Book: Some Old Time Beauties
T >>
Thomson Willing >> Some Old Time Beauties
"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 Francois 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."
[Illustration: LAVINIA COUNTESS SPENCER by REYNOLDS]
LAVINIA
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 naivete 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 naively 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.
[Illustration: ELIZABETH, DUCHESS 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
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 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 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.
[Illustration: 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
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.