Part 4
The conjugal affection which ever afterwards united the hero and heroine of this pretty romance receives emphatic testimony from Horace Walpole. In the gossip he gathers up for his correspondents their names figure frequently; and while he jests maliciously about the Duke’s “pride and Stuartism,” and the Duchess’s “grandeur,” he is an enthusiastic admirer of her Grace’s beauty, and his cynicism is not proof against the spectacle of her love for her husband, and her devotion to her children. Like her daughter, the Duchess of Leinster, she had an extraordinarily large family—twenty-six, as we learn from Horace Walpole[16]—but as was so often the case in these enormous eighteenth-century families—but a small proportion of them survived their infancy. We have a pretty picture of the Duchess and her husband (“who sat by his wife all night kissing her hand”) at the ball given by “long Sir Thomas Robinson” for “the Duke’s little girl,” Lady Caroline Lennox, in October, 1741. “The beauties,” he informs his Florentine correspondent, Sir Horace Mann, “were the Duke of Richmond’s two daughters,[17] and their mother, still handsomer than they.” At the Duchess of Norfolk’s great “masquerade” of February 17th, 1742, to which Royalty went, ablaze with diamonds, and where “quantities of pretty Vandykes, and all kinds of old pictures walked out of their frames,” the “two finest and most charming masks,” in Mr. Walpole’s opinion, “were their Graces of Richmond, like Henry the Eighth and Jane Seymour, excessively rich, and both so handsome!”[18]
Footnote 16:
“Letters,” II., 221.
Footnote 17:
“Letters,” I., 85. The editor of the Walpole “Letters,” identifies the second of these girls as Lady Emily, our heroine, but it seems very unlikely, as she was only ten years old at the date of this ball.
Footnote 18:
_Ibid._, p. 146.
Owing to their father’s position at Court, the little Lennox girls were well known to the old king, George II, and prime favourites with him. He was Lady Emily’s godfather, and the christening cup he gave her is still preserved at Carton. He was delighted, beyond measure, when one day, taking his constitutional on the broad walk at Kensington, he saw a charming little maid rush from her French _bonne_ and come bounding up to him with a saucy “_Comment vous portez vous Monsieur le Roi, vous avez une grande et belle maison ici, n’est ce pas?_” It was little Lady Sarah Lennox, and the king, having discovered her identity, invited her _bonne_ to carry her often to see his “_grande et belle maison_.” The children learned to speak French before they spoke English, and Lady Emily, in particular, showed herself all through life an enthusiastic admirer of French literature, and very accessible to the new ideas of which that literature made itself the vehicle. Horace Walpole tells us of the delight he experienced, on one occasion when he had invited her and her sister, Lady Caroline, with their husbands, Lord Kildare and Mr. Fox, to Strawberry Hill, and the weather turned out too wet to show his company the wonders of his castle and grounds, to find that Lady Kildare was “_a true Sévignist_.” “You know,” he remarks to his correspondent, Richard Bentley, “what pleasure I have in any increase in our sect” (_i.e._ the cult of Madame de Sévigné). “I thought she looked handsomer than ever, as she talked of _Notre Dame des Rochers_.”[19] Later on, we hear from Mrs. Delany of her admiration for Rousseau, and his theories of education; and we know from one of her daughters that her great interest in education made her a diligent reader of Madame de Genlis. She seems to have spent much time in her girlhood with her mother’s relations in Holland, and this fact, together with the French influences which presided over her education, gave her a European point of view, which was in striking contrast with the insularity of the majority of English-women of her class and generation. Doubtless, this cosmopolitanism of his mother’s was, also, not without its effect on Lord Edward.
Footnote 19:
A name given by Horace Walpole to Madame de Sévigné, of whose “Letters” he was a devoted enthusiast. He sometimes calls her “_Notre Dame de Livry_”—_Les Rochers_ and _Livry_ were the names of her country seats.
In 1744, her elder sister, Lady Caroline, eloped with Mr. Henry Fox, to the great displeasure of the Richmonds. “The town,” writes Horace Walpole to his namesake in Florence (May 27th, 1744) “has been in a great bustle about a private match; but which by the ingenuity of the ministry, has been made politics. Mr. Fox fell in love with Lady Caroline Lennox, asked her, was refused, and stole her. His father was a footman;[20] her great grandfather, a king: _hinc illae lacrymae_.”
Footnote 20:
Sir Stephen Fox was said originally to have been a choir-boy in Salisbury Cathedral. He died, after a romantic career, and having held office under four sovereigns—Charles II, James II, King William, and Queen Anne—one of the wealthiest men in England.
It was only after some years, and when the birth of Lady Caroline’s eldest little boy made the struggle between tenderness and pride in her parents’ hearts incline overwhelmingly towards the former, that they consented to a reconciliation. The touching letter which the Duke addresses to his daughter on this occasion has been published by the Princess Liechtenstein in her book on “Holland House” (pp. 68-72), and will be read with interest by all who have learned to like Lord Edward’s maternal grandfather and grandmother, from Horace Walpole’s account of them.
One consequence of Lady Caroline’s runaway marriage was to make the Duke and Duchess of Richmond extra careful about the chaperonage of their second daughter, Lady Emily. Horace Walpole has an amusing story to tell in this connection of a little “set-to” between the Duchess of Richmond and the witty but eccentric Duchess of Queensberry. “There is a very good quarrel on foot between two duchesses: she of Queensberry sent to invite Lady Emily Lennox to a ball: her Grace of Richmond, who is wonderfully cautious since Lady Caroline’s elopement, sent word ‘she could not determine.’ The other sent again the same night: the same answer. The Queensberry then sent word, that she had made up her company, and desired to be excused from having Lady Emily’s; but at the bottom of the card wrote, ‘Too great a trust.’”[21]
Footnote 21:
Letter to Sir Horace Mann, March 29, 1745.
Carefully guarded as Lady Emily might be, the town was soon busy with her name. When Prince Lobkowitz arrived in England in the beginning of 1745 and was observed to pay great attention to the Duke of Richmond’s charming daughter, it was immediately reported that they would make a match of it. The gossip even reached Mrs. Dewes, deep in the provinces, and in reply to a question she puts her sister, Mrs. Delany, about it, the latter gives the accepted version of the story:[22] “You were not quite misinformed about Lady Emily Lennox and Prince Lobkowitz; he _was_ in love with her and made proposals of marriage, but the Emperor would not consent on some foolish reason of State. I never heard that Lady Emily was in any way engaged to him, and everything is agreed on between her and Lord Kildare, and my Lady Kildare is come over for the wedding. Prince Lob. was in England last year.”
Footnote 22:
Letter to Mrs. Dewes, November 7, 1746.
Well informed as Mrs. Delany prided herself on being, it is not to be expected that she would know as much about the matter as Lady Emily herself; and fortunately we have in a letter of the latter’s addressed to her friend, Hon. Anne Hamilton,[23] her version of the incident. As the letter gives a vivid idea of our heroine as a lively girl, of fourteen or fifteen, and of the sort of society in which she moved, it is worth reproducing.
Footnote 23:
Afterwards Countess of Roden. The letters of Lady Emily to Miss Hamilton are in the possession of the Earl of Roden and have been published by the Marquis of Kildare in his “Earls of Kildare,” Second Addenda, 1866, p. 76 _et seq._
“Prince Lobkowitz, who I believe you remember a giddy, good-natured wild young man, as any in the world, was coming to Goodwood, and has had a fall off his horse, so that I fancy he won’t be here this good while; _a propos_ to him I must make you laugh and tell you what the Town says, _he is in love with me_, I very much so with him, but his relatives don’t care he should marry a Protestant, though as he is his own master that would be no objection, but that Papa and Mamma, great as he is, won’t part with me, and besides have other views for me; is not this a pretty story. I assure you ’tis told for certain all over the Town, and several of my friends have told me of it. The truth of the matter is, he is vastly fashionable, and as I happen to speak French and to know most of his acquaintances in Holland, he takes it into his head to talk a good deal to me, and you know in London two people can never talk together a quarter of an hour but they must immediately either be in love or to be married. They say also that the Venetian ambassadrice is in love with him and with rather more truth, for she really behaves very ridiculously about him.[24] As you love these sort of things I must tell you a ridiculous thing enough. Prince Lobkowitz was one night at supper at the Venetian ambassadrice’s and the Prince of Wales sent for him, upon which he went and she was excessively angry with him for leaving her to go; in joking she said since he would go she would keep his hat. Accordingly the next morning she cut the hat into a million of little pieces and sent it to him with her compliments. About a week after he told her a pye which he had promised her had come from Germany, upon which she invited a vast deal of company to dinner, and when she came to open the pye, behold it was the bits of hat which she had sent him. I think it gives one a very good notion of them both.”
Footnote 24:
Some of the pranks of this lady, which created a sensation, even in the irresponsible society of the period, are related with great _verve_ by Horace Walpole.
Very soon after, “the Town” had given her a new suitor—and this time with more reason. As early as April 15th, 1746, Mr. Horace Walpole was able to report to Sir Horace Mann that the Duke of Richmond “has refused his beautiful Lady Emily to Lord Kildare, the richest and first peer of Ireland, on a ridiculous notion of the King’s evil being in the family.” The Earl persisted in his suit, and the Duke’s objections were finally overcome so that by the end of the year we find Lady Emily writing to her friend “Nancy” Hamilton to announce her betrothal. “In short, in order that the whole town of London should not tell a lye, Lord Kildare desires to make them speak truth, and as Papa and Mamma have no objection to it. I am willing to save them from this and heartily wish they would tell no more.” A little after the announcement of the engagement, Mrs. Delany met the beautiful bride-elect at the Prince of Wales’s “Birthday” in Leicester House, and waxes enthusiastic in a letter to her sister, Mrs. Dewes (January 21, 1747), over her loveliness. Even the hideous dress of the moment (“hoops of enormous size and most people wear vast winkers to their heads”), which make other women look like “blown bladders,” could not destroy Lady Emily’s exquisite beauty. “The reigning beauty I think among the young things is Miss Carpenter, Lord Carpenter’s daughter, and since Lady Dysart was fifteen I have never seen anything so handsome; but the prize of beauty is disputed with her by Lady Emily Lennox. She is indeed ‘like some tall stately tower’; the other is ‘some Virgin Queen’s delicious bower!’”
The marriage took place on February 7th, 1747, when the bride was a little over sixteen. Horace Walpole has the record of the event in the chronicle he sends his friend in Florence on February 23rd, 1747. “Lord Kildare is married to the charming Lady Emily Lennox, who went the very next day to see her sister, Lady Caroline Fox, to the great mortification of the haughty Duchess-mother. They have not given her a shilling, but the King endows her by making Lord Kildare a Viscount-Sterling[25] and they talk of giving him a pinchbeck dukedom, too, to keep him always first peer of Ireland.”
Footnote 25:
That is an _English_ viscount, in contrast to the “pinchbeck” of an Irish title.
It was quite true that Lady Kildare (who, in common with the rest of the family, had been forbidden all intercourse with Lady Caroline since the latter had married Mr. Fox in opposition to their parents’ wishes) made immediate use of the liberty conferred by her new position to visit her sister. Lord Kildare and she urged a reconciliation, with more zeal perhaps than discretion. In the letter of the Duke to Lady Caroline to which I have already referred, he complains very bitterly of the tone adopted by the Kildares, “who instead of makeing entreatys, were pleas’d to tell your mother that wee _ought_ to forgive you, and were blamed by the world, and by themselves for not doing it, which is a language I would hear from nobody, and indeed when they saw how it was received, they did not think fit to repeat it. And I assure you my reconcilement to you has been defer’d upon this account, for I will have both them and yourselves know that it proceeds from the tenderness arising in our own breasts for you, and not from their misjudg’d aplication.”
The first few months after the marriage were spent by Lord and Lady Kildare in England and the young wife’s letters to her girl friend are full of bridal happiness. But her “dearest Nanny” is not to think that when she says she is happy, “it is from being her own mistress, doing just what she please, and all the fuss and racket.” “No, believe me, that my happiness, thank God, is upon a better foundation. It is from being marry’d to the person I love best in the world, and who is the best and kindest of husbands.”
James, twentieth Earl of Kildare, was just twenty-five at the time of his marriage, and had succeeded his father, Robert, nineteenth Earl, three years previously. His young Countess might well find him “the best and kindest of husbands,” for he was one of the best and kindest of men, much concerned for the welfare of his people and his country, and taking a serious view of the duties and responsibilities of his great position. He was the leader of the popular party in the Irish House of Lords, and when the corrupt administration under the Duke of Dorset and Primate Stone had become intolerable to the people he took the bold step of presenting a memorial against them to King George II. His brave fight with tyranny and corruption made him the idol of the populace, and on one occasion “he was an entire hour passing through the crowd from Parliament House to Kildare House, and a medal was struck to commemorate the memorial, representing the Earl, sword in hand, guarding a heap of money on a table from a hand which attempted to take it, with the motto, ‘Touch not, says Kildare.’”
By July, 1747, the young Earl and Countess were back in Ireland settled for the moment at Dollardstown. The Dowager Countess and Lady Margot, the Earl’s sister, came on a visit to them, and these with Miss Brudenell, the young Countess’s companion, and a couple of men friends of the Earl’s, make up a party very much to the bride’s taste. “We read, work, write and walk,” she informs her confidante Miss “Nanny.” They are presently to take up residence in Carton, which the Dowager Lady Kildare has given over to her son and his bride, having completed it after her husband’s death and furnished it for the young people from top to bottom—even to “the table linen.” It would be ungrateful of the new Countess—after this generosity on the part of her mother-in-law—to seem indifferent about Carton, but in truth she leaves the simplicity of Dollardstown for the grandeur of Carton with much regret.
A few weeks later we find our young people in residence at Carton, with the elder Lady Kildare and her daughter, Lady Margot, as their guests. The young wife, one gathers, stands a little in awe of her grave, reserved mother-in-law, whose manner “until ye are well acquainted with it, is not very taking.” But she is quite in love with Lady Margot, “whom she [_i.e._ the Dowager] is very strict with.” She is “really charming, and I find I shall grow vastly fond of her. She is vastly lively, very sensible and a very open heart, for she always speaks her mind, and has a very open heart.” In a later letter she makes merry over the compassion she received from those friends who thought it “a very dismal thing for her” to have to leave London—the new London house the Earl had bought for her in Whitehall—“to come with the person in the world I love best, who studies how to please me and make me happy more and more every day, to a very pretty country where I meet with nothing but civilities from everybody, to a whole family who are agreeable and cheerful and vastly fond of me, and to a country where I have a charming house building [Leinster House], a sweet place [Leinster Lodge] which you know I always delight in, and another pretty place [Carton]. Certainly I deserve great compassion for all this.”
While “her charming great house” was a-building, the Earl took a town house for his bride’s first winter in Dublin in Stephen’s Green, and she did the honours of her great position by giving some large parties in it. She enters with great zest into her Lord’s building and improvement schemes. Beautiful Leinster House, perhaps the most perfect creation of Richard Castle’s architectural genius, was nearing its completion, and although her health does not permit her to share her Lord’s weekly visit to Carton, she keeps _au courant_ with all that is being done there. “Lord Kildare has cut down the avenue, which I am sure makes it charming, and has made a very fine lawn before the House, which I think is the greatest beauty a place can have.”
A few weeks after the date of this letter, her first child George, Lord Offaly, was born (January 15th, 1748) and the young mother’s cup of happiness seemed full to overflowing. She was one of those women who have the genius and the passion of maternity, and much of her sweetness was due to this characteristic. During the following years her letters to her friend are full of the pretty children who have followed George into her nursery at quick intervals. William, her second son, afterwards Duke of Leinster, was born in March, 1749, and the Countess’s first little girl arrived in August of the following year. Her friend receives an entertaining account of the small bundle of femininity: “in the first place her name is Caroline Elizabeth Mabel. Caroline after my sister, Elizabeth after the old Lady Kildare in London, and Mabel to please Mr. Fox, who had entertained himself while he was here in reading over old manuscripts and letters belonging to the Kildare family, in which he found there had been a great many Mabels, and therefore begged we would tack it on to the other two, which was done accordingly. And now ye have the history of her name. I will tell you she is in the first place fat and plump, has very fine dark long eyes which I think a great beauty, don’t you? and her nose and mouth like my mother’s, with a peaked chin like me. As for her complexion she is so full of red gum that there is no judging of it, but what is best of all is that she is in perfect health and has been so ever since she was born. But it’s not fair to her brothers to entertain you only about her without mentioning them.” And so we get a charming picture of the two little boys, and incidentally a glimpse of their pretty young nineteen year-old mother in the midst of them: “To begin with George. He is in the first place much improved as to his beauty, but the most entertaining, comical arch little rogue that ever was, chatters incessantly, is immensely fond of me, and coaxes me not a little, for he is cunning enough, very sweet tempered and easily governed by gentle means, in short if I was to sit down and wish for a child it would be just such a sort of boy as he is now. William is a sweet child, too, in a different way, he is not so lively or active as George is by a good deal, but is forward enough both as to his walking and talking, for he says several words and walks quite alone. As for his little person it is fat, round and white as he was when you saw him, and does not improve as to that; he is the best-natured creature that can be, and excessively passionate already, but puts up his mouth to kiss and be friends the very next moment. He is vastly fond of his nurse and does not care twopence for me, so you may imagine I cannot for my life be as fond of him (though in reality I love him as well) as of George, who is always coaxing and kissing me, and does not care for anybody else.”
The poor young mother was to have the great grief of seeing two of these pretty children die young. Lord Offaly died in 1765 at the age of seventeen, and was succeeded as heir, by William. Little Caroline died in 1754 at the age of four. The fatality which, as has been already observed, pursued the large eighteenth-century families, did not spare our beautiful Countess’s. Of the nineteen children (nine sons and ten daughters) she bore her lord during the twenty-six years of their married life there only survived the years of childhood six sons: William, Charles, Henry, Edward, Robert, Gerald; and four daughters: Emily (afterwards Countess of Bellamont), Charlotte (afterwards Baroness Rayleigh), Sophia, and Lucy.
In the meantime, knowing nothing of what the future has in store for her, the Countess is a very happy woman. The improvements at Carton, in which she is so interested, have been a great success, and no wonder she longs to go there and see how “her spotted cows” look on the new lawn from which the Earl has cleared some hedges since she was there last. Did she ever tell her friend of her passion for spotted cows? She believes not: “You have no notion what a delightful beautiful collection of them I have got in a very short time, which indeed is owing to my dear Lord Kildare, who ever since I took this fancy into my head has bought me every pretty cow he saw. It’s really charming to see them grazing on the lawn.”