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In the winter of 1745 the city of Dublin was thrown into a state of high excitement by the appearance of a couple of girls from the wilds of Connaught, whose almost unearthly beauty won the instant homage of every man, from His Excellency the Earl of Harrington, then Lord Lieutenant, to the sourest jarvey who cracked a whip in her streets. To quote the pardonably extravagant language of a chronicler of the time,
"They swam into the social firmament of the Irish capital like twin planets of dazzling splendour, eclipsing all other constellations, as if the pall of night had been drawn over them."
They had grown to girlhood, so the story ran from mouth to mouth, in a ruinous thatched house, in the shadow of Castle Coote, in County Roscommon, and were the daughters of John Gunning, a roystering, happy-go-lucky, dram-drinking squireen, whose most serious occupation in life was keeping the brokers' men on the right side of his door. And at the time this story opens they were living in a cottage, rented for a modest eight pounds a year, on the outskirts of Dublin, with their mother, who was a daughter of Lord Mayo.
To say that all Dublin was at the feet of the Gunning sisters, at the first sight of their lovely faces and dainty figures, is an unadorned statement of fact. The young "bloods" of the capital were their slaves to a man, ready to spill the last drop of blood for them; and every gallant of the Viceregal Court drank toasts to their beauty, and vied with his rivals to win a smile or a word from them. Peg Woffington, it is said, threw up her arms in wonder at the sight of them, and, as she hugged each in turn, declared that she "had never seen anything half so sweet"; and Tom Sheridan went down on his knees in involuntary homage to the majesty of their beauty.
It was Tom Sheridan who placed his stage wardrobe at their disposal when they were invited to the great Viceregal ball in honour of King George's birthday; and, attired as Lady Macbeth and Juliet respectively, they danced the stately minuet and rollicking country dances with such grace and abandon that lords and ladies stopped in their dances, and mounted on chairs and tables to feast their eyes on so rare and ravishing a sight.
"With Betty as with Maria," says Mr Frankfort Moore, "the art of the dance had become part of her nature. Her languorous eyes were in sympathy with the voluptuous movements of her feet and lithe body, and the curves made by her arms formed an invisible chain that held everyone entranced. The caresses of her fingers, the coyness of her curtsies, the allurements of her movements—all the graces and charms inwoven that make up the poem of the minuet—became visible by the art of that exquisite girl, until all other dancers became common-place by comparison."
Such was the fascination of their beauty that, it is said, the sisters were one day drugged by a party of licentious admirers, whose guests they had innocently consented to be, and were actually being carried away by their ravishers when Sheridan, who had got wind of the plot, appeared on the scene with a number of stout-armed friends, and effected their rescue.
But even Dublin was no suitable market for such peerless beauties, Mrs Gunning decided. Through her they had the blood of the Plantagenets in their veins; and no man less than a Duke or an Earl—certainly not an Irish squire or impoverished lord—was a fitting match for her daughters. And so to England and London they were carried, flushed with their conquests, leaving broken hearts behind them, and heralded across the Channel by many a sonnet singing their beauty.
But, although each was equally fair, the sisters were by no means alike in their charms. Maria, all gladness and mirth, was a sprightly brunette, in whose laughing glances shone the fires of a pleasure-seeking soul; while Elizabeth, the younger, with soft blue eyes and dark golden hair, although infinitely more placid, was no less radiant than her dashing sister.
"Each was," to quote another description, "divinely tall, with a figure of perfect symmetry, and a grace of dignity enhanced by the proud poise of the small Grecian head. Faultless also were the rounded arms and the hands, with their long, slender tapering fingers."
All the portraits of Elizabeth reveal the same dainty disdainful lips in the shape of a Cupid's bow, the long, slender nose, the half-drooping lids and lashes. In colouring there was the same delicacy. A soft, ivory pallor shone in her face, a flush of pink warmed her cheeks, there was a gleam of gold as the sunbeams touched her light brown hair.
Such, in the cold medium of type, were the two Irish sisters who took London by storm, and who "made more noise than any of their predecessors since the days of Helen," in the summer of 1751. Their conquest was immediate, electrifying. London raved about the new beauties; they were the theme of every tongue, from the Court to the meanest coffee-house. Even Grub Street rubbed its eyes in amazement at the wonderful vision, and ransacked its dictionaries for superlatives; and the poets, with one accord, struck their lyres to a new inspiration.
Whenever the sisters took their walks abroad "they were beset by a curious multitude, the press being once so great that one of the sisters fainted away and had to be carried home in her chair; while on another occasion their beaux were compelled to draw swords to rescue them from the mob." When, too, they once went to Vauxhall Gardens, they found themselves the centre of a mob of eight thousand spectators, struggling to catch a glimpse of their lovely faces or to touch the "hem of their garments."
When, in alarm, they sought refuge in a neighbouring box, the door was at once besieged by jostling, clamorous thousands, who were only kept at bay by the sword-points of their escort. And when, one day, they visited Hampton Court, the housekeeper showed the company who were "lionising" the place into the room where they were sitting, instead of into the apartment known as the "Beauty Room," with the significant remark, " These are the beauties, gentlemen."
With such universal and embarrassing homage, it is no wonder that all the gallants in town, from the rakish Duke of Cumberland downwards, were at the feet of the fair sisters, or that they had the refusal of many a coronet before they had been many weeks in London. Each sister counted her noble lovers by the score, and each soon capitulated to a favoured wooer.
Among Maria's most ardent suitors was the Earl of Coventry, "a grave young lord" of handsome person and courtly graces, who had singled himself out from them all by the ardour of his wooing; and to him Maria gave her hand. One March day in 1752, the world of fashion was thrown into a high state of excitement by reading the following announcement:—
"On Thursday evening the Earl of Coventry was married to Miss Maria Gunning, a lady possessed of that exquisite beauty and of those accomplishments which will add Grace and Dignity to the highest station. As soon as the ceremony was over they set out for Lord Ashburnham's seat at Charlton, in Kent, to consummate their nuptials."
Of Lady Coventry, who seems to have been as vain and foolish as she was beautiful, many amusing stories are told. So annoyed was her ladyship by the crowds that still followed her when she took the air in St James's Park that she appealed to the King for an escort of soldiers, a favour which was readily granted to "the most beautiful woman in England," Thus, on one occasion, we are told,
"from eight to ten o'clock in the evening, a strange procession paraded the crowded avenues, obliging everyone to make way and exciting universal laughter. In front marched two sergeants with their halberds, then tripped the self-conscious Lady Coventry, attended by her husband and an ardent admirer, the amorous Earl of Pembroke, while twelve soldiers of the guard followed in the rear!"
One day, so runs another story which illustrates her ladyship's lack of discretion, she was talking to King George II., who in spite of his age, was a great admirer of beauty, and especially of my Lady Coventry. "Are you not sorry," His Majesty enquired, "that there are to be no more masquerades?" "Indeed, no," was the answer. "I am quite weary of them and of all London sights. There is only one left that I am really anxious to see, and that is a coronation !" This unflattering wish she was not destined to realise; for King George survived the foolish beauty by a fortnight.
Lady Coventry had no greater admirer of her own charms than herself. She spent her days worshipping at the shrine of her loveliness, and embellished nature with every device of art. She squandered fortunes in adorning it with the most costly jewellery and dresses, of one of which the following story is told. One day she exhibited to George Selwyn a wonderful costume which she was going to wear at an approaching fête. The dress was a miracle of blue silk, richly brocaded with silver spots of the size of a shilling. "And how do you think I shall look in it, Mr Selwyn?" she archly asked. "Why," he replied, "you will look like change for a guinea."
Mrs Delany draws a remarkable picture of my lady at this culminating period of her vanity.
"Yesterday after chapel," she writes, "the Duchess brought home Lady Coventry to feast me—and a feast she was! She is a fine figure and vastly handsome, notwithstanding a silly look sometimes about the month; she has a thousand airs, but with a sort of innocence that diverts one! Her dress was a black silk sack, made for a large hoop, which she wore without any, and it trailed a yard on the ground. She had on a cobweb-laced handkerchief, a pink satin long cloak, lined with ermine mixed with squirrel-skins. On her head a French cap that just covered the top of her head, of blond, and stood in the form of a butterfly with wings not quite extended; frilled sort of lappets crossed under her chin, and tied with pink and green ribbon—a head-dress that would have charmed a shepherd! She had a thousand dimples and prettinesses in her cheeks, her eyes a little drooping at the corners, but fine for all that."
Such vanities may be pardoned in a woman so lovely and so spoiled by Fortune, especially as her reign was fated to be as brief as it was splendid. She was, perhaps, too fair a flower to be allowed to bloom long in the garden of this world. Before she had been long a bride consumption sowed its deadly seeds in her; and she drained the cup of pleasure with the fatal sword hanging over her head. She knew she was doomed, that all the medical skill in the world could not save her; and, with characteristic courage, she determined to enjoy life to its last dregs.
She saw her beauty fade daily, and pathetically tried to conceal its decay by powders and paints. She grew daily weaker; but, with a brave smile, held her place in the vortex of gaiety. Even when the inevitable end was near she insisted on attending the trial of Lord Ferrers for the murder of his steward. As Horace Walpole says,
"The seats of the Peeresses were not nearly full, and most of the beauties were absent; but, to the amazement of everybody, Lady Coventry was there, and, what surprised me more, looked as well as ever. I sat next but one to her, and should not have asked her if she had been ill, yet they are positive she has few weeks to live. She was observed to be 'acting over all the old comedy of eyes' with her former flame, Lord Bolingbroke, an unscrupulous rake, who seems to have striven for years to make her the victim of his passion."
Her conduct, indeed, seems never to have been very discreet.
"Her levities," says a chronicler of the time, "were very publicly talked of, and some gallantries were ascribed to her which were greatly believed. However, they were never brought home to her; and, if she were guilty, she escaped with only a little private scandal, which generally falls to the lot of every woman of uncommon beauty who is envied by the rest of her sex."
During the summer of 1760 the unhappy lady lay at the point of death, in her stately home at Croome Court, bravely awaiting the end.
"Until the last few days," says Mr Horace Bleackley, "the pretty Countess lay upon a sofa, with a mirror in her hand, gazing with yearning eyes upon the reflection of her fading charms. To the end her ruling passion was unchanged; for when she perceived that her beauty had vanished she asked to be carried to bed, and called for the room to be darkened and the curtains drawn, permitting none to look upon her pallid face and sunken cheeks."
Thus, robbed of all that had made life worth living, and bitterly realising the vanity of beauty, Lady Coventry drew her last breath on October 1st 1760. Ten days later, ten thousand persons paid their last homage to her in Pirton churchyard.
Three weeks before Maria Gunning blossomed into a Countess her younger sister Betty had been led to the altar under much more romantic conditions, after one of the most rapid and impetuous wooings in the annals of Love. A few weeks before she wore her wedding-ring, the man who was to win her was not even known to her by sight; and what she had heard of him was by no means calculated to impress her in his favour. The Duke of Hamilton, while still young, had won for himself a very unenviable notoriety as a debauchee in an age of profligacy. He had drunk deep of every cup of questionable pleasure; and at an age when he should have been in the very prime of his manhood, he was a physical wreck, his vitality drained almost to its last drop by shameful excesses.
Such was the man who entered the lists against a legion of formidable rivals for the guerdon of Betty Gunning's hand. It was at a masquerade that he first seems to have set eyes on her; and at sight of her this jaded, worn devotee of pleasure fell headlong in love. Within an hour of being introduced he was, Walpole says,
"making violent love to her at one end of the room, in my Lord Chesterfield's house, while he was playing at pharaoh at the other; that is, he neither saw the bank nor his own cards, which were of £300 each. He soon lost a thousand."
Such was the first meeting of the lovely Irish girl, and the man whom she was to marry—a man who, even in the thraldom of a violent love, could not refrain from indulging his passion for gambling. So inflamed was he by this new beauty who had crossed his path that, to quote our entertaining gossip again,
"two nights afterwards, being left alone with her, while her mother and sister were at Bedford House, he found himself so infatuated that he sent for a parson. The doctor refused to perform the ceremony without licence or ring—the Duke swore he would send for the Archbishop. At last they were married with the ring of the bed-curtain, at half an hour after twelve at night, at Mayfair Chapel. The Scotch are enraged, the women mad that so much beauty has had its effect."
If the wooing be happy that is not long in doing, the new Duchess should have been a very enviable woman; as no doubt she was, for she had achieved a splendid match; the daughter of the penniless Irish squireen had won, in a few days, rank and riches, which many an Earl's daughter would have been proud to capture; and, although her Ducal husband was "debauched, and damaged in his fortune and his person," he was her very slave, and, as far as possible to such a man, did his best to make her happy.
Translated to a new world of splendour the Irish girl seems to have borne herself with astonishing dignity and modesty. She might, indeed, have been cradled in a Duke's palace, instead of in a "dilapidated farmhouse in the wilds of Ireland," so naturally did she take to her new rôle . When Her Grace, wearing her Duchess's coronet, made her curtsy to the King one March day in 1752,
"the crowd was so great, that even the noble mob in the drawing-room clambered upon tables and chairs to look at her. There are mobs at the doors to see her get into her chair; and people go early to get places at the theatre when it is known that she will be there."
A few weeks after the marriage, the Duke of Hamilton conducted his bride to the home of his ancestors; and never perhaps has any but a Royal bride made such a splendid progress to her future home. Along the entire route from London to Scotland she was greeted with cheering crowds struggling to catch a glimpse of the famous beauty, whose romantic story had stirred even the least sentimental to sympathy and curiosity. When they stopped one night at a Yorkshire inn, "seven hundred people," we are told, "sat up all night in and about the house merely to see the Duchess get into her post-chaise the next morning."
Arrived at her husband's Highland Castle she was received with honours that might almost have embarrassed a Queen, and which must have seemed strange indeed to the woman whose memories of sordid life in that small cottage on the outskirts of Dublin were still so vivid. Indeed no Queen could have led a more stately life than was now opened to her.
"The Duke of Hamilton," says Walpole, to whom the world is indebted for so much that it knows of the Gunning sisters, "is the abstract of Scotch pride. He and the Duchess, at their own house, walk into dinner before their company, sit together at the upper end of their own table, eat off the same plate, and drink to nobody under the rank of an Earl. Would not indeed," the genial old chatterbox adds, "one wonder how they could get anybody, either above or below that rank, to dine with them at all? It is, indeed, a marvel how such a host could find guests of any degree sufficiently wanting in self-respect to sit at his table and endure his pompous insolence—the insolence of an innately vulgar mind, which, unhappily, is sometimes to be met even in the most exalted rank of life."
Perhaps the proudest period in Duchess Betty's romantic life was when, with her husband, the Duke, she paid a visit, in 1755, to Dublin, the "dear, dirty" city she had known in the days of her poverty and obscurity, when her greatest dread was the sight of a bailiff in the house, and her highest ambition to procure a dress to display her budding charms at a dance. Her stay in Dublin was one long, intoxicating triumph. "No Queen," she said, "could have been more handsomely treated." Wherever she went she was followed by mobs, fighting to get a glimpse of her, or to touch the hem of her gown, and blissful if they could win a smile from the "darlint Duchess" who had brought so much glory to old Ireland.
Her wedded life, however, was destined to be brief. Her husband had one foot in his premature grave when he put the curtain-ring on her finger; but, beyond all doubt, his marriage gave him a new if short lease of life. She became a widow in 1758; and before she had worn her weeds three months she had a swarm of suitors buzzing round her. The Duke of Bridgewater was among the first to fall on his knees before the fascinating widow, who, everybody now vowed, was lovelier than ever; but he proved too exacting in his demands to please Her Grace. In fact, the only one of all her new wooers on whom she could smile was Colonel John Campbell, who, although a commoner, would one day blossom into a Duke of Argyll; and she gave her hand to "handsome Jack" within twelve months of weeping over the grave of her first husband.
"It was a match," Walpole says, "that would not disgrace Arcadia. Her beauty had made enough sensation, and in some people's eyes is even improved. She has a most pleasing person, countenance and manner; and if they could but carry to Scotland some of our sultry English weather, they might restore the ancient pastoral life, when fair kings and queens reigned at once over their subjects and their sheep."
It was under such Arcadian conditions that Betty Gunning began her second venture in matrimony, which proved as happy as its promise. Probably the eleven years which the Dowager-Duchess had to wait for her next coronet were the happiest of her life; and when at last Colonel Jack became fifth Duke of Argyll she was able to resume the life of stately splendour which had been hers with her first Duke. By this time her beauty had begun to show signs of fading.
"As she is not quite so charming as she was," says Walpole, "I do not know whether it is not better to change her title than to retain that which puts one in mind of her beauty."
But what she may have lost in physical charms she had gained in social prestige. She was appointed Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen Charlotte; and was one of the three ladies who acted as escort to the Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz to the arms of her reluctant husband, George III. It is said that when the young German bride came in sight of the palace of her future husband, she turned pale and showed such signs of terror as to force a smile from the Duchess who sat by her side. Upon which the frightened young Princess remarked, "My dear Duchess, you may laugh, for you have been married twice; but it is no joke for me." Her life as Lady of the Bedchamber appears to have been by no means a bed of roses, for Charlotte proved so jealous of the attentions paid to the beautiful Duchess by her husband, the King, that at one time she contemplated resigning her post. The letter of resignation was actually written and despatched; but Her Grace, who did not approve altogether of its language, added this naive postscript before sending it, "Though I wrote the letter, it was the Duke who dictated it."
Boswell, when describing a visit he paid to Inverary Castle, in Johnson's company, gives us no very favourable impression of the Duchess's courtesy as hostess. When the Duke conducted him to the drawing-room and announced his name,
"the Duchess," he says, "who was sitting with her daughter and some other ladies, took not the least notice of me. I should have been mortified at being thus coldly received by a lady of whom I, with the rest of the world, have always entertained a very high admiration, had I not been consoled by the obliging attention of the Duke."
During dinner, when Boswell ventured to drink Her Grace's good health, she seems equally to have ignored him. And while paying the utmost deference and attention to Johnson, the only remark she deigned to make to his fellow-guest was a contemptuous "I fancy you must be a Methodist." In fairness to the Duchess it should be said that Boswell had incurred her grave displeasure by taking part against her in the famous Douglas Case in which she was deeply interested; and this was no doubt the reason why for once she forgot the elementary demands of hospitality as well as the courtesy due to her rank; and why, when Johnson mentioned his companion by name, she answered coldly, "I know nothing of Mr Boswell."
The Duchess saw her daughter, Lady Betty Hamilton, wedded to Lord Stanley, the future Earl of Derby, a union in which she paid by a life of misery for her mother's scheming ambition; and died in 1790, thirty years after her sister Maria drew the last breath of her short life behind drawn bed-curtains in her darkened room.
To Betty Gunning, the squireen's daughter, fell the unique distinction of marrying two dukes, refusing a third, and becoming the mother of four others, two of whom were successive Dukes of Hamilton, and two of Argyll.