Book: Some Old Time Beauties
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Thomson Willing >> Some Old Time Beauties
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."
[Illustration: 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 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."