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 navely 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.
[Ill.u.s.tration: ELIZABETH, d.u.c.h.eSS OF HAMILTON by READ]
ELIZABETH GUNNING
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 n.o.bility, 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 debut 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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 t.i.tle 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 b.e.l.l.e.n.den, daughter of John, Lord b.e.l.l.e.n.den,--
"Smiling Mary, soft and fair as down."
She is mentioned otherwise as by Gay:--
"b.e.l.l.e.n.den 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 surpa.s.singly 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 d.u.c.h.ess, _you_ may laugh at me, but _you_ have been married twice," said the Princess. The d.u.c.h.ess 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 d.u.c.h.ess 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-d.u.c.h.essed 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 a.s.sociates of brilliant, intellectual men, but partic.i.p.ants 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 coa.r.s.enesses, the sisters determinedly kept their names free from ign.o.ble soil and scandal.
[Ill.u.s.tration: MARIA COUNTESS OF COVENTRY by HAMILTON]
MARIA GUNNING
"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 surpa.s.sing 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 princ.i.p.al 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 cla.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed the greater part of his life in Rome, painting cla.s.sical subjects and pursuing archaeological investigations. He died there, in 1797.
Portraiture was probably a pecuniary pursuit before the cla.s.sics 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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 c.u.mberland 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 a.s.sured 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-gla.s.s constantly in hand, grieving at the gradual decay. The room was darkened, that others might not discern that which so chagrined her.