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If ever woman was born to romance it was surely the Lady Sarah Lennox, whose beauty and witchery nearly won for her a crown as England's Queen a a century and a half ago; and who, after ostracising herself from Society by a flagrant lapse from virtue, lived to become the mother of heroes, and to end her days in blindness and a tragic loneliness.
There was both passion and a love of adventure in the Lady Sarah's blood; for had she not for great-grandfather that most fascinating and philandering of monarchs, the second Charles; and for great-grandmother, the lovely and frail Louise Renée de Querouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth, the most seductive of the beautiful trio of women—the Duchesses of Portsmouth, Morland, and Mazarin—who spent their days in "open dalliance" with the "Merrie Monarch," and their nights at the basset-table, winning or losing guineas by the thousand.
As an infant, too, she drank in romance from her mother's breast—the mother whose marriage is surely the most romantic in the annals of our Peerage. One day, so the story runs, the Duke of Richmond, when playing cards with the first Earl of Cadogan, staked the hand and fortune of his heir, the Earl of March, on the issue of the game, which was won by Lord Cadogan. On the following day the debt of honour was paid. The youthful Earl was sent for from his school, Cadogan's daughter from the nursery; a clergyman was in attendance, and the two children were told they were immediately to be made husband and wife.
At sight of the plain, awkward, shrinking girl who was to be his bride the handsome school-boy exclaimed in disgust, "You are surely not going to marry me to that dowdy!" But there was no escape; the demands of "honour" must be satisfied. The ceremony was quickly performed; and within an hour of first setting eyes on each other, the children were separated—Lord March being whisked back to his school-books, and his bride to her nursery toys.
Many years later Lord March returned to London after a prolonged tour round the world—a strikingly handsome, cultured young man, by no means eager to renew his acquaintance with the "ugly duckling" who was his wife. One evening when he was at the opera his eyes were drawn to a vision of rare girlish loveliness in one of the boxes. He had seen no sight so fair in all his wide travels; it fascinated him as beauty never yet had had power to do.
Turning to a neighbour he asked who the lovely girl was. "You must indeed be a stranger to London," was the answer, "if you do not know the beautiful Lady March, the toast of the town!" Lady March! Could that exquisite flower of young womanhood be the ugly, awkward girl he had married so strangely as a boy? Impossible! He proceeded to the box, introduced himself, and found to his delight that the beautiful girl was indeed none other than Lady March, whom he had every right to claim as his wife. A few too brief years of happy wedded life followed; and when the Earl died in the prime of manhood his Countess, unable to live without him, began to droop and, within a few months, followed him to the grave.
Such was the singular romance to which Lady Sarah Lennox owed her being, a romance which was to have a parallel in her own life. As a child in the nursery she gave promise of charms at least as great as those of her mother. And she was as merry and full of mischief as she was beautiful.
One day (it is her son who tells the story) she was walking with her nurse and her aunt, Lady Louisa Conolly, in Kensington Gardens, when George II. chanced to stroll by. Breaking away from her guardian the pretty little madcap ran up to the King and exclaimed in French: "How do you do, Mr King? You have a beautiful house here, n'est-ce pas ?" George was so delighted with the child's naïveté that he took her up in his arms, gave her a hearty kiss, and would not release her until she had promised to come and see him.
And how the King and his "little sweetheart," as he called her, enjoyed these visits! and the merry romps they had together!
"On one occasion," says Captain Napier (Lady Sarah's son of much later days), "after a romp with my mother, the King suddenly snatched her up in his arms, and, after squeezing her in a large china jar, shut down the cover to prove her courage; but soon released her when he found that the only effect was to make her, with a merry voice, begin singing the French song of Malbruc, with which he was quite delighted."
But these happy days of romping with a King came too soon to an end. On her mother's death Lady Sarah, then only five years old, was carried off to Ireland, to the home of Lady Kildare. There she remained for eight years, when she returned to England and the guardianship of her eldest sister, Lady Holland. As soon as George heard of the return of his little playmate he sent for her, hoping to resume the romps of early years. But Lady Sarah, though prettier than ever, proved so shy and so embarrassed by the King's familiarities that at last he exclaimed in disgust: "Pooh! she has grown too stupid!"
But if Lady Sarah's shyness had cost her the King's favour, her beauty and girlish grace quickly won for her another Royal friend—none other than George's grandson and heir to the throne, then a handsome boy little older than herself, and at least equally diffident. Every time the young Prince saw her he became more and more her slave, until his conquest was complete. He was only happy by her side; while she found her dogs and squirrels more entertaining company than the King-to-be.
Lady Sarah was now blossoming into young womanhood. Every year added some fresh touch of beauty and grace. She was the pet and idol of the Court, captivating young and old alike by her charms and winsomeness. Horace Walpole raved about her. When she took part in a play at Holland House, of which he was a spectator, he wrote:
"Lady Sarah was more beautiful than you can conceive.... When she was in white, with her hair about her ears and on the ground, no Magdalen by Correggio was half so lovely and so expressive."
And Lord Holland, her brother-in-law, draws this alluring picture of her:
"Her beauty is not easily described otherwise than by saying she had the finest complexion, most beautiful hair, and prettiest person that was ever seen, with a sprightly and fine air, a pretty mouth, and remarkably fine teeth, and excess of bloom in her cheeks."
Although the Prince's passion for her was patent to all the Court, she seems either not to have seen it or to have been indifferent to it—an indifference which naturally only served to feed the flames of his love. One day shortly after he had succeeded to the throne, George, the shyest of Royal lovers, determined to unbosom himself to Lady Sarah's friend, Lady Susan Strangways, since he could not summon up courage to declare his passion to the lady herself. After turning the conversation to the Coronation, "Ah!" he exclaimed with a sigh, "there will be no Coronation until there is a Queen." "But why, sir?" asked Lady Susan in surprise. "They want me to have a foreign Queen," George answered, "but I prefer an English one; and I think your friend is the fittest person in the world to be my Queen. Tell her so from me, will you?"
A few days later when the King met Lady Sarah, he asked: "Has your friend given you my message?" "Yes, sir." "And what do you think of it? Pray tell me frankly; for on your answer all my happiness depends. What do you think of it?" "Nothing, sir," Lady Sarah answered demurely, with downcast eyes. "Pooh!" exclaimed the King, as he turned away in dudgeon, "nothing comes of nothing."
Thus foolishly Lady Sarah turned her back on a throne, which there is small doubt might have been hers for a word. Why that word was not spoken will always remain a mystery. It was said that her heart had already been won by Lord Newbattle, a handsome young gallant of the Court; but what was taken for a conquest seems to have been but a passing flirtation. How little Lord Newbattle's heart was involved was shortly proved when, on learning that Lady Sarah had been thrown from her horse and had broken her leg, he made the heartless remark, "That will do no great harm, for her legs were ugly enough before!"
The news of this accident, however, had a very different effect on the young King, who was consumed with anxiety about the girl he still loved passionately, in spite of her coldness. He promptly sent the Court surgeon to attend to her; kept couriers constantly travelling to and fro to bring the latest bulletins, and knew no peace until she was restored to health again. When at last she was able to return to London he was unremitting in his attentions to her. He was never happy apart from her; and, in fact, his intentions became so marked that his mother, the Princess-Dowager, and the ministers were reduced to despair.
Secret orders were given that the young people were never to be allowed to be together. The Princess, indeed, carried her interference to the extent of breaking in on their conferences, and rudely laughing in Lady Sarah's face as she led her son away. "I felt many a time," the insulted girl said in later years, "that I should have loved to box her ears." But Lady Sarah, who seems at last to have awakened to the attractions of the alliance offered to her, was not the girl to sit down tamely under such interference with her liberty. Her spirit was aroused, and she brought all her arts of coquetry to her aid.
If she could not see the King at Court she would see him elsewhere. When George took his daily ride he was sure to meet or overtake Lady Sarah, attired in some bewitching costume; or to see her daintily plying her rake among the haymakers in the meadows of Holland House, a picture of rustic beauty well-calculated to make his conquest more complete.
Once, it is said, when she had not seen her Royal lover for some days she even disguised herself as a servant and intercepted him in one of the corridors of the Palace. The coy and cold maiden who had told the King that she "thought nothing" of his advances, had developed into the veriest coquette who ever set her heart on winning a man. Such is the strange waywardness of woman; and by such revolutions she often courts her own defeat.
That King George still remained as infatuated as ever is quite probable. Had it been possible for him to have his own way, Lady Sarah Lennox might still have won a crown as Queen of England. But the forces arrayed against him were too strong for so pliant a monarch. In a weak moment, despairing of winning the girl he loved, he had placed his matrimonial fate unreservedly in the hands of the Privy Council; and from this surrender of his liberty there was no escape.
Colonel Graeme had been despatched to every Court on the Continent, in quest of a suitable bride for him; and his verdict had been given in favour of Charlotte Sophia, the unattractive daughter of the Duke of Mecklenburg Strelitz. The die was cast; and George, just when happiness was within his reach, was obliged to bury the one romance of his young life and to sacrifice himself to duty and his Royal word. To Lady Sarah the news of the arranged marriage was no doubt a severe blow—to her vanity, if not to her heart. It was a "bolt from the blue," for which she was not prepared. But she was too proud to show her wounds.
"I shall take care," she wrote to her friend, Lady Susan, on the very day on which the blow fell, "I shall take care to show that I am not mortified to anybody; but if it is true that one can vex anybody with a reserved, cold manner, he shall have it, I promise him. Now as to what I wish about it myself, excepting this little message, I have almost forgiven him. Luckily for me I did not love him, and only liked, nor did the title weigh with me. So little, at least, that my disappointment did not affect my spirits more than an hour or two, I believe. I did not cry, I assure you, which I believe you will, as I know you were more set on it than I was. The thing I am most angry at is looking so like a fool, as I shall, for having gone so often for nothing, but I don't much care. If he was to change his mind again (which can't be, tho') and not give me a very good reason for his conduct, I would not have him; for if he is so weak as to be governed by everybody, I shall have but a bad time of it."
A few days later, the Royal betrothal was made public. At the wedding Lady Sarah tasted the first fruits of revenge, when she was by common consent, the most lovely of the ten beautiful bridesmaids who, in robes of white velvet and silver and with diamond-crowned heads, formed the retinue of George's homely little bride. During the ceremony George had no eyes for any but the vision of peerless beauty he had lost, who, compared with his ill-favoured bride, was "as a queenly lily to a dandelion."
The ceremony was marked by a dramatic incident which crowned Lady Sarah's revenge, and of which her son tells the following story. Among the courtiers assembled to pay homage to the new Queen was the half-blind Lord Westmorland, one of the Pretender's most devoted adherents.
"Passing along the line of ladies, and seeing but dimly, he mistook my mother for the Queen, plumped down on his knees and took her hand to kiss. She drew back startled, and deeply colouring, exclaimed, 'I am not the Queen, sir.' The incident created a laugh and a little gossip; and when George Selwyn heard of it he observed, 'Oh! you know he always loved Pretenders.'"
But if Lady Sarah had lost a crown there was still left a dazzling array of coronets, any one of which was hers for the taking. Her beauty which was now in full and exquisite flower drew noble wooers to her feet by the score; but to one and all—including, as Walpole records, Lord Errol—she turned a deaf ear. Picture then the amazement of the world of fashion when, within a year of refusing a Queendom, she became the bride of a mere Baronet—Sir Thomas Bunbury, who had barely reached his majority, and who, although he was already a full-blown Member of Parliament and of some note on the Turf, was scarcely known in the circles in which Lady Sarah shone so brilliantly.
More disconcerting still, Lady Sarah was avowedly happy with her baronet-husband.
"And who the d——," she wrote to her bosom-friend, Lady Susan, "would not be happy with a pretty place, a good house, good horses, greyhounds for hunting, so near Newmarket, what company we please in the house, and £2,000 a year to spend? Pray now, where is the wretch who would not be happy?"
And no doubt she was happy, with her dogs and horses, her peacocks and silver-pheasants, and her genial sport-loving husband who simply idolised her. Even after five years of this rustic life she wrote to Lady Susan, who was now also a wife:
"Good husbands are not so common, at least I see none like my own and your description of yours, from which I reckon that we are the two luckiest women living. As for me, I should be a monster of ingratitude if I ever made a single complaint and did not thank God for making me the happiest of beings."
It was fortunate that she had an idolatrous husband; for even in Arcadia she could not, or would not, keep her coquetry within decent bounds. She flirted outrageously with the neighbouring squires and with such men of rank as drifted her way; but the baronet saw no cause for alarm or resentment. He was frankly delighted that his wife had so many admirers. He basked genially in the reflected glory of his wife's conquests!
And Lady Sarah might have lived and died the baronet's adored wife had not Lord William Gordon crossed her path. Lord William was young, handsome, full of romance, a dangerous rival to the bucolic and stolid baronet, under whose unobservant eyes he carried on an open flirtation with his wife. Before Lady Sarah realised her danger, she had drifted into a liaison with the handsome Scot, which could only have one termination. One morning in February 1769 Sir Thomas awoke to find his nest empty. Lady Sarah had flown, and Lord William with her.
Then followed for Lady Sarah a brief period of fearful joy, of intoxicating passion. Far away near the Scottish border she and her lover spent halcyon days together. Their favourite walk by the banks of the Leader is known to-day as the "Lovers' Walk." It was a foolish paradise in which they were living, and a rude awaking was inevitable. After three months of bliss Lord William's family brought such pressure to bear on him that the lovers were compelled to separate—he to travel abroad, she to find a refuge from her shame under the roof of her brother, Charles, Duke of Richmond, at Goodwood, where, with her child (but not Sir Thomas Bunbury's), she spent a dozen years in penitence and isolation.
The life which had dawned so fairly seemed to be finally merged in night. Her betrayed husband had procured a divorce; and although he was chivalry itself in his forgiveness of and kindness to her, she realised that there was no hope of reunion with him. Days of weeping, nights of remorse, were her portion. But though she little dared to hope it, bright days were still in store for her—a happy and honourable wifehood, and the pride and blessing of children to rise up to do her honour.
It was the coming of the Hon. George Napier, an old Army friend of her brother, that heralded the new dawn for her darkened life. There were few handsomer men in England than this tall, stalwart son of the sixth Lord Napier, who is described as "faultless in figure and features." When he met Lady Sarah, under the roof of his old friend, her brother, he was still mourning the wife whom he had recently buried in New York; but the sight of such suffering and beauty allied touched a heart which he had thought dead to passion. That she was as poor as he was, and many years older mattered nothing to him. He soon realised that his only hope of happiness lay in winning her. In vain the lady protested that she was not fit to be his wife.
"He knows," she wrote to Lady Susan, "I do love him; and being certain of that, he laughs at every objection that is started, for he says that, loving me to the degrees he does, he is quite sure never to repent marrying me."
Lady Sarah's family put every possible obstacle in the way of the proposed union, but the masterful soldier had his way; and one August day in 1781 Captain Napier led his tarnished but loved and loving bride to the altar. For many years poverty was their lot; but they laughed at their empty purse and found their reward in mutual devotion and the sight of their children growing in strength and beauty by their side. Of their five sons, three won laurels on many battlefields and died generals; one of the trio was the famous conqueror of Scinde, another was the historian of the Peninsular War.
When, after twenty-three years of ideally happy life together, Colonel Napier (as he had become) died, his widow was disconsolate.
"How I wish I could go with him," she wrote; "the gentlest, bravest man who ever brought sunshine and solace into a woman's darkened heart."
But Lady Sarah was destined to walk life's path alone for nearly twenty years longer, finding her only comfort in watching the careers of her gallant boys.
To add to her misfortunes her last days were spent in darkness. The eyes that had melted with love and sparkled with mischief, could no longer even look on the sons she loved.
A pathetic story is told of these last clouded days of Lady Sarah's life. In the year 1814, when, although an old woman she had still twelve years to live, she was present at a sermon preached by the Dean of Canterbury in aid of an Infirmary for the cure of diseases of the eye. As the preacher drew a pathetic picture of King George, a liberal patron of the Infirmary, spending his days in darkness among the splendours of his palace, tears were seen to stream down Lady Sarah's cheeks, until, overcome by emotion, she asked her attendant to lead her out of the church.
Who shall say what sad and tender memories were evoked by this picture of her lover of fifty years earlier, in his darkness and isolation, shut out like herself by a dark barrier from the joy and light of life. Among the mental pictures that thronged her brain was, probably, that of a dainty maiden, rake in hand, glancing archly from under her bonnet at a gallant young Prince, whose eyes spoke love to hers as he rode lingeringly by; and that other picture of the same maid, with downcast eyes, declaring that she "thought nothing" of her Royal lover's vows, though they carried a crown with them.