Rowlandson, the caricaturist, once published a cartoon entitled "Juno Devon, All Sublime." The rival goddesses in competition with her before that modern Paris, the Prince of Wales, being their Graces of Gordon and Rutland. Beyond the various written records of the opposing beauty of those aristocratic dames who dominated society in their day, we have ample painted evidence of their loveliness. Of her Grace of Devonshire, we have, first, the engraved renderings of "the lost Gainsborough." There are other Gainsboroughs, too,—Georgiana as a child, and a full-length of her standing at the edge of a lawn, her face looking down, wearing a white dress, her right elbow on the base of a column, a scarf in both hands, her hair piled high, but without the hat, as in the more famous picture. There are then several by Sir Joshua. The first, where she stands as a child beside her mother; then, she as a mother with her own child,—a very charming profile, and a picture that insinuates the vivacity of demeanor and the abandon so characteristic of her.
Walpole wrote of this as "Little like and not good." Yet, as to goodness, a modern authority has said: "It is a superb work; and, in motive, color, and composition, it ranks as a triumph alike of nature and art." Again, there is a whole-length showing her about to descend some steps to a lawn, her superb shoulders and neck bare, and her hair highly bedecked with feathers. Walpole writes of another portrait, drawn by Lady Di Beauclerck, and engraved by Bartolozzi: "A Castilian nymph conceived by Sappho and executed by Myron, would not have had more grace and simplicity. The likeness is perfectly preserved, except that the paintress has lent her own expression to the Duchess, which you will allow is very agreeable flattering." In the Royal collection of miniatures at Windsor, are three charmingly executed ivories of her by Cosway. Lawrence, too, made a chalk drawing of her, which now hangs at Chiswick House, in the room in which Charles Fox died. This is an interesting work from being a very early effort of the after-time President of the Academy, and showing that then he had not attained the trick of flattering his sitters, even when they were noted beauties. Angelica Kauffman painted her, and John Downman also made a portrait replete with elegance and picturesqueness. In fact, the comely Duchess pervaded the art of the period. Of her Grace of Gordon, we have, as our ideal presentment of her, the portrait by Sir Joshua. In it her hair is done up high, and two rows of pearls are intertwined therein. The dress is of the Charles the First period, and shows the sweetly modulated shoulders leading up to—
"The pillared throat, clear chiselled cheek, High arching brows, nose purely Greek, Set lips,—too firm for a coquette."
We have also an interesting portrait of her by Romney.
Of her Grace of Rutland, we have also several pictures by Sir Joshua. There is a whole-length with a decorative head-dress, and a landscape background. The original of this was destroyed by fire at Belvoir Castle. Another, a half-length, in the same costume, and a three-quarter face, is mostly pervaded by a serene sense of pride. There is a drawing of her done by the Hon. Mrs. O'Neil, which is interesting from the picturesque head-dress shown. Her Grace of Gordon was as great a power in the political world as she of Devonshire,—probably greater, for her alliance and principles were with the ruling power. This lady was to Pitt's party what Fair Devon was to Fox's. In fact, it was asserted she endeavored to marry her daughter, Lady Charlotte, afterwards Duchess of Richmond, to the premier. When Georgiana made her famous canvass in favor of Fox, the Tories opposed to her the Scotch Duchess.
She lived and entertained then in a splendid mansion in Pall Mall; and there assembled the adherents of the Administration.
Jane was the daughter of Sir William Maxwell, of Monreith, and in her youth, even, was noted for beauty. A ballad, "Jenny of Monreith," written in her honor, was often chivalrously sung by her son George, the last Duke of Gordon. "Jenny" married the fourth Duke, Alexander, in 1767. The career of the Duke's youngest brother George, identified with the "Gordon Riot," caused the family much embarrassment, and even threatened to derogate from the Duchess's dominance with the ruling party.
Her Grace was of somewhat stronger fibre than she of Devon; more masculinity, ay, even more principle, characterized her. Thrift was a visible virtue, in contrast to Georgiana's improvidence. Command, rather than cajolery, was her political method. Her later life was devoted to securing sons-in-law; three dukes, a marquis, and a knight were of her garnering. She was on good terms with the Regent, and endeavored to aid him in his differences with his Princess Caroline. She is remembered, too, as a patron and friend of Dr. Beattie, the poet, who has eulogized her in these lines "To a Pen":—
"Go, and be guided by the brightest eyes, And to the softest hand thine aid impart; To trace the fair ideas as they arise, Warm from the purest, gentlest, noblest heart."
The third in that group of goddesses was surely the fairest of them all, of more perfect form, more noble bearing, having that ultimate element of the greatest beauty,—distinction. She came of a longer lineage, and was the consummate flower of beauty wrought by the sun and summers through many generations of patrician life,—life amid the palatial parks, the superb scenery, and majestic castles of England. Such living weaves its sweetest elements into the tissues of the being and works a spell of loveliness such as Lady Mary Somerset. She was the youngest daughter of Charles, fourth Duke of Beaufort, a descendant of the Plantagenets. In 1775, she was married to Lord Charles Manners, eldest son (born in 1754) of John,—that Marquis of Granby whom Junius attacked, who was associated in the government, in George the Second's time, with the Earl of Chatham. The Marquis was a man of much force, and a most hospitable entertainer. He died before his father, the third Duke of Rutland.
Lord Charles succeeded to the dukedom in 1779. He had formed a friendship at Cambridge with Pitt, the son of his father's colleague, and through his influence Pitt entered Parliament. In 1784, he was induced by the young premier to accept the Lord-Lieutenancy of Ireland, and it is with the lavish entertainment and high revelries at Dublin Castle that his name and that of his beautiful Duchess is connected.
High living soon told its tale, for the Duke died in 1787, at the early age of thirty-three. Though having the most beautiful wife in England, his affections wandered, and tales are told of his attachment to that siren singer, Mrs. Billington. The Duchess's manner had somewhat of levity and much coquetry in it, though she could not be classed with that company who have not time to be virtuous. At the time of her lord's death, she was living with her mother, the Dowager Duchess of Beaufort, in Berkeley Square, London, having been partially estranged from her husband. On hearing of his illness, she started to set out for Dublin; but a message of his death came fast upon the trail of the first news. Perchance it was this estrangement at death, this having parted in anger without the chance of reconciliation in life, that affected her so deeply that, though sought by many suitors, the widow was true to the memory of her late lord. Her son, John Henry, succeeded to the title; and his bride, a daughter of the Earl of Carlisle, was also known as a beauty, and her portrait was painted by Hoppner, in 1798. It was she of whom Greville wrote in his Memoirs, and commented on her lack of taste in spoiling the magnificent Castle of Belvoir, the pride and glory of the Eastern Midlands.
The beauty of the Duchess Mary Isabella was statuesque, classical; her features were noble. She received admiration as her right, but gave not largesse of smiles and wit in return. She was not as the Devonian divinity, "The woman in whose golden smile all life seems enchanted."
Wraxall writes of a lady telling of witnessing a prenuptial display of her person, and being entranced by lithe limb, by the fine and faultless form. Reynolds has hinted at the beauteous body, and the hint ensnares us. Verily, "the visible fair form of a woman is hereditary queen of us." Wraxall also likens the Duchess to an older-time beauty, Diane de Poitiers,—that famous lady of France, the favorite of François I. and Henri II. Of that lady's beauty, it was written, that it was of the form and feature rather than the radiance of the mind and manner transforming them; and like her, too, our Duchess retained her beauty to an advanced age. She died in 1821. To the last, she impressed one with her dignity, her nobility, her loveliness.
"And they who saw her snow-white hair. And dark, sad eyes, so deep with feeling, Breathed all at once the chancel air, And seemed to hear the organ pealing."
In March, 1781, Walpole writes to a friend: "As your lordship has honored all the productions of my press with your acceptance, I venture to inclose the last, which I printed to oblige the Lucans. There are many beautiful and poetic expressions in it. A wedding, to be sure, is neither a new nor a promising subject, nor will outlast the favors; still, I think Mr. Jones's ode is uncommonly good for the occasion." The ode was "The Muse Recalled," and the occasion the nuptials of Lord Viscount Althorp and Miss Lavinia Bingham, eldest daughter of Sir Charles Bingham, created, in 1776, Baron Lucan of Castlebar. Sir Charles was a man of culture, who was intimate with Johnson, Goldsmith, Gibbon, Reynolds, and Burke. He is frequently pleasantly mentioned by Boswell. He had married, in 1760, Margaret, daughter of James Smith, M.P., a lady of great good sense and rare accomplishments, and three lovely daughters were the issue from this union. Reynolds found in them most pleasing subjects for his pencil. Their pictures appeared at the Academy, in 1786. Lavinia was portrayed as shown in the picture here given, and again in quite as lovely a fashion,—standing out doors and wearing a wide-brimmed hat which casts a broad shade across the face; the wavy curls of hair fall upon the shoulder; in the background is a landscape. The naïvete of the face is exquisitely delightful. The old-time flavor of the whole causes one to recall Locker's lines on the picture of his grandmother:—
"Beneath a summer tree. Her maiden reverie Has a charm; Her ringlets are in taste; What an arm! ... what a waist For an arm!"
In the picture of her youngest sister, Anne, is a broad hat, too; she sits full-face, but in her features there is lacking just a little of the quiet dignity of the eldest. All of these portraits have been made familiar to us by the most meritorious mezzotints of them by Cousins. In Lavinia's face there lingers all the enchanting grace of girlhood,—a face yet full of that early beauty—
"Which, like the morning's glow
Hints a full day below."
A later president of the Academy, Sir Martin Shee, has shown us that face in the noonday of its matronly beauty, and the gentle character and sweet sensibility yet outshine through the mask of the flesh as in the earlier pictures.
Lady Bingham was careful of the education and company of her daughters. The girls were musical, and Lavinia excelled in painting as well. Walpole writes of her being in Italy, in 1785, with Mrs. Damer, his sculptor friend, and of her drawing with very great expression. He was not so complimentary of her music some years before, when he tells of being invited to Lady Lucan's to hear her daughters sing Jomelli's "Miserere," set for two voices: "It lasted for two hours, and instead of being pathetic was eminently dull, until at last I rejoiced when 'the two women had left the sepulchre.'"
Shortly after this he tells of rumors of the attachment of George John, Lord Althorp, brother of Georgiana of Devonshire, to "that sweet creature" Lavinia. At dinner at Lord Lucan's, Lord Althorp sat at a side table with the girls and a Miss Shipley. "Pray, Lady Spencer," said Walpole, "is it owned that Lord Althorp is to marry—Miss Shipley?" His next reference to the Lucans is in regard to the wedding ode printed on the Strawberry Hill press. The poet therein invokes blessings in this wise:—
"Shine forth, ye silver eyes of night, And gaze on virtues crowned with treasures of delight.
. . . . . . . .
"Flow smoothly, circling hours,— And o'er their heads unblended pleasure pour; Nor let your fleeting round Their mortal transports bound, But fill their cup of bliss, eternal powers, Till time himself shall cease, and suns shall blaze no more."
He essays to eulogize the bride:—
"Each morn reclined on many a rose, Lavinia's pencil shall disclose New forms of dignity and grace, The expressive air, the impassioned face, The curled smile, the bubbling tear, The bloom of hope, the snow of fear, To some poetic tale fresh beauty give, And bid the starting tablet rise and live; Or with swift fingers shall she touch the strings, Notes of such wondrous texture weave As lifts the soul on seraph wings."
He then proceeds to encourage Althorp to lead a strong, noble life, devoting his great abilities to the state, though he laments the small chances for genuine sterling worth to achieve eminence.
"In this voluptuous, this abandoned age,"
when the leaders of the country are
"Slaves of vice and slaves of gold."
There was much fitness in this poet essaying a homily for the groom's benefit, for he had been the young man's tutor some years before. When the first Earl—a man of most fascinating manners—placed his son in the tutor's charge, he said, "Make him, if you can, like yourself and I shall be satisfied." Johnson said of Sir William Jones, "The most enlightened of the sons of men." He became a great Indian and Persian scholar, and was ever an honored friend of his former pupil.
Previous to his marriage, Lord Althorp had entered Parliament, and, as a Whig, was opposing Lord North. When the Marquess of Rockingham came to power, he was made a Lord Commissioner of the Treasury. In 1783, he succeeded to his father's earldom. The Dowager Countess lived on until 1814. Her character has been variously described. Mrs. Delany calls her "an agreeable person, with a sensible, generous, and delicate mind." She was termed vain. What woman would not be who was mother to such beauties as Devonshire, Duncannon, and Lavinia. In an autobiography by the third Earl, he naïvely remarks that his mother never liked his grandmother. The pleasing picture of "Ruth and Naomi" is the exception in families.
On the breaking out of the French Revolution, Earl Spencer gave his support to Pitt, by whom he was appointed first lord of the admiralty, in 1794. It was during the period of her husband's brilliant career in this office that the Countess made her greatest success as a hostess in ministerial society. She was a good conversationalist, and especially attractive to men of individuality who admired her sagacious, picturesque pungency of expression. The great naval commanders, who frequented the admiralty, were impressed with the frankness and force of her superior mind, Nelson and Collingwood particularly. She is frequently mentioned in their letters as being sure to have much sympathy in their work. A late biographer of the Earl wrote: "She had the penetration to appreciate Nelson through the cloud of personal vanity and silly conceit which caused him to be lightly esteemed in London society." Her "bull-dog" she used playfully to call him. She visited Gibbon at Lausanne, in 1795, and he writes: "She is a charming woman who, with sense and spirit, has the playfulness and simplicity of a child." By some she was accounted haughty and exclusive. Perchance she was to those who were without the breeding or the brains to commend them to her. Dignified she certainly was, and her influence was wholly for good in the uplifting of politics and the purifying of society. "I would not advise any one to utter a word against any one she was attached to," once said her father. She became the wise coadjutor of her husband in forming the magnificent Althorp Library.
When the earl retired from the admiralty, in 1800, his entertaining became less general. His hospitalities at Spencer House were restricted to his more intimate friends. Here came Lord Grenville, Earl Grey, chief of the Whigs, Brougham, Horner, and Lord John Russell; the younger men to hold converse with her who had known Burke, Pitt, Fox, and all the older time orators and statesmen.
In a series of boyish letters sent by the heir to the earldom to his father the ending of all is in this quaint phrase: "My duty to Mama." The youth did his duty by his mother. She directed his tastes and studies, and when he was at college incited him to try for high honors, and urged, again and yet again, application to study; and through her persuasion he became a reading man. He entered Parliament when of age, in 1803. During the Fox and Grenville administration he held office as a lord of the treasury. When his mother was congratulated on his appointment, she said: "Jack was always skilful in figures, and his work is so much to his taste that I am sure he will do himself credit." He did himself great credit. His career was consistently courageous, honorable, and beneficent. He had character! This is his mother's best eulogy. She died in 1831, shortly after her son had become Chancellor of the Exchequer, in which office he earned his greatest repute as a statesman.
The story of the Gunnings is as romantic as any ever wrought into imaginative narrative or incorporated in epic poem. The notorious damsels were daughters of John Gunning of Castle Coote, County Roscommon, Ireland, by the Hon. Bridget Bourke, daughter of Theobald, sixth Viscount Bourke of Mayo, whom he married in 1731. The family was wofully impecunious; so when the daughters, Maria and Elizabeth, grew into marvellously comely maidens, their mother urged their going on the stage to augment the faulty fortune. They went to Dublin, and there were kindly received by Peg Woffington, then in her glory as Sir Harry Wildair, and by Tom Sheridan, manager of Dublin Theatre. The stage had not then become the stepping-stone to the ranks of the nobility, so the girls were advised to adventure socially, with their faces for their fortunes. They had not the dresses to be presented in at Dublin Castle, but Sheridan supplied these from the resources of the green-room wardrobe. Attired as Lady Macbeth and as Juliet they made their curtsies to the Earl of Harrington, the then Lord-Lieutenant.
The hostess of the evening was the handsome Lady Caroline Petersham, bride of the Earl's eldest son. Lady Caroline had been one of the "Beauty Fitzroys," and had been a favorite belle in town before her marriage.
"When Fitzroy moves, resplendent, fair. So warm her bloom, sublime her air, Her ebon tresses formed to grace And heighten while they shade her face."
Walpole wrote of her in his poem on "The Beauties." The raw Connaught girls outshone this dazzling hostess.
Their "first night" was an auspicious success. The début was applauded, and the players praised. They were adjudged fitted to star the social capital, so to London they went, in June, 1751. Their reception was magical. The West End went almost mad over them. When they appeared at Court, the aristocracy present was indecorous in its efforts to view the dominant beauties. Lords and ladies clambered on any eminence to gaze. The crowd surged upon them, and it was with difficulty they entered their chairs because of the mob outside. The gayety of Vauxhall Gardens was incomplete without them.
Their campaign was a short and eminently active one; Elizabeth triumphed first. At a masquerade at Lord Chesterfield's, in February, 1752, James, the sixth Duke of Hamilton and Brandon, who was enamoured of the younger Irish girl, wished to marry her at once. A clergyman was asked to perform the ceremony then and there. He objected to the time and place and the absence of a ring. The Duke threatened to send for the Archbishop. With the ring of a bed-curtain, at half an hour past midnight, the wedding took place in Mayfair Chapel. The Scotch were enraged at the alliance, which became an unhappy one. The Duke was vulgar, debauched, extravagant, and "damaged in person and fortune," yet, withal, insolently proud. He betook himself off within six years, and his two sons by the Duchess became, successively, seventh and eighth Dukes of Hamilton; and a daughter married Edward, twelfth Earl of Derby.
The dowager was less than a year in widow's weeds when she exchanged them for more strawberry leaves. She had two ducal offers, from their graces of Bridgewater and of Argyll; she accepted the latter. In March, 1759, she married John, the fifth Duke of that name. Walpole's comment on this was: "Who could have believed a Gunning would unite the two great houses of Campbell and Hamilton? For my part I expect to see Lady Coventry Queen of Prussia. I would not venture to marry either of them these thirty years, for fear of being shuffled out of the world prematurely, to make room for the rest of their adventurers. The first time Jack Campbell carries the Duchess into the Highlands, I am persuaded that some of his second-sighted subjects will see him in a winding-sheet with a train of kings behind him as long as those in Macbeth." And again: "A match that would not disgrace Arcadia ... as she is not quite so charming as her sister, I do not know whether it is not better than to retain a title which puts one in mind of her beauty."
The Dukes of Argyll—Lords of the Isles—have always shown a partiality for beauties as brides. This Duke's father married the beautiful Mary Bellenden, daughter of John, Lord Bellenden,—
"Smiling Mary, soft and fair as down."
. . . . . . .
She is mentioned otherwise as by Gay:—
"Bellenden we needs must praise, Who, as down the stairs she jumps, Sings 'Over the hills and far away,' Despising doleful dumps."
Walpole says she was never mentioned by her contemporaries but as the most perfect creature they had ever known. The present Duke wedded that charming child, Lady Elizabeth Leveson Gower, who sits on her mother's knee in that surpassingly fine picture by Lawrence, called "Lady Gower and Child." And his son is allied to the Princess Louise, the most comely of Victoria's daughters.
After her sister's death, in 1760, her Grace of Argyll suffered a decline in health. She was ordered abroad for change. She was appointed to accompany the Princess Sophia Charlotte on her journey to England to be married to the King. As they neared the ceremony in London, the Princess became nervous. Her Grace essayed to quiet her fears. "Ah, my dear Duchess, you may laugh at me, but you have been married twice," said the Princess. The Duchess became one of the ladies of the bedchamber, and was in much favor with the Queen.
In 1767, her father died at Somerset House, and her mother, the Hon. Mrs. Gunning, in 1770. There were three sisters in the family besides our heroines: Sophia Gunning died, an infant, in 1737; Lissy, who died in 1752, aged eight years; and Catherine, who was married, in 1769, to Robert Travis an Irish squire in her own rank of life. She died, too, at Somerset House, in 1773, where she was an upper housekeeper. A brother entered the army, fought at Bunker Hill, and became a major-general in 1787. He was much of a ladies' man. He married a Miss Minfie, author of some novels, and they had a daughter who aspired to repeat the successes of her famous aunts. She managed to marry the Hon. Stephen Digby, who had lost his first wife, a daughter of Lord Ilchester, in 1787. The Duchess of Argyll was created, in 1776, a peeress of England as Baroness Hamilton of Hambledon County, Leicester, and died in December, 1790. By her second marriage she had two sons, successively Dukes of Argyll, and two daughters, one of whom, Lady Charlotte Campbell, attained some fame as a novelist as Lady Charlotte Bury, she having married Colonel John Campbell and secondly Rev. Edward Bury.
We have no evidence of the possession of bright Irish wit by the double-duchessed beauty. Ingenuous enthusiasm, perfect simplicity, and unfailing good humor ever marked her manner, and were a captivating adjunct to her great facial charm. Walpole writes of a pretty sight when their Graces of Hamilton and of Richmond with Lady Ailesbury sitting in a boat together, and proceeds to tell of the suspected jealousy by she of Hamilton of the beauty of his niece, daughter of Sir Edward Walpole, who became the bride of Earl Waldegrave, and later married the Duke of Gloucester, the King's youngest brother. At another time, when a lady wrote telling him of the advent of a beauty who was expected to outvie the Gunnings, he replies: "There was to have been a handsomer every summer these seven years, but when the seasons come they all seem to have been addled by the winter."
One day the housekeeper of Hampton Court was showing the palace to visitors when the sisters were there. She threw open the door where they were sitting, saying, "This is our beauty-room." The pictures and galleries were forgotten by the crowd, which gazed on the beauties instead.
For a decade their beauty was regnant in London. They were not politicians as were their Graces of Gordon and Devonshire, nor had they the ability to become such. Neither were they the associates of brilliant, intellectual men, but participants in the gay, vacuous, showy society of the rapid set of the aristocracy. The elder sister gained the coronet of Coventry, but her vanity caused her own undoing; the younger was a part of the exhibition of "Beauty and the Beast." A high price was paid for her position by the endurance of a period of tyranny and terror.
Some praise must be accorded the beauties, for at a time of much licentiousness of a profligate society and tolerated coarsenesses, the sisters determinedly kept their names free from ignoble soil and scandal.
"Two Irish girls of no fortune, who make more noise than any of their predecessors since the days of Helen, and who are declared the handsomest women alive." So wrote Walpole, in June, 1751. If we were to judge of their beauty by the pictured presentments of it, we would certainly agree with "our Horace" when he says he has seen much handsomer women than either. We have no adequate image of their surpassing loveliness, the beholding of which would cause us to feel how merited was their meed of praise, how fair the contemporary comment on their comeliness, and how just the wide fame of a beauty which tradition has epitomized for us in the phrase, "The Fair Gunnings." Though the print publishers of the time actively issued portraits, we feel that none of them picture such a person as would set society and the whole city of London astir by her blazing beauty.
The best-known likenesses are the various pictures by Francis Cotes, one of the founders of the Royal Academy, a painter of considerable merit, who was born about 1725, and died in 1770. It is said that Hogarth preferred him as a portrait painter to Reynolds. His studio was in Cavendish Square, and at his death was taken by Romney; and it was while he worked there that Sir Joshua referred to his rival as "the man in Cavendish Square." The studio was later occupied by Sir Martin Shee.
Cotes's picture of Maria is a half length of a modestly dignified lady, having no tendency at all to that silliness that Walpole insinuates was characteristic of her. The face is oval, the eyebrows well apart and distinctly arched, and the hair brushed back from the forehead and falling on the very graceful neck. The dress is cut low, showing a delicately-moulded bosom. This picture was mezzo-tinted by McArdell; and there is another, somewhat similar, reproduced superbly by Spooner. His principal picture of Elizabeth is not so attractive as the picture of her sister; the body is too constrained and symmetrically formal; the dress is very low and edged with lace, some flowers resting on her bosom. The neck and breast have not the suave grace of the sister's. This has been engraved in mezzo-tint by Houston. Another portrait by Cotes shows her with fur on the dress. He also painted a portrait of Kitty in a low dress sprigged with flowers, with a sash, and ribbons at the back of the head. This has a wooded landscape background. Below the print of this picture is engraved these lines:—
"This youngest of the Graces here we view So like in Beauty to the other two Whoe'er compares their Features and their Frame Will know at once that Gunning is her name."
There is an engraved picture of the two sisters together—based on Cotes's portrayals—called "The Hibernian Sisters." Maria is sitting on the left, looking toward the right, with a dog on her lap; the younger is on the right, looking to the front, and holds a fan in her hand. In the background is a garden wall. Cupids surmount the picture. The inscription is in this fashion:—
"Hibernia long with spleen beheld
Her Favorite Toasts by ours excelled.
Resolved to outvie Britannia's Fair
By her own Beauties,—sent a pair."
Reynolds painted them both, in 1753; but he failed to give them the charm we would expect. Unless Sir Joshua's engravers belie him, he did not make Maria even ordinarily fair to look upon. These pictures are not classed among his masterpieces. There is a picture of Maria by B. Wilson the engraver, made before she left Ireland. In it the features are handsome and the figure graceful, though over-dressed, and the whole impression is of a matron in her thirties rather than a maid in her teens. The picture we give of her is from a whole-length by Gavin Hamilton, a Scotch artist, a friend of Burns, born in Lanark about 1730. He must have been a precocious genius, for this picture was engraved by McArdell, and published in 1754. Hamilton passed the greater part of his life in Rome, painting classical subjects and pursuing archaeological investigations. He died there, in 1797. Portraiture was probably a pecuniary pursuit before the classics claimed him. His portraits savor somewhat of the affectations of the "curtain and column" school. His canvas of Elizabeth shows her standing on a terrace with a low dress and long hair, a veil loosely tied across her chest. Her left hand rests on the head of a greyhound. There is a seat to the left and trees in the background.
Houston engraved a portrait of Maria after a drawing by J. St. Liotard. This is a three-quarter length figure. Her hair is in large plaits twined with a muslin veil on her head. The dress is open at the throat, showing a necklace. There is a wide belt with large clasps. Her left elbow rests on her knee. Perhaps the most satisfactory pictures of the Beauties are those by Catharine Read, who died, in 1786; and who is chiefly known by her winsome delineations of the graces of the Gunning girls. We could readily judge from these that the girls were attractive. There is a genial graciousness in the face of she of Coventry, while the Scotch duchess is possessed of a persuasive sweetness of mien. The mob-cap frames a face almost faultless in the regularity of its features. For all the pleasant flavor of these facial charms, there is absent that peerless, regal loveliness, that compelling magnificence of presence, that hauteur which dazzles and enthrals.
The originals of these various portraits have been retained at Croome Court, near Worcester; the seat of the Coventry family, at Inverary Castle, Argyllshire; and at Hamilton Palace.
Three weeks after the romantic marriage of her younger sister, Maria Gunning was married to George William, who was Lord Deerhurst—"that grave young Lord," Walpole calls him—until 1750, when he succeeded to the Earldom of Coventry. He had been dangling about her for some time, and seemed nerved to the wedding by his Grace of Hamilton's precipitate action. The Earl took her for a trip on the Continent in company with Lady Caroline Petersham, that other great beauty. Neither caused much comment abroad, and Paris did not ratify the repute of London. My Lady was at a disadvantage from her ignorance of the French language. She complained, too, of the arbitrary rule of her husband in not allowing her red nor powder, so much in vogue with the Parisian beauties. It is told how he saw her appear at a dinner with some on, and took out his handkerchief, and there tried to rub it off. But her fame abated not in England. Crowds continued to mob her whenever she appeared on the street. The King was pleased to order that whenever my Lady Coventry walked abroad she should be attended by a guard of soldiers. Shortly after this she simulated great fright at the curiosity of the mob, and asked for escort. She then paraded in the park, accompanied by her husband and Lord Pembroke, preceded by two sergeants, and followed by twelve soldiers. Surely this outdoes the advertising genius of any latter-day American actress! A shoemaker at Worcester gained two guineas and a half by exhibiting at a penny a head a shoe he had made for the Countess. She was in much favor at Court, and always circulated in an atmosphere of adulation and sensation. The Duke of Cumberland was an admirer, as was also, more emphatically, Fred St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke,—"Billy and Bully" these two blades were termed. There was rumor, at one time, of the Earl seriously resenting the attentions of Bolingbroke. The old King, too, showed her some courtesies; and the most oft-told anecdote of her is about His Majesty asking if she were not sorry the masquerades were over. She assured him she was surfeited with pageants,—there was but one she wished yet to see, and that was a coronation. She saw it not, for the King outlived her by a fortnight. Had she but abstained from the use of paint and powder, her career would not have ended at the early age of twenty-seven. Blood-poisoning came from the use of it. Her beauty paled rapidly. My lady lay on a couch, a pocket-glass constantly in hand, grieving at the gradual decay. The room was darkened, that others might not discern that which so chagrined her. Then the curtains of the bed were drawn to guard her from pitying gaze; and then, on a September day, in 1760, the pathetic end came. Over ten thousand people viewed her coffin. Sensationalism even after the drop of the curtain! The Countess left four children, two sons and two daughters. Of these, Anne, four years old at her mother's death, was one of the children whom George Selwyn showed much kindness to. The Earl married again, the second Countess being Barbara, daughter of Lord St. John of Bletsoe. George William, the son of Maria, came to the earldom in 1809.
In an ode on the death of Maria the poet Mason wrote:—
"For she was fair beyond your brightest bloom (This Envy owns, since now her bloom is fled): Fair as the Forms that wove in Fancy's loom, Float in light vision round the Poet's head. Whene'er with soft serenity she smiled, Or caught the orient blush of quick surprise, How sweetly mutable, how brightly wild. The liquid lustre darted from her eyes! Each look, each motion, waked a new-born grace That o'er her form its transient glory cast: Some lovelier wonder soon usurped the place, Chased by a charm still lovelier than the last."
In these latter days can we imagine a lawsuit, costing contestants thousands of pounds, over the right to a certain heraldic charge? In the fourteenth century Sir Robert Grosvenor was the defendant in such a suit, and we read of Chaucer, John of Gaunt, Owen Glendower, and Hotspur being witnesses before the High Court of Chivalry. Sir Robert established his defence, and since those days the Grosvenors have ever held a high rank in the nobility of England. Quite as proud a patrician position was held through the centuries by the family of Gower. In the early part of this century, the heir of the Grosvenors espoused the most beautiful daughter of the House of Gower,—Lady Elizabeth Mary Leveson Gower. This lady was the youngest daughter of George, the second Marquis of Stafford, who married, in 1785, Elizabeth, who was Countess of Sutherland and Baroness Strathnaver in her own right. The Marquis was created Duke of Sutherland in 1833.
The Lady Elizabeth Mary was born in 1797, and married, in 1819, Robert, Viscount Belgrave, eldest son of the second Earl of Grosvenor. The portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence was painted in the year preceding her marriage.
The Marquisate of Westminster had been created in 1831, and in 1845, when the Viscount's father died, he succeeded to the title. He had entered Parliament in 1818 as member for Chester. He spoke but rarely in the House, although a hard worker on committees. He greatly improved his vast London property, and had the credit of administering his estate with a combination of intelligence and generosity seldom seen. Of reserved habits and inexpensive tastes, he was averse to ostentation and extravagance. He died in 1869. His successor was his son (born in 1825) the present Duke, who was elevated to a dukedom in 1874. He is one of the wealthiest peers in the kingdom, is a man of great taste, and has patronized the arts with almost a Medician munificence.
The seat of the family is the renowned Eaton Hall, near Chester; that stately mansion set in the centre of a country rich in pastoral beauty. Its enlargement and beautification was begun by the second Earl in 1802, and has been carried on by its present lord until it is now the most magnificent of all the modern mansions of the nobility. G.F. Watts's heroic equestrian statue of Hugh Lupus, the founder of the family and a nephew of William the Conqueror, challenges admiration as one enters the grounds. There is no great picture gallery in the Hall, for that is at Grosvenor House in London, but the family portraits are here. Let into panels of the dining-room are portraits from the time of the first Earl, who was painted by Gainsborough. The Viscount Belgrave and his lady were painted by Pickersgill, in 1825,—this picture of the latter being much inferior to Lawrence's,—while the present generation was painted almost wholly by Millais,—that of Constance, the Duke's first wife, being especially fine. Leslie, in 1833, executed a group of the Grosvenor family.
Lawrence and Hoppner were to the regency what Reynolds, Gainsborough, and Romney were to the early days of the reign of George III., as painters of the patrician beauties. What a marvellous mass of records of fair women these five have left us!—Reynolds, supreme in style, painting the character as seen through the fair mask of the flesh; Gainsborough, superbly picturesque, and a faithful limner withal; Romney, impressively picturesque, too, a fine colorist, imaginative, and but now, a century later, coming into his proper meed of praise; Lawrence, elegant, charming,—a courtier indeed; Hoppner, through many years a close rival of Lawrence. To Hoppner we are indebted for the visible evidence of the beauty of many who had repute as fair women. There is that piquant Jane Elizabeth, Countess of Oxford, who greets us in the National Gallery. Then that dark-eyed and winsome Lady Kenyon, who was one of the reigning belles, on canvas, at the Grafton Gallery show in London this year. In this exhibit, too, was his "Mademoiselle Hillsberg,"—a tall and dark dancing woman, which he regarded as his best work. Then there is that group of noble dames by him, which were engraved by Charles Wilkin and published under the title "Bygone Beauties,"—Lady Charlotte Duncombe; Viscountess St. Asaph; Lady Charlotte Campbell, daughter of Elizabeth Gunning; Viscountess Andover; Lady Langham; the Countess of Euston, one of the three beautiful Ladies Waldegrave, painted by Reynolds; the Duchess of Rutland. These are indeed "a select series of ladies of rank and fashion." And with these must be classed that sweet ideal face of Mrs, Arbuthnot, known as "Marcia." At this late date it gives us greeting from how many a parlor wall! Its tender charm makes perpetual appeal to the passer-by from how many a print-shop window!
There seems to have been bitter feeling between Hoppner, who was an intense Whig, and Lawrence, who knew no politics, but was all things to all men. "The ladies of Lawrence show a gaudy dissoluteness of taste, and sometimes trespass on moral as well as professional chastity," and "Lawrence shall paint my mistress and Phillips my wife," were the two rapier phrases Hoppner thrust at his rival. But it is recorded that thenceforth Lawrence's commissions from fair sitters multiplied.
Sir Thomas was a finished flatterer. No man ever knew better, except it was Lely, how to pay the compliment of the brush. This form is the substantial, the lasting compliment for which golden guineas are gladly paid. Grace and elegance are the hall-mark of his every picture. But the artist was a courtier in speech and manners as well, and this got him into trouble once. He was attentive to the ill-used Princess Caroline,—markedly attentive! A royal commission inquired into his conduct, but absolved him from the charges of wrongdoing. When Lady Grosvenor, who had become Marchioness of Westminster, was an old lady, in 1881, she wrote in a letter to Lord Leveson Gower her recollections of the painter: "His manners were what is called extremely 'polished' (not the fault of the present times). He wore a large cravat, and had a tinge about him of the time of George IV., pervading his general demeanor.... I should not say he was amusing, but what struck me most, during my two hours sitting in Russell Square, was the perfection of the drawing of his portraits. Before any color was put on, the drawing itself was so perfectly beautiful that it seemed almost a sin to add any color." This portrait of her, which was painted at this one sitting, is considered the very best Lawrence ever painted. The head has distinction and hauteur, albeit the face is sweetly ingenuous. And the eyes! Well, Sir Thomas always excelled here! Never, since Titian, has painter given us such "strange sweet maddening eyes,"—
"Fathomless dusk by night, the day lets in Glimmer of emerald,—thus those eyes of hers!"
This picture now hangs in the gallery of Stafford House, and was mezzotinted by Cousins, in 1844, and included in the published collection of the artist's works. This volume is representative of the artist. It opens with that perennially delightful picture of the "Calmady Children," called "Nature,"—one of the very best and sweetest representations of child life ever made. Here is the elemental artlessness of nature, and here the beatitude of innocence. Another child-picture is the portrait of Lady Emily Cowper, afterwards Lady Ashley, called "The Rosebud." Among the ladies shown are Lady Leicester, Lady Lyndhurst, and Lady Georgiana Agar Ellis, the picture of the latter being surpassing in its elegance. That majestically maternal picture is here of Lady Gower and Lady Elizabeth Leveson Gower,—not our Elizabeth Mary, but she who became Duchess of Argyll.
The Countess of Grosvenor was a lady of high character and most affable manners, and held her exalted position with a dignity of demeanor and a bearing worthy of a descent from the noble Gowers, lords of Sittenham. Her residence latterly was Motcombe House, near Shaftesbury, Dorsetshire. She lived on until our own day, dying at the age of ninety-four.
In 1840-41 she accompanied her husband on a yacht voyage in the Mediterranean, an entertaining account of which she published in two volumes. She was a keen politician, as so many ladies of rank are in England. In 1873 Lady Westminster's son, then Lord Robert Grosvenor, spoke in favor of the Liberal candidate for Shaftesbury. The candidate told her tenants that he believed her ladyship was not averse to his candidature. It was putting his fingers into the den of the apparently sleeping lioness. She wrote sharply: "I beg to undeceive you. I am most anxious for the success of the conservative cause, connected as it is with the preservation of our religion and our loyalty to our Queen."