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 l.u.s.tre 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."
[Ill.u.s.tration: ELIZABETH COUNTESS GROSVENOR by LAWRENCE]
LADY ELIZABETH
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 n.o.bility 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 t.i.tle. 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 n.o.bility.
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 ma.s.s 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 n.o.ble dames by him, which were engraved by Charles Wilkin and published under the t.i.tle "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 d.u.c.h.ess of Rutland. These are indeed "a select series of ladies of rank and fashion." And with these must be cla.s.sed 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 pa.s.ser-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 trespa.s.s on moral as well as professional chast.i.ty," 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 t.i.tian, 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 beat.i.tude 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 surpa.s.sing 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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 n.o.ble 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."