as well as instructive. He was, moreover, the best fencer, dancer, swimmer, runner, dresser, the best shot, the best horseman, the best draughtsman, of his age."
Such was the Count, then a youth of nineteen, who thus entered Lady Blessington's life, in which he was to play such an intimate part until its tragic close.
From France the regal progress continued to Italy, everywhere greeted with wonder at its magnificence and admiration of my lady's beauty. Two spring months in 1823 were passed at Genoa, where Lord Byron loved to sit at the Countess's feet and pay homage to her with eye and tongue. From Genoa the procession fared majestically to Rome, of which her ladyship, in spite of the sensation she produced and the adulation she received, soon wearied; she sighed for Naples, where she was regally lodged in the Palazzo Belvidere, a Palace, as she declared, "fit for any queen." And how the squire's daughter revelled in her new pleasure-house, with its courtyard and plashing fountain, its arcade and its colonnade, "supporting a terrace covered with flowers"; its marvellous gardens, filled with the rarest trees, shrubs and plants; and long gallery, "filled with pictures, statues, and bassi-relievi."
"On the top of the gallery," she says, "is a terrace, at the extreme end of which is a pavilion, with open arcades and paved with marble. This pavilion commands a most charming prospect of the bay, the foreground filled up by gardens and vineyards. The odour of the flowers in the grounds around the pavilion, and the Spanish jasmine and tuberoses that cover the walls, render it one of the most delicious retreats in the world. The walls of all the rooms are literally covered with pictures; the architraves of the doors of the principal rooms are oriental alabaster and the rarest marbles; the tables and consoles are composed of the same costly materials; and the furniture bears the traces of its pristine splendour."
Such was the Arabian palace of all delights of which her gorgeous ladyship now found herself mistress; and yet nothing would please her indulgent lord but the spending of a few thousands in adding to its splendours by new and costly furnishings. Here she spent two-and-a-half years of ideal happiness, sailing by moonlight on the lovely bay, with d'Orsay for companion; visiting all the sights, from Pompeii to the galleries and museums, with a retinue of experts, such as Herschell and Gell in her train, and entertaining with a queenly magnificence Italian nobles and all the great ones of Europe who passed through Naples.
From Naples Lady Blessington took her train to Florence, where she cast her spell over Walter Savage Landor, who spent every possible hour in her fascinating company; and where she was joined by her husband's daughter, the Lady Harriet Gardiner, a girl of fifteen, who, within a few weeks of reaching Italy, became the wife of my lady's handsome protege, d'Orsay. And it was not until 1828, six years after leaving London, that the stately procession turned its face homewards, halting for a few months of farewell magnificence in Paris, where Lady Blessington was installed in Marshal Ney's mansion, in an environment even more gorgeous than the Palazzo Belvidere of Naples could boast, thanks to the prodigality of her infatuated lord.
The description which her Ladyship gives of her Paris palace reads, indeed, like a passage from the "Arabian Nights."
"The bed," she says, "which is silvered instead of gilt, rests on the backs of two large silver swans, so exquisitely sculptured that every feather is in alto-relievo, and looks nearly as fleecy as those of a living bird. The recess in which it is placed, is lined with white fluted silk, bordered with blue embossed lace; and from the columns that support the frieze of the recess, pale blue silk curtains, lined with white, are hung. A silvered sofa has been made to fit the side of the room opposite the fireplace—pale blue carpets, silver lamps, ornaments silvered to correspond."
Her bath was of white marble; her salle de bain was draped with white muslin trimmed with lace, and its ceiling was beautiful with a painted Flora scattering flowers and holding an elaborate lamp in the form of a lotus. And all the rest of the equipment of this dream-palace was in keeping with these splendours, from the carpets and curtains of crimson to the gilt consoles, marble-topped chiffonières, and fauteuils "richly carved and gilt and covered with satin to correspond with the curtains."
This, although Lady Blessington little dreamt it, was to be the last lavish evidence of her lord's devotion to his beautiful wife; for, before they had been many months back in England the Earl died suddenly in the prime of his days. Large as his fortune had been, the last few years of extravagance had made such inroads in it that all that was left of his £30,000 a year was an annual income of £600, which went to his illegitimate son. Fortunately the Countess's jointure of £2,000 a year was secure; and on this income Lady Blessington was able to face the future with a heart as light as it could be after such a bereavement; for, eccentric as her husband had been, and in some ways almost contemptible, she had loved him dearly for the great and touching love with which he had always surrounded her.
It was during her early years of widowhood that her ladyship turned for solace, and also for additional revenue to support the extravagance which had now become second nature, to her pen, in which she quickly found a small mine of welcome gold. Her "Books of Beauty" and "Gems of Beauty" were an instantaneous success—they made a strong appeal to the flowery sentiment of the time, and sold in tens of thousands of copies. Her "Conversations with Byron," a record of those halcyon days at Genoa, fed the curiosity which then invested the most romantic of poets with a glamour which survives to our day; and her novels and gossipy books of travel were hailed in succession by an eager public of readers.
In these years of prolific literary labour she was able to double her jointure, and to maintain much of the splendour to which she had become so accustomed. Even her literary children were cradled in luxury on a fauteuil of yellow satin, in a library crowded with sumptuous couches and ottomans, enamel tables and statutary. To her house in Seamore Place her beauty and fame drew the most eminent men in England, from Lawrence and Lyndhurst to Lytton and young Disraeli, gorgeous as his hostess, in gold-flowered waistcoat, gold rings and chains, white stick with black tassel, and his shower of ringlets.
But the Seamore Place house proved too cabined and too modest for my lady's exacting social ambition. She demanded a more spacious and magnificent shrine for her beauty, which was still so remarkable that she was considered the loveliest woman at the Court of George III. when well advanced in the forties—and this she found at Gore House, in Kensington, a stately mansion in which Wilberforce had made his home, and which, surrounded by beautiful gardens and shut in with a girdle of spreading trees, might have been in the heart of the country, instead of within sight of the tide of fashion which flowed in Hyde Park.
Here for thirteen years, with the handsome, gay, accomplished d'Orsay, who had separated from his wife, as major-domo, she dispensed a princely hospitality. Her dinners and her entertainments were admittedly the finest in London; and invitations to them were as eagerly sought as commands to a Court-ball.
"At Gore House," said Brougham, "one is sure to meet some of the most interesting people in England, and equally sure not to have a dull moment." Brougham was himself a constant and a welcome guest, and the men he met there ranged from Prince Louis Napoleon, then an exile without a prospect of a crown, and the Duke of Wellington to Albert Smith and Douglas Jerrold—so wide was the net of Lady Blessington's hospitality. And all paid the same glowing tribute, not only to their hostess's loveliness but to the warmth of heart, which was one of her greatest charms. And of all the great ones who sat at her dinner-table or thronged her drawing-rooms not one was wittier or more fascinating than Count d'Orsay, who, in spite of envious and malicious tongues, never occupied to the Countess any other relation than that of a dearly-loved and devoted son.
Although Lady Blessington's income rarely fell below £4,000 a year, it was quite inadequate to her expenditure; and it was clear to her that this era of splendid hospitality could not last for ever. A day of reckoning was sure to come; and it came sooner than she had anticipated. D'Orsay, who seems to have been even more careless of money than his mother-in-law, plunged deeper and deeper in debt—some of it, at least, incurred in helping to keep up the Gore House ménage—until he found himself at last face to face with liabilities far exceeding £100,000, and besieged with duns and bailiffs. Once he was arrested at the suit of a bootmaker, and was rescued from prison by Lady Blessington's rapidly-emptying purse. The climax came when a sheriff's officer smuggled himself into Gore House, and brought down on d'Orsay's head an avalanche of angry creditors, each resolute to have his "pound of flesh." The Countess was powerless to stem the invasion; her own resources were at an end, the Count himself was penniless. The only safety was in flight; and one day Gore House was found empty. The birds had flown to Paris; and the mansion which had been the scene of so much magnificence was left to the mercy of a horde of clamorous creditors.
A few weeks later, all "the costly and elegant effects of the Right Honourable, the Countess of Blessington, retiring to the Continent" were put up to auction; and twenty thousand curious people were pouring through the rooms which her gorgeous ladyship had made so famous—among them Thackeray, who was moved to tears at the spectacle of so much goodness and greatness reduced to ruin. The sale, although many of the effects brought absurdly low prices, realised £12,000—a smaller sum probably than would be paid to-day for half-a-dozen of the Countess's pictures.
This crushing blow to her fortunes and her pride no doubt broke Lady Blessington's heart; for within a few months of the last fall of the auctioneer's hammer, she died suddenly in Paris, to the unspeakable grief of d'Orsay, who declared to the Countess's physician, Madden, "She was to me a mother! a dear, dear mother—a true, loving mother to me." Three years later this "paragon of all the perfections" followed the Countess behind the veil, and rests in a mausoleum, of his own designing, at Chamboury, with one of the most lovely women who have ever graced beauty with rare gifts of mind and with a warm and tender heart.
The 29th of May in the year 1660 was indeed a red-letter day in the calendar of jovial fox-hunting Squire Jennings, of Sandridge, in Hertfordshire. It was the day on which his Royal idol, the second Charles, set out from Canterbury on the last stage of the journey to his crown. Mounted on his horse, caparisoned in purple and gold, at the head of a gay cavalcade of retainers, he rode proudly through the Kentish lanes and villages: through avenues of wildly-cheering crowds, flinging sweet may-blossoms and flowers under his horse's feet, and waving green boughs over their heads in a frenzy of welcome.
And it was on this very day, as the "Merrie Monarch" was riding under the flowery arches and fluttering pennons of London streets, to the clanging of joy-bells and the thundering of cannon, with a procession twenty thousand strong behind him, that Squire Jennings' daughter first opened her eyes on the world in which, though her simple-minded father little dreamt it, she was destined to play so brilliant a part. No birthday could have been more auspicious than this which saw the restoration of a nation's hope; and the sun which flooded it with splendour was typical of the good fortune that was to gild the life-path of the Sandridge baby.
If on that day Squire Richard had been told that his baby-girl would live to wear a Duchess's coronet and to be the bosom-friend and counsellor of a Queen of England, he would have laughed aloud; and yet Fate had this and more in waiting for Sarah Jennings in the years to come. The Squire himself professed to be no more than a plain country-gentleman, who knew as much as any man about horses and the management of acres, but knew no more of courts and coronets than of the man in the moon.
His family, it is true, had been seated for generations on its broad Hertfordshire lands, and his father had been dubbed a Knight of the Bath when the Prince of Wales, later Charles I., himself received the accolade. His mother, too, was a Thornhurst, of Agnes Court, Old Romney, a family of old lineage and high respectability; but, apart from Sir John, no Jennings had ever aspired even as high as a mere knighthood, and certainly they were as far removed from coronets as from the North Pole.
Squire Jennings had another daughter, Frances, at this time a winsome little maid of eight summers, already showing promise of a rare loveliness. And she, too, was destined to a career, almost as brilliant as, and more adventurous than that of her baby-sister. Her story opened when one day she was transported, as maid-of-honour to the Duchess of York, from the modest home in Hertfordshire to the glamour and splendours of the Royal Court, where her beauty dazzled all eyes.
The Duke of York himself lost his heart at sight of her, and turned on her the battery of his sighs and smiles, his ogling and flattering speeches. When she met his advances with coldness, he bombarded her with notes "containing the tenderest expressions and most magnificent promises," slipping them into her pocket or muff, as opportunity served; but the disdainful beauty dropped the billets-doux on the floor for any one to read who chose to pick them up, until at last the Royal lover was compelled to abandon the pursuit in despair.
James's brother, the King, made violent love to her; and every Court gallant, from the Duke of Buckingham to Henry Jermyn, the richest beau in England, fluttered round her beauty like moths around a candle. How, after many romantic vicissitudes, Frances Jennings gave her heart and hand to Dick Talbot, the handsomest man in the British Isles; how she raised him to a Dukedom, and, as Duchess of Tyrconnel, queened it as Vicereine of Ireland; and how, in later life, she sank from this dizzy pinnacle to such depths of poverty that for a time she was thankful to sell tapes and ribbons in the New Exchange bazaar in the Strand, is one of the most romantic stories in the annals of our Peerage.
While Frances Jennings was coquetting with coronets and playing the madcap at the Court of Whitehall, Sarah was growing to girlhood in her rustic environment in Hertfordshire, more interested in her pony and her toys than in all the baubles that made up the life of that very fine lady her sister, and giving no thought to her beauty, to which each day was adding its touch of grace. But she was not long to remain in such innocence; for one day when she was still but a child of twelve her sister came in a splendid Court carriage, and took her off to London, where a very different life awaited her.
She was not, it is true, to move like Frances in the splendid circle of the Throne, though she was to be on its fringe and to catch many a glimpse of it. Her more modest rôle was to be playfellow and companion of the Duke of York's younger daughter, Anne—a shy, backward child, a few years younger than herself, who suffered from an affection of the eyes, which practically closed books and the ordinary avenues of education to her.
To such a child cradled in a palace and hedged round by ceremonial, Sarah Jennings, with the superabundant health and vitality of a country-bred girl, was an ideal playmate; and before many days had passed the timid, clinging Princess was the very slave of the vivacious, romping, strong-willed daughter of the squire. Thus was begun that union between the strong and the weak, which in later years was to make Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, virtual Queen of England, while her childish playfellow, Anne, wore the crown.
It was under such conditions that Sarah Jennings blossomed rapidly into young womanhood—little less lovely than her ravishing sister, but infinitely more dowered with strength of mind and character—an imperious young lady, with the cleverest brain and tongue, and the most inflexible will within the circle of the Court.
While Sarah was playing with her Royal charge in the Palace nursery, John Churchill, son of a West Country knight, whose life was to be so closely linked with hers, had already climbed several rungs of the ladder at the summit of which he was to find a Duke's coronet. He had made his first appearance at Court while she was still in the cradle at Sandridge; and although, no doubt, she had caught many a glimpse of the handsome young courtier and favourite of the King, in her eyes he moved in a world apart, as far removed by his splendid environment as by his ten years' superiority in age.
John Churchill was, at least, no better born than herself. He was son of one Winston Churchill, of a stock of West Country gentry, who had flung aside his cap and gown at Oxford to wield a sword for King Charles; and who, when Cromwell took the fallen reins of government into his own hands, was made to pay a heavy price for his loyalty by the forfeiture of his lands and a fine of £4,000. When Charles I.'s son came to his own, Winston's star shone again; his acres were restored, he was dubbed a knight, and was rewarded with well-paid offices under the Crown. Moreover, a place at Court, as page-boy, was found for his young son John; and another, as maid-of-honour to the Duchess of York, for his daughter Arabella.
From the day young Churchill entered the service of James, Duke of York, Fortune smiled her sweetest on him. The Duke was captivated by the boy's handsome face, his intelligence and charming manners, and took him at once into favour. By the time he was sixteen he was a full-blown officer of the Guards, and the idol of the Court. His good looks, his graces of person, and powers of fascinating wrought sad havoc in the breast of many a Court-lady; and, boy though he was, there were few favours which might not have been his without the asking.
Even Barbara Villiers, my Lady Castlemaine, who had for many years been the King's "light o' love," and had borne him three sons, all Dukes-to-be, cast amorous eyes on the handsome young Guardsman; and, what is more, succeeded where beauty failed, in drawing him within the net of her coarse, middle-aged charms. Strange stories are told of the love-making of this oddly-assorted pair, which had a ludicrous conclusion. One day King Charles was informed that if he would take the trouble to go to Lady Castlemaine's rooms he would be rewarded by a singular spectacle—that of young Churchill dallying with his mistress and the mother of his children. And so it proved; for when the King made an unexpected appearance he was just in time to see the lieutenant-Lothario disappearing through an open window and his inamorata on the verge of hysterics on a sofa.
One cannot blame the "Merrie Monarch" for deciding that such activities were better fitted for another field of exercise. The young Lothario was packed off to Tangier to cool his ardour by a little bloodshed; but before he went Lady Castlemaine handed him a farewell present of £5,000 with which, according to Lord Chesterfield, "he immediately bought an annuity of £500 a year of my grandfather Halifax, which was the foundation of his subsequent fortune."
A young man so enterprising and so gifted by nature could scarcely fail to go far, when his energies were directed into a suitable channel. He proved that he could serve under the banner of Mars as gallantly as under the pennon of Cupid. He did such doughty deeds against the Dutch, under Monmouth, that he was made a Captain of Grenadiers. At the siege of Nimeguen his reckless bravery won the unstinted praise of Turenne, who, when one of his own officers cowardly abandoned an important outpost, exclaimed, "I will bet a supper and a dozen of claret that my handsome Englishman will recover the post with half the number of men that the officer commanded who has lost it." And the "handsome Englishman" promptly won the supper for the Marshal. Moreover, by an act of splendid daring, during the siege of Maestricht he saved the Duke of Monmouth's life; and returned to England a hero and a colonel, having thoroughly purged his indiscretion in Lady Castlemaine's boudoir. If he had toyed dangerously with the King's mistress, he had at least saved the life of his Sovereign's best-loved son.
It was at this time that Churchill seems to have first set eyes on Sarah Jennings, now standing on the verge of womanhood, and as sweet a flower as the Court garden of fair girls could show. He saw her moving with queenly grace and dainty freshness among a crowd of the loveliest women at a Royal ball, her proud well-poised head rising above them as a lily towers over meaner flowers. And—such are the strange ways of love—from that first glance he was fascinated by her as no other woman ever had power to fascinate him. When he sought an introduction to her, the bright spirit that shone in her eyes, her clever tongue, and her graciousness quickly forged the chains which he was proud to wear to his life's end. Seldom has a woman's spell worked such quick magic—never has the love it gave birth to proved more loyal and enduring.
But Sarah Jennings was no maid to be easily won by any man—even by a lover so dowered with physical graces and so invested with the halo of romance as John Churchill. She knew all about his heroism on battlefields; she knew also of that little incident in a palace boudoir, and of many another youthful peccadillo of the gallant young colonel. She was no flower to be worn and flung aside; and she meant that Colonel Churchill should know it. She could be gracious to him, as to any other man; but she quickly made the limits of her indulgence clear. To all his amorous advances she presented a smiling and inscrutable front; his ardour was as unwelcome as it was premature.
Had she designed to make a conquest of her martial lover she could not have set to work more diplomatically. Colonel Churchill had basked for years in woman's smiles, often unsought and undesired; to coldness and indifference he was a stranger; but they only served, as becomes a soldier, to make him more resolute on victory. As a subtle tongue and a handsome person made no impression on this frigid beauty, he had recourse to his pen (since his sword was useless for such a conquest) and inundated her with letters, breathing undying devotion, and craving for at least a smile or a look of kindness.
"Show me," he writes, "that, at least, you are not quite indifferent to me, and I swear that I will never love anything but your dear self, which has made so sure a conquest of me that, had I the will, I had not the power ever to break my chains. Pray let me hear from you and know if I shall be so happy as to see you to-night."
But to all his protestations and appeals she returns no response. If she is deaf to the pleadings of love she must, he determined, at least give him her pity. He writes to tell her that he is "extreme ill with the headache," and craves a word of sympathy, as a beggar craves a crust. He vows, in his pain,
"by all that is good I love you so well that I wish from my soul that if you cannot love me, I may die, for life could be to me one perpetual torment. If the Duchess," he adds, "sees company I hope you will be there; but if she does not, I beg you will then let me see you in your chamber, if it be but for one hour. If you are not in the drawing-room you must then send me word at what hour I shall come."
At last the iceberg thaws a little—though it is only to charge him with unkindness! She assumes the rôle of virtue; and, with a woman's capriciousness, charges her lover with the coldness and neglect which she herself has visited on him.
"Your not writing to me," she says, "made me very uneasy, for I was afraid it was want of kindness in you, which I am sure I will never deserve by any action of mine."
Was ever wayward woman so unjust? For weeks Churchill had been deluging her with ardent letters, to which she had not deigned to answer one word. Now she assumes an air of injured innocence, and accuses him of unkindness! She even promises to see him, but cannot resist the temptation to qualify the concession with a gibe.
"That would hinder you," she says, with delicious, if cruel satire, "from seeing the play, which I fear would be a great affliction to you, and increase the pain in your head, which would be out of anybody's power to ease until the next new play. Therefore, pray consider; and, without any compliment to me, send me word if you can come to me without any prejudice to your health."
At any rate, the Sphinx had spoken and shown that she had some feeling, if only that of pique and unreason; and the despairing lover was able to take a little heart. After all, coquetry, even if carried to the verge of cruelty, holds more promise than Arctic coldness.
But the course of love, which could scarcely be said to have even begun, was not to run at all smoothly. Sir Winston Churchill had set his heart on his son marrying a gilded bride, and he had discovered the very woman for his ambitious purpose—one Catherine Sedley, daughter of his old friend Sir Charles Sedley, a lady, no longer quite young, angular and unattractive, but heiress to much gold and many broad acres. And he lost no time in impressing on his handsome boy the necessity of such an alliance. Pretty maids-of-honour were all very well to practise love-making on; but land and money-bags far outlast and outshine penniless beauty.
For a few undecided weeks the lure seemed to attract Churchill, coupled though it was with the death of his romance. He dallied with the temptation as far as the stage of marriage-settlements; and rumour had it that the match was as good as made. Handsome Jack Churchill was to marry an elderly and gilded spinster, and to mount on her money-bags to greatness!
No sooner had these rumours reached the ear of Sarah Jennings than she flew into a towering rage. "Marry a shocking creature for money!" she raved; "and this was what all his passionate protestations of love amounted to!" Sitting down in her anger she poured out the vials of her wrath on her treacherous swain, bidding him wed his gold.
"As for seeing you," she wrote, "I am resolved I never will in private or in public if I can help it; and, as for the last, I fear it will be some time before I can order so as to be out of your way of seeing me. But surely you must confess that you have been the falsest creature upon earth to me. I must own that I believe I shall suffer a great deal of trouble; but I will bear it, and give God thanks, though too late I see my error."
Never had maid been so cruelly treated by man! After spurning Churchill for months, returning nothing to his ardour and homage but a disdainful shoulder or a gibe, the moment he dares to turn his eyes on any other divinity she is the most outraged woman who ever staked happiness on a man's constancy. But at least her anger served the purpose of bringing Churchill back to his allegiance more promptly than smiles could have done. He, who had never yielded a foot to an enemy on the field of battle, quailed before the tornado of his lady's anger. He broke off the negotiations for his marriage with Miss Sedley, who quickly found a solace in the Duke of York's arms in spite of her lack of beauty, and came back to the feet of his outraged lady on bended knees.
But if she was coy and cold before, she was unapproachable now. In vain did he vow that he had never ceased to love her more than life—that he adored her even more now in her anger than in her indifference.
"I vow to God," he wrote, "you do so entirely possess my thoughts that I think of nothing else in this world but your dear self. I do not, by all that is good, say this that I think it will move you to pity me, for I do despair of your love, but it is to let you see how unjust you are, and that I must ever love you as long as I have breath, do what you will. I do not expect in return that you should either write or speak to me. I beg that you will give me leave to do what I cannot help, which is to adore you as long as I live; and in return I will study how I may deserve, though not have, your love."
Was ever lover more abject, or ever maid so hard of heart, at least in seeming? To this pathetic effusion, which ought to have melted the heart of, and at least wrung forgiveness from, a sphinx, she retorted that he had merely written it to amuse himself, and to "make her think that he had an affection for her when she was assured he had none." At last, however, importunity tells its tale. She consents to see him; but warns him that
"if it be only to repeat those things which you have said so often, I shall think you the worst of men and the most ungrateful; and 'tis to no purpose to imagine that I will be made ridiculous to the world."
Still again she gave signs of thawing. To his next letter, in which he wrote:
"I do love and adore you with all my heart and soul, so much that by all that is good, I do and ever will be better pleased with your happiness than my own,"
she answered:
"If it were sure that you have that passion for me which you say you have, you would find out some way to make yourself happy—it is in your power. Therefore press me no more to see you, since it is what I cannot in honour approve of; and if I have done so much, be as good as to consider who was the cause of it."
At last Churchill had received a crumb of real encouragement. Even the veriest poltroon in love must take heart at such words as these—"you would find out some way to make yourself happy—it is in your power." And it was with a light step and buoyant heart that he went the following day to the Duchess's drawing-room to pursue in person the advantage her letter suggested. But the very moment he entered the room by one door his capricious mistress left it by the other; and when, in his anger at such cavalier treatment, he wrote to ask the meaning of it, and if she did not think it impertinent, she left him in no doubt by answering that she did it "that I may be freed from the trouble of ever hearing from you more!"
Once more Churchill, just as he had begun to hope again, was relegated to the shades of despair. She refused to speak to him, she avoided him in a manner so marked that it became the talk of the Court, and brought her lover into ridicule. To such extremity was he reduced that he actually wrote to her maid to beg her intercession.
"Your mistress's usage to me is so barbarous that sure she must be the worst woman in the world, or else she would not be thus ill-natured. I have sent her a letter which I desire you will give her. I do love her with all my soul, but will not torment her; but if I cannot have her love I shall despise her pity. For the sake of what she has already done, let her read my letter and answer it, and not use me thus like a footman."
In her reply to this letter Sarah assumed again an air of wounded innocence. She had done nothing, she declared, with tears in her pen, to deserve what he had written to her; and since he evidently had such a poor opinion of her she was angry that she had too good a one of him.
"If I had as little love as yourself, I have been told enough of you to make me hate you, and then I believe I should have been more happy than I am like to be now. However," she continued, "if you can be so well contented never to see me, as I think you can by what you say, I will believe you, though I have not other people."
No wonder the poor man was driven to his wits' end by such varied and contradictory moods. After avoiding him for weeks in the most marked and merciless manner she charges him with "being content never to see her." Although she had never uttered or penned a syllable of love in return for his reams of passionate protestations, she taunts him with having less love than herself! Was ever woman so hard to woo or to understand, or lover so patient under so much provocation?
She further accused him of laughing at her when he was "at the Duke's side," to which he retorted "I was so far from that, that had it not been for shame I could have cried." She even swore that it was he who avoided her; and he proves to her that he had followed her elusive shadow everywhere, and had even "made his chair follow him, because I would see if there was any light in your chamber, but I saw none."
But even this arch-coquette recognised that the most devoted lover's forbearance has its bounds, and she was much too clever a woman to strain them too far. When she had brought him to the verge of suicide by her moods and vapours she saw that the time of surrender had come; and when her lover's arm was at last around her waist and her head on his shoulder, she vowed that she had never ceased to love him from the first, and that she had never meant to be unkind!
Thus it came to pass that one winter's day in 1677, at St James's Palace, John Churchill led his bride to the altar, which proved the portal to one of the happiest wedded lives that have ever fallen to the lot of mortals. How little, at that crowning moment, Sarah Churchill could have foreseen those distant days of the future, when she was left to walk alone the last stage of life, in which she would read and re-read, with tear-dimmed eyes, the faded letters which her coldness had wrung from her lover in the flood-tide of his passion and his despair.
When the Hon. Mary King first opened her eyes in Cork County late in the eighteenth century, her parents, who already had a "quiverful" of offspring, could little have foreseen the tragic chapter in the family annals in which this infant was to play the leading part. Had they done so, they might almost have been pardoned for wishing that she might die in her cradle, a blossom of innocence, before the blighting hand of Fate could sully her.
Her father, Robert, Viscount Kingsborough, was heir to the Earldom of Kingston, and member of a family which had held its head high, and preserved an untarnished 'scutcheon since its founder, Sir John King, won Queen Elizabeth's favour by his zeal in suppressing the Irish rebellion. All its men had been honourable, all its women pure; and it was not until Mary King came on the scene that this fair repute was ever in danger.
Not that there was anything vicious in Lord Kingsborough's young daughter. She was the victim of a weak nature and a lover as unscrupulous as he was handsome and clever. She grew up in the Mitchelstown nursery—one of a dozen brothers and sisters—a wholesome, merry, mischievous girl, with no great pretensions to beauty, but with the fresh charms, the dancing grey eyes, and brown hair (which, in its luxuriant abundance, was her chief glory) of a daughter of Ireland.
Among those whom her bright nature and winsome ways captivated was one Henry Gerald Fitzgerald, the natural son of her mother's brother, and thus her cousin by blood, if not by law. Fitzgerald, who was many years Mary's senior—indeed, at the time this story really opens, he was a married man—had been brought up by Lady Kingsborough as one of her children. He had been the companion of Mary's elder brothers, and Mary's "big playfellow" when she was still nursing her dolls. He was, moreover, a young man of remarkable physical gifts—tall, of splendid figure, and strikingly handsome. It is thus small wonder that the child made a hero of him long before she had emerged from short frocks. When she grew into young womanhood Fitzgerald's attentions to her grew still more marked. He was her constant companion on walks and rides, her partner at dances—in fact, her shadow everywhere, until even her unsuspecting parents began to grow alarmed.
One summer day in 1797, when the Kingsborough family were spending a few weeks by the Thames-side, near Fitzgerald's home at Bishopsgate, the blow fell. Miss King disappeared, leaving behind her a note to the effect that she intended to drown herself in the Thames. Her family and friends were distracted. The river was dragged, but no trace of the missing girl was found. On the river bank, however, were discovered her bonnet and shawl, mute witnesses to the fate that seemed to have overtaken her. Her father alone refused to believe that his daughter had ended her life tragically. He persisted in his search for her, and was soon rewarded by a clue which threw a different and more ominous light on her fate.
From a postboy he learned that a young lady, answering exactly to the description of his daughter, had been driven, in the company of a handsome man, to London, where they had walked off arm in arm together. In London they had vanished; and advertisements and placards offering large rewards failed to discover a trace of them. Then it was that Lord Kingsborough's suspicions fixed themselves firmly on Fitzgerald. He and no other must have been the scoundrel who had done this dastardly deed—a shameful return for all the kindness lavished on him by the family of the girl he had abducted.
When his lordship sought Fitzgerald out, and charged him with his infamy, he was met with open surprise and honest indignation. So far from being the guilty man, Fitzgerald avowed the utmost disgust at the deed, and declared that he would know no rest until the girl had been restored to her parents, and the miscreant properly punished. And from this time no one appeared to be more zealous in the search for the runaway than her abductor.
For weeks all their efforts to trace the fugitive proved of no avail, until one day a girl of the lower-classes called on Lady Kingsborough, to whom she told the following strange tale. She was, she said, servant at a boarding-house in Kennington, to which, some weeks earlier (in fact, at the very time of the disappearance), a gentleman had brought a young lady who answered to the advertised description of the missing girl, especially in her profusion of beautiful hair, which fell below the knees. The gentleman, she continued, often visited the girl.
"It must be my daughter!" exclaimed Lady Kingsborough. "But who is the gentleman? Pray describe him as fully as you can." "He is tall and handsome——" began the girl. At that moment the door opened, and in walked Fitzgerald himself. "Why," exclaimed the servant, as with startled eyes she looked at the intruder, "that's the very gentleman who visits the lady!"
For once Fitzgerald's coolness deserted him. At the damning words he turned and dashed out of the room, thus confirming the worst suspicions against him. The rage and indignation of the injured family were boundless. Such an outrage could only be wiped out with blood, and within an hour Colonel King, elder brother of the wronged girl, called on Fitzgerald, with Major Wood as second, struck him on the cheek, and demanded a meeting on the following morning.
The next day at dawn the duellists met near the Magazine in Hyde Park, Colonel King bringing with him his second and a surgeon. Fitzgerald came alone. He had been unable to find a friend to accompany him. Even the surgeon, when requested, point blank refused to undertake the dishonourable office of second to such a miscreant. The combatants were placed ten yards apart, and, at the signal, two shots rang out. Neither man was touched. Again and again shots were exchanged, and both men remained uninjured.
After the fourth ineffectual exchange Major Wood tried to make peace between the duellists. But Colonel King turned a deaf ear alike to his second and to Fitzgerald, to whom he said: "You are a —— villain, and I will not hear a word you have to offer!" Once more the duellists took up their positions, three more shots were exchanged without the least effect, and, as Fitzgerald's ammunition was now exhausted, the combatants left the ground, after making another appointment for the next day. The next day, however, both were placed temporarily under lock and key, to prevent a further breach of the peace.
Meanwhile, the unhappy girl had been rescued from the Kennington lodging-house, and taken back to the family seat at Mitchelstown, where at least she ought to be safe from further harm from the scoundrelly Fitzgerald. The Kings, however, had not reckoned on the desperate, vindictive nature of the man, who was now more resolute than ever to get Mary into his power.
Disguising himself, he journeyed to Cork, carrying the fight into the enemy's camp. He took up his quarters at the Mitchelstown Inn to develop his plans for a second abduction. But in his scheming Fitzgerald had literally "bargained without his host," who chanced to be an old trusted retainer of the King family, and who from the first was not a little suspicious of the strange guest, who kept so mysteriously indoors all day and walked abroad at night.
No honest man would act in this secretive way, he thought. There had been strange "goings-on" lately; and the least he could do was to communicate his fears to Lord Kingsborough, in case his guest should be "up to some mischief." His lordship, who was away from home, hurried back to Mitchelstown, convinced, from the description, that the suspected man was none other than Fitzgerald himself, and arrived at the inn only to discover that the bird had already flown.
Luckily, it was no difficult matter to trace the fugitive in the wilds of County Cork. The postboy who had driven him was easily found, and from him it was learnt that the stranger had been put down at the Kilworth Hotel. There was no time to be lost. Jumping on to his horse, Lord Kingsborough accompanied by his son, the Colonel, raced as fast as spurs and whip could take him to Kilworth, and demanded to see the newly-arrived guest at the hotel. A waiter, despatched to the guest's room, returned with the announcement that his door was locked, and that he refused to see any one. But the pursuers had heard and recognised the voice through the closed door. It was Fitzgerald himself.
Bursting with rage and indignation, father and son rushed up the stairs and demanded that Fitzgerald should come out. When he refused with oaths, they broke in the door—and found themselves face to face with a brace of pistols. Before they could be used, however, Colonel King, stooping suddenly, made a dash at Fitzgerald, closed with him, and was at once engaged in a life and death struggle. Backward and forward the combatants swayed, straining every muscle to bring their pistols into play for the fatal shot. By an almost superhuman effort, Fitzgerald at last wrested his right arm free. His pistol was pointed at the Colonel's head. But before he could press the trigger, a shot rang out, and he fell back dead, shot through the heart. Lord Kingsborough had killed his daughter's betrayer to save his son's life.
The news of the tragedy flew throughout the country, in all the distorted forms that such news assumes on passing from mouth to mouth. But wherever it travelled—from the shebeens of Connemara to the coffee-houses of Cheapside—it carried with it a wave of compassion for the assassin and execration for his victim. As for Lord Kingsborough, he confessed to a friend: "God knows, I don't know how I did it; but I wish it had been done by some other hand than mine!"
As was inevitable, the Viscount and his son were arrested on a charge of murder. Colonel King was tried at the Cork Assizes, and acquitted to a salvo of deafening cheers, as there was no prosecution. For Lord Kingsborough a different escape was reserved. Before he could be brought to trial at Cork, his father, the Earl of Kingston, died, and the Viscount became an Earl, with all the privileges of his rank—including that of trial by his Peers.
In May 1798, a month after his son's acquittal, Lord Kingston's trial took place in the House of Lords, with all the state and ceremony appropriate to this exalted tribunal. Preceded by the Masters in Chancery, the judges in scarlet and ermine, by the minor lords and a small army of eldest sons, the Peers filed in long and stately procession into the House, followed by the Lord High Steward, the Earl of Clare, walking alone in solitary dignity.
Then began the trial, with all its quaint and dignified ceremonial; and Robert, Earl of Kingston, pleaded "Not Guilty," and claimed to be tried "by God and my Peers." But the trial, which drew thousands to Westminster, was of short duration. To the demand that "all manner of persons who will give evidence against the accused should come forth," no response was given. Not a solitary witness for the Crown appeared. One by one the Peers pronounced their verdict, "Not Guilty, upon my honour"; the Lord Steward broke his white staff; and amid a crowd of congratulating friends, the Earl walked out a free man.
And what was the fate of Mary King, the cause, however innocent, of all this tragedy? For her own sake, and for obvious reasons, it was important that she should disappear for a time until the scandal had subsided; and with this object she was sent, under an assumed name, to join the family of a Welsh clergyman, not one of whom knew anything of her story. Here, secluded from the world, and in a happy environment, she soon recovered her old health and gaiety. She was young; and youth is quick to find healing and forgetfulness. In the Welsh parsonage she made herself beloved by her amiability and admired for her gifts of mind.
Among the latter was a talent for story-telling, with which she beguiled many a long, winter evening. On one such evening she told the story of her late tragic experiences, disguising it only by giving fictitious names to the characters. And she told the story with such power and pathos that, at its conclusion, her auditors were reduced to tears for the maiden and execrations for her betrayer.
Carried away by the excitement of the moment and the effect she had produced, she exclaimed: "I, myself, am the person for whom you express such sorrow." Then, horrified by her indiscretion, she added: "And now, I suppose, you will drive me from your home." But such was not to be Mary King's fate. The clergyman, who was a widower, had already almost lost his heart to her charms; and her sufferings made his conquest complete. A few weeks later the bells rang merrily out when Mary King became the wife of her kindly host; and for many a long year there was no one more beloved or happy in all Wales than the parson's wife, who had thus romantically come through the storm into a haven of peace.
In the latter days of Queen Elizabeth there was no merchant in England better known or held in higher repute than Sir John Spencer, the Rothschild or Rockefeller of his day, whose shrewdness and industry had raised him to the Chief Magistrateship of the City of London.
From the day on which John Spencer fared from his country home to London in quest of gold, Fortune seems to have smiled sweetly and consistently on him. All his capital was robust health and a determination to succeed; and so profitably did he turn it to account that within a few years of emerging from his 'prentice days he was a master of men, with a business of his own, and striding manfully towards his goal of wealth. Everything he touched seemed to "turn to gold"; before he had reached middle-age he was known far beyond the city-walls as "Rich Spencer"; and by the time his Lord Mayoralty drew near he was able to instal himself in a splendour more befitting a Prince than a citizen, in Crosby Hall, which a century earlier Stow had described as "very large and beautiful, and the highest at that time in London."
Indeed, Crosby Hall, ever since the worthy alderman, whose name it bore, had raised its walls late in the fifteenth century, had been the most stately mansion in the city, and had had a succession of famous tenants. When Sir John Crosby left it for his splendid tomb in the Church of St Helen's, it was for a time the palace of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, in which, to quote Sir Thomas More, "he lodged himself, and little by little all folks drew unto him, so that the Protector's Court was crowded and King Henry's left desolate"; and it was in one of its magnificent rooms that Richard was offered, and was pleased to accept, the Crown of England.
Shakespeare, who lived in St Helen's in 1598, knew Crosby Hall well, and has immortalised it in "Richard III."; Queen Elizabeth was feasted more than once within its hospitable walls, and trod more than one measure there with Raleigh. For seven years it was the home of Sir Thomas More when he was Treasurer of the Exchequer; and, to his friend and successor as tenant, More sent that affecting farewell letter, written in the Tower with a piece of charcoal, the night before his execution. Such was the historic and splendid home in which "Rich Spencer" dispensed hospitality as Lord Mayor of London in the year 1594.
Not content with the lordliest mansion in London Sir John must also have his house in the country, to which he could repair for periods of leisure and rest from his money-making; and this he found in Canonbury Tower, which he purchased, together with the manor, from Lord Wentworth. It is said that Sir John had a bargain in his purchase; but, in the event, he narrowly escaped paying for it with his life. It seems that the news of "Rich Spencer's" wealth had travelled as far as the Continent, and there tempted the cupidity of a notorious Dunkirk pirate, who conceived the bold idea of kidnapping the merchant and holding him to a heavy ransom. How the attempt was made, and how providentially it failed is told by Papillon.