Part 4

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.

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.

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."

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!"