Part 3 (1/2)
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 Devons.h.i.+re, Duncannon, and Lavinia. In an autobiography by the third Earl, he navely 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.
[Ill.u.s.tration: ELIZABETH, d.u.c.h.eSS 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 n.o.bility, 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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 t.i.tle 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 b.e.l.l.e.n.den, daughter of John, Lord b.e.l.l.e.n.den,--
”Smiling Mary, soft and fair as down.”
She is mentioned otherwise as by Gay:--
”b.e.l.l.e.n.den 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 surpa.s.singly 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 d.u.c.h.ess, _you_ may laugh at me, but _you_ have been married twice,” said the Princess. The d.u.c.h.ess 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.