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Cornell university:
LIBRARIES ITHACA. N. Y. 14853
JOHN M. OUN
LIBRAEY
Cornell University Library
NC242.B37 E73
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Lady Diana Beauclerk, her life and her w
3 1924 030 664 076 olln Overs
The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library.
There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text.
http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924030664076
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK
HER LIFE AND WORK
BACCHANALS.
From a water-colour drawing by Lady Diana Beauclerk By kind permission of Colonel Lascelles.
LADYDIANA BEAUCLERK
HER LIFE AND WORK
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To
Mr. Walter Shaw- Sparrow
Woolbeding Collection.
Shepherdess,
PREFACE.
AME," says Doctor Johnson, " is a shuttlecock. If it be struck only at one end of the room, it will soon fall to the ground " 5 a saying which is peculiarly applicable to Lady Diana Beauclerk's reputation
F
as an artist.
She was admired and feted by contemporaries, but in these days her work — although some few specimens of it have been always recognised by connoisseurs — has been suffered as a whole to remain without praise or blame and
vii
PREFACE.
consequently without recognition. The shuttlecock of fame, after being tossed sky-high, has certainly fallen in a dusty corner and has been forgotten.
No apology is needed for presenting to the public this volume containing her published and unpublished work, now for the first time collected together, but some few words may not be out of place to explain the shortcomings and omissions in the accompanying Memoir.
It is in no sense a complete life of the artist, or a complete account of her work. Lady Diana left no note- book or diary, she seems to have destroyed all letters and the only material available was to be found scattered over the literature of the day. The Memoir, in such a case, is at best but a patchwork affair and is only offered in the hope that it may present some picture, however dim and unsatisfactory, of this brilliant and accomplished woman, of the people with whom she was associated and of the environment in which she lived.
I should like to express my thanks to those who have so kindly helped me in this undertaking, especially to Count Emil Jenison of Walworth, for allowing me to use the interesting letters which were privately printed in
viii
PREFACE.
Heidelberg, to Colonel Lascelles of Woolbeding, for access to his interesting collection of drawings, to the Duke of Marlborough, the Duchess of St. Albans, the Lady Amelius Beauclerk, the Earl of Pembroke and the Earl of Nor- man ton, for permission to reproduce pictures in their possession ; to Mr. Algernon Graves and to Mr. F. Rath- bone for kind assistance and to the Dowager Countess of Charlemont for leave to supply some omissions in the
Charlemont letters.
BEATRICE ERSKINE.
Woolbeding collection.
Children and Donkey.
IX
b
From the Hollatid House Collection.
By kind permission of the Earl of Ilchester.
Cupids Sporting.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
PREFACE vii
CHAPTER I I
CHAPTER II 17
CHAPTER III 28
CHAPTER IV 42
CHAPTER V. . . . 55
CHAPTER VI 73
CHAPTER VII 90
CHAPTER VIII 107
CHAPTER IX 119
CHAPTER X 143
CHAPTER XI 156
CHAPTER XII 167
CHAPTER XIII 182
CHAPTER XIV 198
xi b 2
CONTENTS.
PAGE
CHAPTER XV 213
CHAPTER XVI 229
CHAPTER XVII 241
LETTERS FROM LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK TO HER DAUGHTER, COUNTESS JENISON OF V^ALWORTH,
FROM 1797 TO 1807 261
INDEX 311
By kM p,rmtsswn of Coh,,,! I.a!»tl„.
Cupids with Dove.
XI I
From the Holland House Collection.
Cupids Sporting.
By Mind permission of the Earl q/' Ilchester
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PLATES.
Bacchanals. (Coloured Photogravure.) ....
Bacchanals. (In Colour.) . . . . . . .
Frederick, Second Viscount Bolingbroke, after Sir
Joshua Reynolds. (Photogravure.) ....
Cupid and Psyche. (In Colour.) . . ...
Infant Pan. (In Colour.) ......
Design for a Ceiling. (In Colour.) . . . .
Lady Herbert and her Children (.?). Cupids. (In Colour.) ......
Lord Robert Spencer, after Sir Joshua Reynolds.
Engraving.) ......
Horses. (In Colour.) .....
(In Colour.) . (Steel
Frontispiece To face page i
To face page 1 7
To face page 28
To face page 55
To face page 90
To face page 107
To face page 119
To face page 198 To face page 261
WITH TEXT.
PAGE
Shepherdess ............ vii
Children and Donkey ......... .ix
Cupids Sporting ........••• xi
Cupids with Dove ........••• xii
Cupids Sporting ........••■ xiii
Children with Basket .....•••■• xvi
xiii
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
Headpiece to "Palamon and Arcite." Book I. . . . . i
Bacchus' Favorite ,....•■••• 3
Cupids .....•••••••• 5
Portrait of Lady Diana Spencer (artist unknown) ... 7
Bacchus and Infant Pans ...•••••• 9
Pastel Study of a Baby Asleep ,..•••• 12
Pastel Study of a Child (after Rubens) 13
Portrait of Lady Diana Spencer (by herself) 15
Boy and Dog ....•••■••• ^°
Headpiece to " Sigismonda and Guiscardo" . . . • • 17
Nymph and Cupid ....•••■••• '9
Duchesse de Grammont (after Sir Peter Lely) 21
Girl Netting ....••••••• 25
Child and Squirrel ....•••••• 27
Headpiece to "Palamon and Arcite." Book IL .... 28
Girl with Infant Fauns .....•••• 29
Shepherd and Shepherdess .....•••• 4^
Headpiece to " Leonore " ........ 42
Sketch of Lady Herbert ......... 44
Cupids .........••• 4^
Viscountess Bolingbroke (after Sir Joshua Reynolds) . . . . 51
The Milkmaid ........... 53
Cupid Hiding ........... 54
Headpiece to "The Flower and the Leaf" .... 55
The Honble. George St. John, afterwards Third Viscount
Bolingbroke, WITH George Selwyn's Dog "Raton" . • ■ 57
The Spent Arrow .......... 61
Bacchus and Cupids Sporting . . . . . . . . 63
Child ............. 67
Boy-Bacchanals ........... 69
Baby Fauns ........... 72
Tailpiece to "Theodore and Honoria" . . . . • • 73
Portrait of Topham Beauclerk (after F. Cotes, R.A.) ... 74
Bacchus' Delight ........... 77
Infant Pan ........... 81
Venus ............. 83
Landscape ............ 87
Little Gipsy ............ 89
Tailpiece to the "Cock and the Fox" ...... 90
Portrait of Lady Diana Beauclerk (artist unknown) . . . 91
Hawking Party .......... 97
xiv
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
Nymphs and Fauns loi
School-children .......... 103
Cupids Gardening ........... 106
Headpiece to " Leonore " . ........ 107
Little Marble Hill .......... 109
Peasants . . . . . . . . . . . .113
Mary and Elizabeth Beauclerk . . . , . . . . 116
Child Pan , . . . . . . . . . . .118
Headpiece to the "Cock and the Fox" . . . . . . 119
Nymph and Cupid . . . . . . . . . .121
Infant Pan and Goat Dancing ........ 127
Pastoral Scene . . . . . . . . . . -130
Girl with Owls . . . . . . . . . ..131
Portrait of the Rt, Honble. Charles James Fox .... 137
Sketch and Inscription on the back of the Portrait . . . 139 Infant Pan . . . . . . . . . . .142
Tailpiece to " Cymon and Iphigenia " . . . . • . 143
Children Playing .......... 145
Landscape with Cupips Bathing ........ 149
Child and Sheep .......•.• 151
Child ^55
Tailpiece to "Palamon and Arcite." Book 1 156
Cupids and Lion ^59
Cupids and Goats . . . . . . . • • .163
Caricature of Edward Gibbon . . . . . . . 165
Child with Umbrella ......... 166
Headpiece to " Palamon and Arcite." Book III 167
The Duchess of Devonshire ........ 169
Lady Herbert and Children 171
Cupids and Goats .....••••• ^73 Bacchus Resting . . . . . • • • • • • ^75
Child and Snake 181
Tailpiece to "Leonore" 182
Bacchanals ^^5
Una and the Lion (after Sir Joshua Reynolds) 191
Children with Basket . . . . • • • • .196
Child Spilling Milk ^97
Headpiece to "Theodore and Honoria " 19^
Little Marble Hill ^99
Mary and Elizabeth Beauclerk 203
The Gipsies ^°9
XV
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
Child with Hat ........
Headpiece to "The Wife of Bath's Tale"
Title Page to "Leonore" ......
Illustration to Burgher's "Leonore" Illustration to "Palamon and Arcjte." Book II. Illustration to "Palamon and Arcite." Book III. . Wedgwood Plaque: Boys as Bacchanals with Trophies Wedgwood Plaque : Cupid and Fauns with Trophies Wedgwood Plaque: Two Fauns . . . . .
Tailpiece to " Leonore "......
Mary and Elizabeth Beauclerk as Gipsies Portrait of John Spencer of Wheatfield . Illustration to "The Cock and the Fox" . Wedgwood Plaque : The Young Pan Tailpiece to " Palamon and Arcite." Book II. Children and Birds .......
Tea Set in Imitation of Sevres
PAGE 212 213 215
21 7 221 223 226 227 228 229 231 234
24O 241 259 263
Colonel Lascelies.
Children with Basket.
By kind permission.
XVI
9 t\tsifaA„Aivi
.^^,v «-v< ' i « ^...^r-v-w^ 'Wt'TO-'''»T~va*>'^f'*.t'«r/°~VTT ?*?fe'V^
BACCHANALS.
From an engraving by Bartolozzi, after Lady Diana Beauclerk.
To face page i.
From Dryde«-s FabUs. F.nsra'vat b, F. Bartolczzl.
Headpiece to " Palamon and Arcite." Book I.
CHAPTER I.
LADY DIANA SPENCER was the elder daughter of Charles, fifth Earl of Sunderland and third J Duke of Marlborough and the great-granddaughter of the great Duke and of that remarkable woman Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, who, not content with having tyrannised over her Royal Mistress and her husband, appears to have ruled her descendants with a rod of iron and to have kept a tight hold on the money-bags to the last. Lady Diana, or " Lady Di" as she was always called, was only ten years old when her great-grandmother died at the age of eighty-four and cannot, therefore, have come within the sphere of her personal influence ; but as that influence
I B
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
had its effect on the family fortunes, it may not be without interest to cast a glance backwards over the events which followed the first Duke's death in 1722.
Henrietta, Lady Godolphin, who succeeded as eldest daughter to the title of Duchess in her own right, was a vain, flighty, eccentric creature, who posed as the patroness of art and literature and as the friend of Congreve, to whom she erected a monument in Westminster Abbey * with a somewhat halting but well-intentioned epitaph of her own composition, which provoked the easily- aroused scorn of her mother. On her death without surviving male issue in 1733, she was succeeded by the eldest surviving son of her sister, Lady Sunderland. The young Duke f was handsome, gene- rous and of a charming and affectionate disposition, but he was also extravagant, a quality which did not recommend him to his grandmother. " He had good sense, infinite generosity, and not more economy than was to be expected from a young man of warm passions and such vast expec- tations," says Horace Walpole. " He was modest and diffident, too, but could not digest total dependence on a capricious and avaricious grandmother."
The position was not a pleasant one for a high-spirited young man and he continued in a state of semi-dependence
* <i ■
Mr. William Congreve Dyed Jan. ye 19th, 1728, Aged 56, And was buried near this place, To whose Memory this Monument is Sett up by Henrietta, Dutchess of Marlborough, as a mark how dearly she remembers the happiness and Honour she enjoyed in the Sincere Friendship of so worthy and Honest a Man, whose Virtue, Candour and Witt gained him the love and Esteem of the present age, and whose writings will be the Admiration of the Future." t Born 1706, died 1758.
-iJ -s
B 2
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
even after his succession to the dukedom, the old Duchess having a large fortune at her own disposal, which she after- wards left to his younger brother John,* besides having control of much of the property. It is evident that John
After a draivui^ hy Lady Diana Beauflerk
Cupids.
■ed hy Bartolozzi.
Spencer, wild and extravagant as he was, was her favourite and that she considered his elder brother a fool, both of which facts she stated frequently, with that plainness of speech for which she was famous; but probably the chief offence of the latter lay in his marriage in 1732 with Elizabeth, the pretty
* Born 1708, died 1746.
5 '
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
daughter of Thomas, Lord Trevor, who had been the avowed enemy of the great Duke. This marriage was arranged chiefly by the instrumentality of his sister Mary, Lady Bateman and of Charles Fox, the first Lord Holland, " the Fox that stole my goose," as the Duchess called him when, later on, he persuaded her grandson to join the Court party against her express commands. There are some very amusing stories told with regard to this marriage. We hear that when Duchess Sarah heard of the wedding, which had taken place without her consent, her rage knew no bounds. She rushed off to the Lodge in Little Windsor Park, which she had lent to her grandson and which he had greatly improved with plantations, " a canall and a serpentine river and a mount that has cost a vast deal of money," and setting to work, aided by a gang of men, she cut, hacked, laid waste and destroyed everything on which she could lay her hands. She then proceeded to "Justice Reeves's; he had pailed in a piece of waste ground that was Mr. Topham's, which will be Lord Sidney Beauclerk's. She had that pulled down and destroyed, for she said, 'Sid the beggar nor none of his family should ever be the better for her,' and told the Justice 'he might go to law about it if he pleased!'" Returning home she had a puppet-show made with wax figures representing the new Duchess and eight female cousins,* the latter tearing up the shrubs and the Duchess walking off with the hen-coop under her arm,
* There were quantities of Trevors at this time. " The Duchess of Marl- borough and one of the million Trevors have been here," writes Mrs. Montagu from Bulstrode in 1741.
6
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
which reversed the actual order of things and put the blame, as well as the ridicule, on to the shoulders of the innocent. After this ebulHtion of temper, she blackened the face of Lady Bateman's portrait, which hung in the
By kind pertnission of the Duke of Marlborough.
Lady Diana Spencer.
Artist unknown.
room where she usually received visitors and wrote on the frame : " She is blacker within."
Whether the old Duchess was ever reconciled to the match, which proved to be a very happy one, does not
7
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
appear ; it is certain that relations between herself and the Duke continued strained and that on one occasion he was obliged to go to law to gain possession of a sword set in diamonds, which had been presented to his grandfather by the Emperor of Austria. The Duchess appeared in court in person and, without defending herself, merely remarked : " I retained it lest he should pick out the diamonds and pawn them."
In 1743 she made her will and let it be known that she only left the Duke certain property on condition that he did not accept any post, either military or civil, under the present Government. The Duke, who had just distin- guished himself at the battle of Dettingen, where he com- manded a brigade of Foot Guards, threw up his commission in order to reinstate himself in the will. " It is very natural," said the old lady; "he listed as soldiers do when they are drunk, and repented when he was sober."
In spite of her often-expressed contempt for the Royal Family, or perhaps on account of it, the Duchess had one scheme which lay very near her heart and which was all but crowned with success. It was nothing less than a marriage between Frederick Prince of Wales* and the Duke's beautiful sister. Lady Diana Spencer. The Prince had quarrelled with his father and was very badly off and he eagerly accepted the offer of a handsome and attractive bride with a dowry of ^100,000. Everything was arranged; the wedding was to take place secretly at the Great Lodge, Windsor, when Sir Robert Walpole arrived suddenly like
* Frederick, Prince of Wales, born 1707, died 1751.
8
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
a deus ex machina and put an end to it. Lady Diana married in 1731 Lord John Russell, afterwards fourth Duke of Bedford* and died in 1735, to the great grief of her grandmother, who seems to have really loved her in her own fashion, although, characteristically enough, she sent the day after her death to recover some jewels she had given her, on pretence that they were only lent. All the same, she was found in the greatest distress lying on the ground by a lady who went to see her and who nearly stumbled over her in the dark and is reported to have said that she was praying in that position, being too wicked to kneel ; a story which reminds one of the strange vision seen by the Duke of Portland when a httle boy at Westminster School. He told his wife that he remembered seeing the Duchess, dressed like a beggar, sitting with the miserable wretches in the Cloister of Westminster Abbey at the time when she was in great distress owing to the death of her only son ; f a display of penitence and humility which did not prevent her from declaring that she was not only sure of going to heaven but of obtaining one of the best places. That she was not in any hurry to avail herself of this privilege appears from her tussle with death in the year 1740, when she exclaimed, " I won't be blistered and I won't die," to the doctor who offered her the alternative and recovered by sheer force of will ; but death came at last and this strange personality, a mixture of many bad qualities and some good ones, loosed its hold on the material plane. It is
* Born 1710, died 1771.
t He died of small-pox at Cambridge, 20 February, 1702.
II C 2
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
only too probable that the surviving members of her family heaved a deep sigh of relief, and proceeded to shape their lives as it appeared best to themselves.
The old Duchess died in 1744, leaving the bulk of her fortune and Althorpe to John Spencer on condition that neither he nor his son would accept any post, military or
By kind permission of the Duke of Marlborough.
Pastel Study of a Baby Asleep
Bj I i-i\ Dii't I Speticei
civil, under the present Government. She also left many legacies, some of them of immense value, to friends and relations and the sum of ^5000 each to her great- granddaughters, Diana and Elizabeth Spencer, to be paid within five years after their eldest brother obtained his majority. These legacies were indeed " small and illtimed as to payment" as the Author of the Remarks which preface the published edition of her will says and he also
12
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
notes the evident animosity she bore the Duke. She imposed no conditions on him however ; probably because she left him nothing over which she had personal control, and one of the first acts of his newly-acquired liberty was to go to London to offer his service to the King on
By kind per}nission of the Duke of Marlborough.
Pastel Study of a Child.
I'V Lady Diana Spencer, after Rubens.
hearing of the reported rising of Prince Charles Edward in France.
Lady Di's girlhood was probably spent chiefly at Blen- heim and there is every reason to suppose that it was a very happy one. The Duke had an affectionate and kind nature and was devoted to his wife and to the children, who in after life were so strongly united to each other by
13
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
the bonds of family affection. Blenheim Palace, built by Vanbrugh, under the superintendence of Duchess Sarah, is a pompous and rather unprepossessing abode seen from the outside, but the interior is finely proportioned and decorated with paintings by La Guerre, who also painted the great pictures illustrating the Duke of Marlborough's victories, which are still at Marlborough House. It con- tained, moreover, in those days, some deathless works of art and the great Sunderland library, besides antiques and ohjets d'art and trophies of all sorts, so that Lady Di, who at a very early age showed signs of possessing that taste for art for which she was afterwards distinguished, had every opportunity for its cultivation. It was before the days of art-schools and she followed the example of the old masters in copying the works of great artists, in studying and assimilating everything that came at all within the sphere of her own genius. There are several pastels in existence which prove that she studied Rubens ; the earliest was executed at the age of eleven and is a most direct and clever study. But although her brain and her pencil seem to have been always active, she must have spent many happy and healthy hours in the Park, in exploring the many-roomed bridge that spans the lake, in the paths and among the gardens and shrubberies at Blenheim, or in the old manor of Woodstock, with its romantic associations. She grew up tall and slim, with brown hair and grey eyes and all the traditional beauty of her family.
There were five children. Diana, born 1734; Elizabeth, 1737; George, 1738; Charles, 1740; and Robert, 1747,
14
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
and they all appear in the fine picture of the Duke and Duchess and their family painted by Hudson, which hangs over the great staircase at Blenheim. The picture, which is a very fine example of this painter's style, was painted when Lady Di was about nineteen or twenty and she is represented standing with her youngest brother, Lord Robert, who was always her staunch friend in after life. The two make a charming group, and it is t unfortunate that, owing to I the position of the picture, it has been impossible to reproduce it. A very good idea of Lady Di's own por- trait may be obtained, how- ever, by a glance at the illustration, which shows the copy she made herself in pastel and into which she introduced the costume of Rubens' wife, taken from the big picture of the
painter's family, from which she had already made several studies. It has been suggested, with much probability, that very likely while making the spirited copy of the baby from this very picture she conceived the idea of introducing the mother's costume into her own portrait as an experiment. The family picture is a very large one and must have taken some time to accompHsh. The budding
15
After a pastd portrait
Lady Diana Spencer,
By kind per>n.ission 0/ the Duke 0/ MarU'oroiigh.
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
artist evidently made the best of her opportunities and watched the master at his work, picking up many a hint as the time went on. Hudson, who was the master of Sir Joshua Reynolds, is supposed to have only painted the head of his portraits and to have been incapable of drawing the figure or painting the drapery and accessories. It is very probable that in a picture of this size he employed someone, possibly Vanhaken, to work with him. The result is exceedingly fine and is a very favourable specimen of his style.
Boy and Dog,
i6
^i.caic^.'U^'^-^ 3j^^ Si'>'(^li>?7^u&t.<:^£ey
FREDERICK, SECOND VISCOUNT BOLINGBROKE.
Frovt a portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds. Engraved by Messrs. Henry Graves <5 Co., 6, Pall Mall.
From Dryden-s Fables. Ensramd If, F. Barl<,lo!>zi.
Headpiece to Sigismonda and Guiscardo.
CHAPTER II.
'T^HE eighteenth century is of all centuries the one of which we have, chiefly by means of the gentle art of letter - writing and the amiable weakness of keeping diaries, the most vivid and complete idea. We have a distinct picture of that brilliant world into which Lady Di was introduced as a young lady of fashion. Gaiety was the order of the day — and indeed of the night; scandal pranced unashamed, fortunes were won and lost in an evening, reputations in the twinkling of an eye; tongues wagged apparently without ceasing, for breakfast parties broke up for loo or hazard, dinner parties began at three or four o'clock and lasted till evening, when routs, ridottos,
17 D
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
festinos, masquerades and fireworks persisted until the small hours of the morning. Was it really as dull as some modern writers would have us believe ? Did the ladies sit apart and yawn over their cards while the men drank more than was good for them, and had they absolutely nothing to say to each other when they met ? A glance at the record of fully occupied hours in any fine lady or gentleman's day will give an answer to this, although it is certain that there was much more division of the sexes in private life than there is in these days and that the unde- sirable coarseness of society and of literature was the result.
However this may be, there is certainly much truth in the picture of the eighteenth century as it has always painted itself before our eyes ; it is a period of irrespon- sible gaiety in which pleasure was the god worshipped, a period which seems to hang suspended over the dark chasm of the French Revolution as if by some sort of magic. One touch and the whole fabric of this vision of powder and patches, of gambling and masquerades, of nymphs and shepherdesses playing at Arcadia, is dispersed like the morning mist before a sterner and colder day.
But when Lady Di first came out in society, no warning note had sounded and we can easily, without much stretch of the imagination, see the Duchess of Marlborough with her two beautifiil daughters, dressed in the flowing white draperies with which we are familiar, wearing on their heads those towering erections of powdered horsehair which were then beginning to be greatly exaggerated, their bright dark eyes sparkling over
i8
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
highly rouged cheeks. We can watch them swing slowly through the great gates of Marlborough House in the ponderous family coach and pass through the Mall crowded
By kijid permission of Coionel Lascel'^s.
Nymph and Cupid.
with dainty visions in delicate raiment and with young dandies with the long spying-glasses which distinguished the macaroni. We even know the slang of the day and have no doubt that they talked of someone having a "complete boar" with another and of their being "grubbed
19 D 2
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
up" by a third individual, who was very " glumpy," of things being " monstrous fine," and people " bon-ton."
At this time the Duchess of Bedford might be "at home " in Bloomsbury Square to " take a walk in the fields " ; Lady Clermont, living in St. James's Place, would issue invitations to "take tea and walk in the Park"; while Mrs. Montagu, in Hill Street, was opening her doors to those who cared to brave the foot-pads of Hay Hill and the dangerous districts of Berkeley Square, for the sake of those conversational feasts which were to take the place of the inevitable card parties.
It does not appear that Lady Di was ever bitten with the prevailing mania for gambling which was the curse of the day. To many women, indeed, it seemed to be not only a necessity of life, but to take the place of all other occupations and we even hear of an inveterate gambler like the Duchess of Devonshire,* going after the opera to the office for lottery tickets to bet with the attendants on the numbers which would prove successful and losing, on one rather unlucky evening, the sum of three hundred pounds. But if gambling was only too common among women at this time, there were many exceptions to the rule and many eminently gifted even among the ranks of that society which appeared to think of nothing more serious than the lucky number for a lottery ticket, or to have time between the numerous engagements crowded into the day, to do more than effect a change of raiment or
* Lady Georgina Spencer, daughter of ist Earl Spencer, born 1757, ^^^^ 1806.
20
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
adjust a patch near a becoming dimple. It was an age, to quote Burke, which was " distinguished by producing extraordinary women," and we have only to name a few who stand pre-eminent in their various capacities, such as Angelica Kauffmann, who was then delighting the town
By Lady Diana Beauclerk. After Sir Peter Lely.
The Duchesse de Grammont.
By Mind permission of W. H. Gren/elt, Esq., M.P.
with her graceful art; Fanny Burney, who was to revolu tionise the novel ; Hannah More, with her sterling gifts, to show the truth of this assertion.
Of course, in contrast to the whirl of town life, there was often a very solitary existence in the country during a part of the year and the art of the accomplished
21
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
letter-writer was eagerly welcomed at this time and was the chief means of conveying gossip and news of all sorts from one place to another. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was a lover of solitude and was exercising her undoubted gifts in the loneliness of Louvere; but Lady Di herself and Mrs. Damer the sculptress, Lady Temple, Lady Spencer, Lady Templeton, Miss Crewe and the host of amateurs, seem to have lived a good deal in the bustle of the great world and yet to have produced a quantity of work.
In the year 1756 there was a rumour of Lady Betty Spencer's approaching marriage with Lord Pembroke,* coupled with another concerning Lady Di and the Duke of Rich- mond. This, however, was without foundation ; the Duke married Lady Mary Bruce, sister to Lord Ailesbury, in the following year and Lady Di became engaged to Frederick, second Viscount Bolingbroke,t nephew and heir to the celebrated Minister of the reign of Queen Anne. He was very handsome and had the reputation of being a confirmed rake — a reputation which, to do him justice, he thoroughly deserved.
There is an account of his proposal given in a letter written from Bath by Mrs. Delany to her sister, Mrs. Dewes. It is dated September 4, 1757, and after describing a party at which she met Miss Egerton, the Maid of Honour, she says : " She told me that the match between Lady Diana Spencer and Lord Bolingbroke is certainly true, and not
* Henry, loth Earl of Pembroke and 8th Earl of Montgomery, born 1734, died 1794.
t Born 1734, died 1787.
22
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
against the lady's consent as was reported. They were together at a party at Vauxhall with the Duchess of Bed- ford; the company was teasing Lord BoHngbroke to marry, and he turned quick about to Lady Diana and said, * Will you have me?' * Yes, to be sure,' she replied. It passed off that night as a joke, but with consideration on his side of the lady's merit (which they say is a great deal), and the persuasion of his friends, he made a serious affair of it and was accepted. ^^1,500 a year jointure and ^"500 a year pin-money has cast a veil over the past. If he has sense, he may be happy; for he must then see the absurd figure he has hitherto made, and know how to value a woman of worth, though so long the dupe of beauty and folly."
It seems unlikely that these rather moderate sums should have proved a tempting bait to the Marlboroughs, who were not only accustomed to great riches but to spending those riches with much prodigality ; it is far more probable that Lady Di was really taken with the good looks and fascinating manners of " Bully," as his friends called him, when, moved by the most unfortunate impulse, she accepted his proposal. As to his reputation for wildness, it was the fashion to be wild and she pro- bably did not think so very much about it being young and high-spirited herself, or if she thought of it imagined, like many another woman both before and since her time, that her influence would be sufficient to alter the course of his life.
Lord BoHngbroke, who was born in 1734, was con- sequently twenty-three years old in 1757, being just the
23
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
same age as Lady Di herself. He was the eldest son of John, second Viscount St. John and of his wife Anne, daughter and co-heir of Sir Robert Furnese. He succeeded his father in February, 1749 and in 175 1 to the honours of his uncle, who had been created Viscount Bolingbroke in 17 12 and attainted in 17 14, but restored to the estates, without the honours, in 1725. The attainder, however, did not affect his nephew, who became second Viscount Bolingbroke and third Viscount St. John and inherited the beautiful property in Wiltshire known as Lydiard Tregoze or Lydiard Park, as well as the old Manor House at Battersea and the gift of the living of Battersea Church, that ugly building with its pseudo-classical facade and copper-crowned tower, where the remains of the celebrated statesman and his second wife, the Marquise de Villette, niece of Mme. de Maintenon, repose. The first Lord Bolingbroke owned a house in Golden Square, but it is not certain that his nephew lived there or even that he inherited it.
Lord Bolingbroke was certainly a man who made many friends and who retained their friendship ; to name only the wit George Selwyn,* the wild Lord March,t Gilly Williams t- the gossip, the artistic Lord Carlisle § and Charles James Fox II the orator, will show that they were not all of
* George Selwyn, son of Col. John Selwyn, of Matson, who was aide-de- camp to the first Duke of Marlborough. Born 17 19, died 1791.
t Lord March, afterwards Duke of Queensberry. Born 1725, died 18 10. J Gilly Williams, born 17 19, died 1805. § Earl of Carlisle, born 1748, died 1825. II Charles James Fox, born 1749, died 1806.
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LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
one type and a long letter which he wrote to George Selwyn on the prevalence of vice or virtue in the Roman republic, quoting liberally from the classics, shows that he
By kind permission of Colonel Lascelles.
Girl Netting.
could turn his mind to saner things if he tried. But the pity of it was that he did not try. He seems to have inherited his celebrated uncle's partiality for drink and dissipation without that statesman's power of passing from
25 E
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
a night of intemperance to a cool morning of concentrated study, without that charming versatility of mind which allowed him, while directing the affairs of a great nation, to study incidentally cookery, Chinese fireworks and the mysteries of the universe.
Such as he was, he had inspired a passion at the age of nineteen in the breast of the beautiful Lady Coventry* and Horace Walpole tells us that when she danced before the King at a masquerade, she would have asked for "the head of St. John" if he had offered her a gift for her trouble. Apart from the joke and the invaluable gossip must have his joke, the attraction seems to have been mutual and we often find Lord Bolingbroke in attendance up to the time when the ravages of consumption spoiled her beauty and she died in 1760, with the curtains closely drawn round her bed to hide herself from every eye. Gossip said that her death was hastened by the use of cosmetics and that Lord Bolingbroke, on hearing of her end, burst into tears, but whether real or fictitious it were hard to say.
Lord Bolingbroke had three sisters and two brothers. Henry St. John, the elder of these^ was a Colonel in the army and afterwards Groom of the Bedchamber to the Duke of York, whom he accompanied in his travels, being with him in 1767 when he died at Monaco. He brought the body home by slow stages and attended the funeral at Westminster Abbey on November 3, but after being profusely thanked for his services, he was relegated to a
* The beautiful Miss Gunning, born 1731, died 1760.
26
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
lieut.-colonelcy in Minorca.* He is known in contemporary literature as "the Baptist," and was apparently sincerely attached to his elder brother, though he never tried to conceal or make light of his many faults. He was at one time Member for Wootton Basset. The younger brother John was Member for Eye and Surveyor-General of Crown Lands, and died on October 8, 1793, having roused great expectations and having only succeeded in becoming " an accomplished macaroni."
Engagements appear to have been very short in these days ; the marriage took place in the same month in which Mrs. Delany's letter was written.
"Lord Viscount Bolingbroke to the Rt. Hon. Lady Diana Spencer, elder daughter to the Duke of Marlborough," is the somewhat curt an- nouncement in the Annual Register for September, 1757-
* Col. St. John afterwards returned to England and in the year 1771 married the elder daughter of Colonel Bladen, one of the two sisters so much ad- mired for their wit and vivacity by Lord March and Gilly Williams,
Wooibeding Collection.
Child and Squirrel.
27
E 2
From Dryden's Fables. Engyaved by F. Bartolozzi.
Headpiece to Palamon and Arcite. Book II.
CHAPTER III.
TN 1758, the year following Lady Di's marriage, the Duke of Marlborough was engaged in the war which England, in conjunction with Frederick the Great of Prussia, was carrying on against France, Russia, Austria, Sweden and Saxony. He was at first in command of all land forces fighting against the French Colonies and later, not long before he died of fever at Munster in Westphalia, he was appointed commander-in-chief of all the British forces serving in Germany under the command of Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick.
The following letters, which were written to his wife from the seat of war and carefully preserved after his death,
28
CUPID AND PSYCHE.
From a water-colour drawing by Lady Diana Beauclerk. By Hnd perrmsszon of Colonel Lascelles.
To face page 28.
By kind permission of Colonel Lascelles.
Girl with Infant Fauns.
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
will give some account of the hardships and difficulties to which the troops were exposed and of the extreme un- certainty of being able to accompHsh manoeuvres on land at any fixed time when at the mercy of the elements in a sailing ship. It seems very improbable that there should be any truth in the story of the Due d'Aiguillon's sending a ship with a flag of truce to the Duke of Marlborough to restore his silver teaspoons with the Blenheim eagles engraved on them, lost during the retreat from S. Malo ; but it is repeated so often in the letters of the day that I give it for what it is worth. It does not seem as if life were very luxurious on board the Essex, but as the story caused the sides to shake with laughter of those who stayed at home, we will let it stand.
The letters themselves breathe a charming spirit of affection and show how much attraction the military career had for the Duke ; and if they do not give us an account of thrilling victories, we know that the army was doing its work well and keeping the French occupied on the Rhine, while Frederick was free to turn his attention elsewhere. On August I, 1759, a great victory was won at Minden by the English troops under the command of Prince Ferdinand, but that was nearly a year after the Duke's premature death, and he must have often filmed inwardly at the perpetual inaction and procrastination of the campaign in which he was engaged. These letters were copied and carefiilly preserved by his youngest son. Lord Robert Spencer, the " Bo " or " Bob " to whom he so often sends messages.
31
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
CoNCALLA Bay, June 6, 1758. My dearest Life,
This is the first opportunity I have had of letting you know that Blan:* and I are perfectly well, not desiring to lett any vessel leave us before landing, which we began last night, and shall land the whole army this morning. We mett with no opposition worth mentioning, only two batterys that the ships batter'd to pieces, the few Militia there were the Grenadiers soon drove away with their bayonotts. The troops behave as silently, orderly and soldierly-like as is possible to wish, far beyond .my hopes. I am greatly pleased and elevated hitherto, but don't say so, least more should be expected in England than can be performed.
Ever most truely and tenderly yours,
(Signed) MARLBOROUGH.
My love to Di:t Beit Bo:§ Cha:]] and Lady Trevor.f
My dearest Life,
On board the Essex, off Concalla Bay,
June 12, 1758.
We are return'd safe and sound, after marching ten miles up to St. Malos throw an inclosed country with very
* George, Marquis of Blandford, afterwards fourth Duke of Marlborough, born 1738, died 1817.
t Viscountess Bolingbroke, born 1734, died 1808. % Countess of Pembroke, born 1737, died 1831. § Lord Robert Spencer, born 1747, died 1831. II Lord Charles Spencer, born 1740, died 1820. f Probably the Duchess of Marlborough's mother.
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LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
bad and very narrow roads, such as is impossible to gett cannon along, and where the' enemy, if they had had the resolution, might have step'd in with a single regiment, as we were obliged to march up the hill from the sea- side, never more than two men in front. When I arrived near St. Malos I found it impossible to gett any morters up to fire on the town and shipping, so order'd the troops at low water to march up to the ships with firebrands and sett them on fire, which they did under the very batterys of the town ; and the ships are now all reduced to ashes, one fifty-gun ship, one six-and-thirty guns, about four-and-twenty privateers from six-and-twenty guns to twenty guns each, seventy merchant ships and about forty small craft. I shall now sail a little along the French coast ; and I hope soon to see you, which is infinitely the greatest happiness of my life.
Ever most truely and tenderly yours,
(Signed) MARLBORO )UGH.
My love to Di: Be: Cha: Bo: and Lady Trevor.
CoNCALLA Bay, yune 19, 1758. My dearest Life,
As we have been detain'd by contrary winds in this bay ever since I wrote to you by the Speedwell^ I can have nothing new to say, but that both Blan: and I are very well, and long for a wind to gett out from hence. The first night we sailed fi-om St. Helena I was very sea-sick ; but am now
33 F
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
so season'd that the motion of the ship, which has been a great deal from very brisk gales, only makes me hungry. As the Speedwell was order'd to meet me at another place, we have received no letters from England since I wrote last, which is very unpleasant, as I long beyond expression to hear from you. Pray send the inclosed to Lord Pembroke, who wrote me a very reasonable letter about Betty.
Ever most truely and tenderly yours,
(Signed) MARLBOROUGH. My love to Di: Be: Cha: Bo: and Lady Trevor.
My dearest Life,
On board the Essex^ off La Hague, "June 24, 1758.
I receiv'd your letter with inexpressible pleasure this morning at four o'clock. Ever since we re-embarked we have had nothing but contrary winds, which makes this sort of service most extremely unpleasant, for schemes ever so well laid are prevented by mere cursed wind. The ship now roles too much to write plain, but I don't believe I shall ever be sea-sick again. As for money I want none, for I don't know what to do with it. Every time I open my box I see a purse of guineas that I am quite tired of, and tempted to throw it overboard ; I would give it all for a dozen of clean shirts, as we can't spare any water on board to wash. Blan: and I are in perfect health but rather dirty. I won't attempt to say how much I long to see you. Tell Bob I will write to him
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LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
by the next ship that sails for England, if the sea is quiet enough.
Ever most tenderly and, truely yours,
(Signed) M A R LBOROUGH . Mi love to Di: Be: Cha: Bo: and Lady Trevor. Dear Blan: gives his duty.
On board the Essex^ off Cherbourg,
,, T June 30, 1758.
My dearest Life, ^ o ^ / ^
We have been excessive unlucky in our winds, as I vv^as prevented three days ago from landing on the coast of Normandy by a gale of v^ind that obliged us to sheer of. Last night I had everything ready to attack the forte of this place. Just before w^e step'd into the boats the w^ind blevi^ so excessive hard that v^e were forced to desist, and have had great difficulty in preventing some of the transports from being blown on shore. This is very provoking, as I firmly thought last night at eleven o'clock to have landed all the forces this morning by break of day. We have but three days' hay for our horses, the water for the troops very bad, so that I am now sailing for Portsmouth. If I have time before we sail again, I will meet you at Langley or London, if I gett leave J if not, you and Bob may meet me at Mr. Eddewes, Storekeeper at Portsmouth ; but you shall hear from me again time enough to settle this.
Ever most truely yours,
(Signed) MARLBOROUGH. My love to Di: Be: Cha: Bo: and Lady Trevor.
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
A Havre, August 3, 1758. My dearest Life,
I arrived here the day before yesterday. We have had very hot and long marches, a prodigious heavy rain -of eight-and-forty hours. The Foot have march'd the last day allmost up to their middle in water the whole way ; I was obliged to stay two days to gett up the artillery and baggage. Prince Ferdinand has recrossed the Rhine, and I shall join him to-morrow. This, I believe, puts an end to all fighting this campaign, which perhaps you are glad of. Don't be angry with me for not agreeing with you in that single point. The messenger who brings this brought me all your letters, together with one from dear Bob, whose predictions I hope and believe will be true. I am extremely sorry that you heard from Capt: Jekyl without having a letter from me ; it was not my fault, but his pilot's, who took five-and-thirty leagues for twelve, and hurry 'd me out from the man-of-war at moment's notice into the yacht, least we should run aground; from which time till our parting the sea ran much too high to send boat out, so I had no possibility of sending a letter to him. You may depend on my missing no opportunity of writing, as that and hearing from you during my absence are by far the greatest comforts I have. Coll: Brown is not yett arrived. I long to see him and aske a thousand questions about you.
Ever most truely and tenderly yours,
(Signed) MARLBOROUGH. My love to Di: Be: Bo: Cha: and Lady Trevor.
36
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
Caesveldt, August^ 1758. My dearest Life,
We arrived here yesterday, where I found Major- general Faustenberg with a detachment of 3,000 men. I shall halt here till Pr: F:* joins me with his whole army, which will be, I believe, in two or three days. I hear in England people are concern'd for fear the Prince de Soubise should catch in before we gott to this place ; but there was no danger, for he has never been nearer to me than eighty miles. His army was too large for me to seek, but if he had happened to have come up with us, I should not have been over alarmed, tho' he was two to one. My troops are extremely desirous to meet the French, but I believe there is no probability of their having that satisfaction. I never saw such heavy rain as we have had for four days and nights without ceasing ; the Foot marched in water all the way up to their middle, and the ground we were forced to encamp on nothing but mud and water ; but the weather is now very fine, and the troops very well, all but their horses, who cough instead of eating. Coll: Brown is just arrived, whom I saw with great pleasure on many accounts, but chiefly as coming last from you. I am sensible I owe his coming to Mr. Pitt, tho' the Duke of Newcastle, in his letter to me, takes the merit of it. The moment the paymaster arrives, whom I expect every hour, I will take the three thousand pounds for equipage money, and send the D. of N. word that I have taken it as my right.
* Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick.
37
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
I am miserable to think that you should still imagine I would have lett Capt. Jekyl part without a letter from me if it had been possible to have sent it. I hope before this you will have receiv'd my letter which explains this cursed mistake of his pilot which caused it. Blan: and I are both very well.
Ever most truely and tenderly yours,
(Signed) MARLBOROUGH.
My love to Di: Be: Cha: Bo: and Lady Trevor.
SCHEPSDOFT, August 9, 1 75 8.
My dearest Life,
We encamped here yesterday in perfect health, and march to-morrow to Oena. If you look for these places in the map I believe you will find neither of them, as one consists of eight houses, and the other of sixteen ; however, we have plenty of provisions. I long most excessively to join Prince Ferdinand, chiefly because I hope to find a letter there from you. It is terrible to be so long without a chance of hearing from you. I shall have no opportunities of writing till I cross the Rhine, which will be about five days hence.
Ever most faithflilly yours,
(Signed) MARLBOROUGH. My love to Di: Be: Cha: Bo: and Lady Trevor.
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LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
[Undated.'] My dearest Life,
Here we continue without any probability of seeing the French. I suppose we shall soon move on account of forage, which will make us still farther from the enemy. I cannot sufficiently commend Pr: Ferd: behaviour with regard to me personally. You must forgive me if I write short letters, for, upon my honour, I have hardly a moment to myself; but business and activity agree perfectly with my health. I hope to God your next letter will tell me that you are better.
Ever most truely and tenderly yours,
(Signed) MARLBOROUGH. My love to Di: Be: Cha: Bo: and Lady Trevor.
Dalmen, August 29, 1758. My dearest Life,
I have just had the infinite pleasure of receiving another letter fi-om you. I am surprised that you have yett received no more of mine, nor of Blandford's. I suppose they will come all together, as the same favourable wind that brings yours to me, stops mine in Holland. This camp is but six miles from the first. The French have no design of crossing the river Lippe to come to us, so in all probability we shall have no action this campaign, and I think certainly a peace before next spring. Abercrombie being repulsed in his stupid attack is of no consequence at all, except to
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LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
the poor officers that were killed. I have read and approve of your advice, which depends more on Prince Ferdinand than me ; and I have a better opinion of him in every respect than I ever had of anybody in so short an acquaintance. Believe me, my dearest, I don't want your watch to make me think of you, who never are or can be a moment from my thoughts.
Ever most truely and tenderly yours,
(Signed) MARLBOROUGH.
My love to Di: Be: Cha: Bo: and Lady Trevor.
Dalmen, September i, 1758. My dearest Life,
I see by your letter I last received, dated August 24, that you have not yett had all I have wrote ; I do assure you that you have mistaken the one line in my letter which you say made you write so much about rashnesse, if you imagine I love fighting for fighting's sake, or that I wished it otherwise than that a good blow might produce a speedy peace. If that can be had without it, as I am now firmly persuaded it will, I should be not only a foolish but a very
bad man not to avoid action
I suppose by this time you know that I am a general, instead of being liet.-general, with my commission ante- dated before Sperkers, which puts me next in command to Pr: Ferdinand. This has happened by Mr. Pitt's fi-iendship, and following your advice in letting the Duke of Newcastle
40
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
know that I felt my own waite in sending him a sort of threatening letter. If you had received half my letters by the post you would have known that Coll: Brown has been here some time, and has wrote both to you and Bob.
Ever, my dearest, more truely and tenderly yours,
(Signed) MARLBOROUGH.
My love to Di: Be: Cha: Bo: and Lady Trevor. I have been writing above four hours.
IVoolbedivg Collection.
Shepherd and Shepherdess.
41
^rtd I, C,Bjirl»Jo»iiaA.
Headpiece to Leonore.
CHAPTER IV.
'T^HE Duke of Marlborough died of fever at Miinster, in Westphalia, on October 28, 1758; the news must have come as a great shock to his family, as he seems to have enjoyed perfect health throughout the campaign.
That he was sincerely mourned will not be doubted by anyone who has read the foregoing letters, written to his wife with such lover-like devotion after twenty-six years of married life and that she reciprocated his affection seems evident from her anxiety and displeasure at the non -arrival of letters, or at a chance expression breathing too warlike a spirit for her peace of mind. She sent him her watch, too, as a remem- brance. One wonders if it ever arrived and if she and
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LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
"Bob" went to Mr. Eddowes, the storekeeper at Portsmouth and had a last glimpse of him before he sailed away never to return.
Among his many good qualities, however, he does not seem to have possessed the very useful one of having a good head for business and, according to all accounts, left his affairs in a state of great confusion. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who appears to have been sincerely attached to Duchess Sarah and consequently to have been prejudiced against the Duke, writes in her most sarcastic vein to Sir J. Stewart : "I read the news of the D. of Marlborough's death with all the sentiments of a true Briton touched with the misfortunes of his country. Panegyrics in paper, weeping widows, etc. More sincere tears shed for his loss than for all the heroes departed for this last century. God knows how many breaking tradespeople and honest scriveners and usurers are breaking their hearts for this untimely fall " ; and later on she refers to a letter received from a friend at Court : " She gives me such an account of the late Duke of Marl- borough's affairs as takes away all doubt of his well-being in the next world. He is certainly eminently distinguished amongst babes and sucklings : to say truth, I never could perceive (tho' I was well acquainted with him) that he had the least tincture of original sin — you know that was the distinction between good and evil of which whole crowds are entirely clear, and it has been water thrown away to christen them."
In spite of this rather ill-natured comment, the Duke died universally regretted and no doubt those " honest
43 G 2
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
scriveners and usurers " got their pound of flesh and the family affairs came under the control of a man who seems to have been of a much more prudent disposition than his
father.
There is not much to be said about Lady Di's married
By kind pernttssioii oj J. Merrick Head, Esq.
Sketch of Lady Herbert.
Once in the possession of the P»nn Family.
life with Lord Bolingbroke, except that it was extremely unhappy and that he was both cruel and unfaithful to her and continued his usual course of drink and dis- sipation. Unfortunately, although he professed to be still in love with her when his conduct had driven her to take the irrevocable step which caused their final separation, she seems to have had no restraining influence over him. On
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LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
March 6, 1761, her eldest son was born and christened George Richard and in the same year the marriage was announced of the young King George III. to Princess Charlotte of Mecklenberg-Strelitz.
There were many rumours as to the ladies who would be chosen for the Queen's household and in all the lists of probable names we find Lady Bolingbroke's mentioned as one of the most likely. It is Horace Walpole who gives us the first ofiicial list : " The new Queen's family con- sists of Lord Harcourtj Master of the Horse; Duke of Manchester, Chamberlain ; Mr. Stone, Treasurer ; the Duchess of Ancaster, Mistress of the Robes and First Lady of the Bedchamber ; the others are the Duchess ol Hamilton, Lady Effingham, Lady Northumberland, Lady Weymouth, and Lady Bolingbroke." * The Maids of Honour were Miss Bishop, Miss Wrottesley, Miss Beauclerk, Miss Keck, Miss Mears and Miss Tryon.
The wedding was fixed for September 10, the coronation for September 22. "Think of the joy the women feel," says our gossip. " There is not a single Scotch peer in the Fleet that might not marry the greatest fortune in England between this and September 22."
The new Queen was very plain in her youth, although we are told that the bloom of her ugliness wore off" as time went on ; but she had simple, unaffected manners and, on the whole, made a very good impression. She wore white and silver at the wedding, with a tiara of diamonds in her hair and an endless train of violet velvet trimmed with
* He forgot to mention Lady Egremont
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LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
ermine, borne by the beautiful bridesmaids in white and silver with diamonds in their hair, of whom the most
By ki>id permission oj
y. Merrick Head, Esq.
Cupids,
Front a ivater-colonr drawing once in the possession of the Pettn Family.
conspicuous was Lady Sarah Lennox, whose beauty had so captivated the young King.
The coronation followed soon after this ceremony and seems to have attracted great crowds to London and to have absorbed public interest for the time being. We read
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LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
of the excitement prevalent amongst all classes of people, from the foot passengers who crowded the streets to the peeress who sat up all night with her mountainous head propped up on a rest and a sleepy maid to wake her if a chance nod should happen to endanger the elaborate structure.
The ceremony itself, though not so well stage-managed as it might have been, was a brilliant affair and if Duchess Sarah assisted at it in spirit one can only hope that a change had come over the animosity of her feelings which would prevent any annoyance being caused by the sight of so many of her descendants supporting the Crown. For she would have seen the Duke of Marlborough carry- ing the sceptre with the cross, walking just after the King's Regalia ; she would have seen Lady Pembroke heading the group of countesses, walking alone, a vision of " majestic modesty," and Lady Bolingbroke, in her robe of estate, her coronet in her hand, as one of the Queen's household. One can imagine rather than express the wrath that such a vision would have caused if she had still been in the flesh!
On October 5, Elizabeth Duchess of Marlborough died, having survived her husband just three years.
The following year does not seem to have been a happy one for Lady Di, or for her sister. Lady Pembroke, whose husband had an escapade with Miss Hunter,* the Maid of Honour, which was much talked of at the time.
* Miss Kitty Hunter eventually made a good marriage, and died " in the odour of Fashion."
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LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
Whether or no the story is true that Lord Pembroke wrote and requested his wife to join the party on the Continent, bringing with her a guitar, two servants who played the French horn and his dog Rover and that it required all the influence of her eldest brother to prevent her accep- tance of the invitation, it is certain that she never lost her affection for her husband and that in 1765, when Lady Di's distresses were reaching their climax, she was spoken of as a model of domestic felicity. Gilly Williams, writing to his gossip, George Selwyn, from Brighton in that year, says : " Poor Lady Bully would envy the extreme conjugal felicity her sister lives in, if she had been witness of their life here " — a sentence which suggests that their reconciliation, which took place in 1763, had borne lasting fruits.
But to return to the year 1762. Lady Di was a great favourite with the Queen and went about a great deal in society, but her home life was becoming more and more unbearable. We know that she had rather a serious difference with her husband this year, as Gilly Williams speaks of a reconciliation. " Bully and his wife are gone lovingly to Lydiard," he says ; and we presume that for the time the quarrel was patched up.
In August of this year the Duke of Marlborough married Lady Caroline Russell, only daughter of the Duke of Bedford, a marriage which was probably pleasing to Lady Di as she was always a great deal with the Bedfords and on good terms with the Duchess, with whom we often find her. It was at the Duchess of Bedford's party that Lord Bolingbroke made his first proposal and we often
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LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
find her in her society, both after her first marriage and in the troubled time preceding her second marriage. The Duke, it will be remembered, married Lady Di Spencer in. 173 1. After her death he married, in 1737, Lady Gertrude Levison, eldest daughter of John, Earl Gower, a woman of rather a disagreeable character, but who appears to have been fond of her husband's nephews and nieces and especially of Lady Di, who very much resembled his first wife.
Society said that the Duchess behaved in the most abominable manner with regard to this marriage and that both she and her daughter were only influenced by the promptings of ambition and the desire to secure a good match. Mrs. Scott, writing to her sister, Mrs. Montagu, says that they were married " eight-and-forty hours after His Grace declared himself a lover. The Duke of Bedford was always known to be a man of business, but he never despatched a matter quicker than this. He gave Lady Caroline ^50,000 down, and is to give as much more at his death " ; and much the same account of this transaction is given by Lord Holland in the Memoir which is published with the " Life and Letters of Lady Sarah Lennox." He says : " The mean and unbecoming artifices the Duchess of Bedford made use of to bring this match on, and which she had so little pride as to use in publick too, exposing herself to the ridicule of the whole world, are not to be described. The D. of Marlboro' saw them, and spoke of her Grace allways with the utmost scorn and derision, sometimes with detestation ; and this too
49 "
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
publickly for his own honour, as the event has happened." The marriage, in spite of these not very pleasant pre- liminaries, turned out very well. The Duchess, who as Lady Carr Russell had been rather a "hoyden" in the language of the day, softened and grew more sympathetic later on and was reported to be very much in love with her husband. She is painted with the Duke and their children in the magnificent portrait group by Sir Joshua Reynolds which is now at Blenheim.
There was another family wedding in this year. Lord Charles Spencer to Mary, only daughter of Lord Vere of Han worth, on which occasion Lady Betty Germaine's exquisite collection of antique gems came into the family and were afterwards celebrated under the name of the " Marlborough gems."
In 1763, both Lord and Lady Pembroke sat for their portraits to Sir Joshua Reynolds, and Lord and Lady Bolingbroke were also among his sitters.
Lady Pembroke's portrait, which is at Wilton, is a little disappointing, giving very little idea of the radiant beauty she must, according to all accounts, have possessed ; but of course allowance must be made for the fact that the carnations have completely faded away. She is repre- sented as a pale, sad woman, with good features and has her little son with her, who was destined in after life to marry her sister's daughter, Elizabeth Beauclerk. Lady Di's own portrait was considered to be a speaking likeness and we find Lord Bolingbroke attending the sittings and showing great interest in the progress of the picture and
50
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
even advising Sir Joshua as to some touches which he thought would add to the resemblance. " You must give the eyes something of Nelly O'Brian, or it will not do,"
By Powell. A/ttrSir Joshua Reynolds.
Viscountess Bolingbroke.
Formerly in the Strawberry Hill Collection. By kind permission of the Earl of Normanton.
he said, doubtless turning to the picture of that celebrated beauty, with whom he was reported to be on very good terms and whose portrait must have been in the studio at the time, as it was completed in this year.*
* According to Sir Joshua Reynolds' note-book, the Duke of Marlborough paid for Lord Bolingbroke's portrait as well as for that of Lady Pembroke and
51 H 2
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
We have a passing glimpse of Lady Di about this time from the vivid pen of Horace Walpole. He describes a masquerade given at Richmond House and we seem to see the briUiantly-h'ghted rooms and illuminated gardens, the throng of masks everywhere, the shimmer of satin and the glint of gold and jewels, the crowd pressing down Whitehall to try and get a view of the fireworks which rose up from barges decked with streamers, stationed in the middle of the Thames. He then tells us that the Dukes of York and Cumberland and the Marquis of Anspach were there and about six hundred masks and that " Mrs. FitzRoy in a Turkish dress. Lady George Lennox and Lady Bolingbroke as Grecian girls. Lady Mary Coke as Imoinda, were the principal beauties of the night."
Beyond these slight and unsatisfactory glimpses we have very little knowledge of any events which might have affected Lady Di at this time. Her brother-in-law, Henry St. John, who was an inveterate letter-writer, has left some records of this date in his correspondence with
her child. The latter is now at Wilton House and we give a reproduction of the portrait which hangs opposite to it and which Mr. Algernon Graves thinks is without doubt Lord Bolingbroke. There is also a picture of George, Duke of Marlborough, at Wilton, painted at the same date as the two others and there seems no doubt that these three pictures, which were all paid for by the Duke, were given or bequeathed by him to his sister Lady Pembroke, especially as they are the only pictures by Sir Joshua at Wilton which were not purchased by Lord Pembroke or his successors. Lady Di's portrait is, or was, in the possession of one of her grand-daughters, Mrs. Aldridge. The reproduction we give is from the picture by Powell after Sir Joshua, which hung in theBeaucIerk closet at Strawberry Hill and is now at Somerley.
52
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK
George Selwyn, but it is chiefly taken up by what, in a later age and referring to another sex, might be called "chiffons." This is hardly surprising in an age when Charles Fox travelled from Paris to Lyons with Lord Carlisle on purpose to buy waistcoats and during the journey talked of no other subject and in an era of fashion when male attire lent itself to discussion by its richness and variety. We find him, therefore, talking of his trips abroad with the Duke of York, or of the obliging manner in which George Selwyn had executed a commission for his royal master as to some applique. " I am satisfied it is ' du dernier gout,' " he says, interlard- ing his phrases with French idioms according to his fashion, " and the D. will
be pleased to hear that it is coming, and so pretty, though he certainly will not be able to wear it at the marriage, as he sets out on the 15th of next month for the Mediterranean. I am very happy to attend him in his travels in Italy, a country I wanted much to see, and by
53
By kind permissiosi of
Colcel Lascelles. -pj^g Milkmaid.
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
no means a bad opportunity of seeing it." Then he writes to George Selwyn from Paris about the commissions which he has in his turn executed for his friends — " Your night- gown, a dauphine, is pretty, it is the colour you desired and costs five louis and a half" ; he has chosen a pretty silk for Lord March's coat and a chenille embroidery, analogue to the fourrure ; he has even attempted to execute Mme. Fagnani's wishes with regard to a marchande- de-gaze, but finding that rather beyond his powers, he asks her to write and explain the details more fully. In the following year he returned to England, much exhausted after his travels. George Selwyn writes in September,
1764 : "The Baptist has recovered his fatigue, and been so well nursed at Lydiard that there is no appearance of his having been for a whole twelve months together on a pack-horse." *
* Lord and Lady Spencer, who were in Italy at the time and met the Duke of York frequently, reported that Henry St. John was so fatigued with the incessant travelling that he had to be left behind at many
Cupid Hiding. places.
VVoolbedmg Collection.
54
INFANT PAN. From a water-colour drawing by Lady Diana Beauclerk. By kind permission of Colonel Lascelles.
To face page 55-
From Dryden's Fabies.
Jin^rraved by Gardiner.
Headpiece to the Flower and the Leaf.
CHAPTER V.
TN 1762, a daughter was born and christened Charlotte. She died very young and was buried at Battersea, being the last of the family to be buried in the St. John vault, as Lord Bolingbroke sold the Battersea property including the old manor-house where his uncle ended his days, to Lord Spencer in the following year.
Lady Di's second son was born on December 20, 1765 and christened Frederick.
In this year the Bolingbroke's disagreements were freely discussed and Lord Holland* writes to George Selwyn : " Tell Lord Bolingbroke to take Jupiter's advice :
*' ' Follow, and you'll find her soon appeased. For I, who made her, know her inmost state ; No woman, once well pleased, can truly hate.' "
* Born 1705, died 1774.
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
" She has been well pleased, I hope : let him follow, court, and prevail with her to be so again."
Whether this advice was taken or not, we do not know, but it was certainly without effect. Lady Di was not only disgusted with her husband, but was, unfortunately for herself, falling under the influence of that fascinating individual and acknowledged wit, Topham Beauclerk. There seems to have been no attempt to conceal this connection and society was already busy with rumours of a divorce. The Bolingbrokes were separated and Lady Di, with her usual straightforward behaviour, faced the situation, declared that she did not intend to dispute the question, but, with the approval of her family, to marry Topham Beauclerk directly the divorce was obtained.
Perhaps the best idea of the situation may be gleaned from a letter from Lady Sarah Lennox to Lady Susan O'Brian, written January 9, 1766. She writes: "I do not find that it's true that seventeen people are to be parted, as the newspapers said, but there has been as many reports to the full. However, I think none is fixed but Lord and Lady Bolingbroke, Mr. Finch and Lady Charlotte and Lord and Lady Fortescue. The two latter are because the husbands are stark-staring mad, and have attempted to kill their wives and children ; the former is because both sides are mad, I believe. But, seriously speaking, I believe Lord B. is much the same as mad when he is drunk, and that is generally. Lady B.'s reason for parting is that she cannot live with him with safety to her health. Lord B. is very penitent, and
56
By kind permission of Colonel Lascelles
After the pastel by his tnother. Viscountess Boliiigbroke.
The Honble. George St. John, afterwards third Viscount Bolingbroke, with George Selwyn's dog " Raton."
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
wants her to come back, but she won't trust him. Her reason is a very good one, but whether she ought to forgive him or not depends on circumstances and temper, which nobody but themselves can be judge of; he says he is more in love with her than ever, and would marry her now if she was Lady Die Spencer. Everybody that don't love her pities him, but, as I had heard he had got a woman in the house already, I can't say I do, for if he was unhappy at the thoughts of having used her so cruelly as he has done, surely a man that had any feeling would not recover his spirits so easily ! If he feels that at all, he must feel it very strongly. I own I am partial to her, and have taken a great fancy to her lately ; not but I think she may be to blame too. She is in great spirits, and seems to be very glad that she has got rid of him."
It will be seen from this letter that Lady Di left her home of her own accord, and refused to go back. Let us turn to the other side and see what the offended and offending husband could bring forward in his defence. Poor Bully, who, as one of his intimates said, was living a turbulent life with rogues and profligates of all sorts, perhaps at no other time of his career does he appear before us with some little advantage. He writes to Selwyn :
Dear George,
I intended to sup with you this evening, but I am so low, dejected, and miserable that I cannot speak. I can only cry. The just parting with her whom i know
59 ' 2
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
(though she does not yet) I shall not see again this long while, quite overcomes me. I shall therefore go and lie out of town this evening.
Do, my dear George, contrive to meet Lady Waldegrave as soon as you can, and immediately set about what we were talking of this morning. Do, dear George, and let me know what success you meet with in your application to Lady Waldegrave. I mean, tell me whether she is sensible about it. But you can make her. If ever you happen to talk of me to Lady Di represent me as appearing to you altered and unhappy. Excuse my plaguing you with my nonsense. You know too well the comfort it affords an afflicted man to talk to his friend and tell his afflictions, not to forgive me.
Adieu, dear George,
Yours sincerely,
BOLINGBROKE.
The Lady Waldegrave whose influence he was so anxious to secure was daughter of John, first Earl Gower, sister of the Duchess of Bedford and of Granville, 3rd Earl Gower and consequently aunt of the Duchess of Marl- borough. For all these reasons it is very likely that she was on intimate terms with his wife ; but whether or no she exerted her influence, it was already too late to stop the course of events.
The friends of the family continued to take great interest in this unfortunate business and many fruitless attempts
60
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
were made to effect a reconciliation. Lord Guildford, who was one of Lady Di's trustees, was very active in this way, but without success. Gibbon writes of it to
By kind perltns^iioH o/ Colonel Lascelles.
The Spent Arrow.
Mme. de Boufflers as of an affair that makes a great deal of noise, adding an appreciation of the heroine of the romance. " It is a great pity," he says. " She is handsome and agreeable and ingenious far beyond the
61
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
ordinary rate." " I do not know Mr. Beauclerk," writes Lord Holland to George Selwyn, " but be he what he will, the fate of my poor dear friend's daughter afflicts me. I cannot bear to think of the folly of it, nor do I see how all her relations, if they wished her as well as I do, can mend the matter."
It must have been an unpleasant position for Lady Di, but from all accounts she carried it off with a high hand. We hear of her announcing, apparently in mere bravado, that she intends to go into waiting as usual and we know that Lord March saw her with the Bedfords and Lord Gower at M. Guerchy's. " She came in just after we had drank coffee," he says, " handsomer than ever I saw her, and not the least abashed. Pauvre Milor Gower^ il ne savoit que /aire de sa personne. ... I was sorry for him, for I knew what he suffered." The allusion to the admiration which Lord Gower was supposed to have felt for Lady Di is several times repeated in the letters of the day, but it is very doubtful whether it ever extended beyond the natural friendship of two people who were united by a community of tastes and connected by marriage. Lord Gower, who was born in 1721, had married in 1748 his second wife, Lady Louisa Egerton, daughter and co-heir of Scrope, Duke of Bridgewater and was to marry for the third time in 1768. Perhaps he would gladly have offered her the vacant throne, had she been available, for they had much in common (she with her artistic gifts and he with that keen appreciation which prompted him to buy a third part of the great Orleans collection when it
62
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
came on the market in 1798), but of any scandal con- cerning either of them the letter-writer of the day is silent, a fact which speaks volumes.
As we are looking at every side of the question, perhaps it may be interesting to see what Henry St. John
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Designed by Lady Diana Beauderk.
Engra-ued by Mariano Bovi.
Bacchus and Cupids Sporting.
From a print in the possession of Moore Garrett, Esq.
thought of it all. It is not surprising that he took his brother's part with so much energy, but he certainly seems to have quite forgotten the kindness and attention which he received at Lydiard after his stay in Italy and not to have a good word to say for his sister-in-law. He writes to George Selwyn in November, 1766: "My brother,
63
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
whom you so kindly inquire after, is not sunk into such low spirits, as you seem to have heard. I think, on the contrary, though he laments the loss of a home, he does not whimper and whine after the object that has been these two years past the cause of his melancholy, and, I fancy, he at last sees that object in its true light. From a desponding lover and husband, as we have seen him, he is determined to become more a man of the world, and not to sacrifice his pleasure and interest in life to the indulgence of a grief, brought on by accident originally, and afterwards continued by the foolish obstinacy of a woman, and promoted by the unfeeling behaviour and indolence of her brother. I need not illustrate to you my meaning. You are master of that subject, and, I am sure, was always much concerned at the rupture. As my brother is, as you properly style him, a vagabond, he eats every day his own mutton at my house, for he parted with his cook and all his establishment together with his house, and now we club a dinner together, and hope, when you return to London next month, you will some- times be of the party, if you can bear our petit couvert after Mons. le Premier's repast
Allowing a certain amount to brotherly partiality, surely a rather fairer version of the story might have been given, especially to George Selwyn, who was so intimately acquainted with both sides of the question and who must have known, from Lord Bolingbroke's letter, that he was not as indifferent as his brother would have liked to make out. In other letters, written about this time, he makes
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LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
constant allusion to little dinners at his house in Sackville Street, at which his brother was apparently a frequent guest. He writes to George Selwyn on December 9, 1768 : "I hope to be in town on New Year's Day, in order to have your company over a gigot and a bottle of claret. As 1 am soon going with my master * to Grantham and Althorpe, I shall not be sure of giving you that fete. I do desire, however, that you will very repeatedly assist at our coterie this year, as I dine at home four or five times a week a trois ou a quatre converts . . . You ask me how play uses me this year ? I am sorry to say very ill, as it has already, since October, taken ^800 from me, nor am I in a likely way to re-imburse myself soon by the emoluments of any place or military preferment, having voted the other evening in a minority. I own it appears ridiculous, in my situation in life, to be a patriot, but I think I can explain to you when we meet (it would be vastly too borish in a letter) my reasons to justify to you the opposition even of a poor younger brother on half-pay. I hear my master is to have his money, but I do not understand he will have it before the holidays.! This is a better court for a subject to live in than a Prince of the Royal Family. There are many rich men of the former class, none of the latter."
All this time Lord Bolingbroke was making a great effort to show that he was really worth something after all. He was shut up for hours with Lord Temple,
* The Duke of York.
t An annuity of ;^8oo a year.
65 K
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
having, in the language of the day, "a complete bore, or boar," about politics. He clothed himself in purple and fine linen every day, evidently in contrast to his usual habits, judging by the surprise it caused to his intimates and he announced his intention of becoming Minister through the good graces of his friends. But the mantle of that great politician, his uncle, was not destined to fall on to his shoulders, neither is the Minister of a great country evolved out of a young man whose life has been spent in gambling and dissipation to the exclusion of all other occupations. In his efforts to smarten himself and become more civilised, he was more successful and a letter to Selwyn, then in Paris, proves that he took some trouble to achieve this desirable end. The letter is written in the easy, half- bantering tone which is familiar to him and is not without a certain charm : " My dear George," he writes, " my brother has showed me a long, half French, half English letter, which you honoured him with. You have admired Mme. de Sevigne till your letters are as full of words and as void of matter as hers. To your admiration of her, and to the ennui which I am persuaded you suffer at Paris, I attribute the change of your epistolary style. For God's sake return home. Nature never meant you for a Frenchman. Burn your formal bag wig and put on your far more agreeable scratch . . ." After some talk on French and EngHsh politics, he says : " But all this is only a much wished- for reformation. I will tell you of one that has happened in private life. Lord B. is more like a gentleman than he
66
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
has hitherto been, and mixes more in the poHte world. He not only thinks you better qualified than anybody else to form and polish the mind of a fine gentleman, but also, by your present situation, very much qualified to adorn and improve the outside, and has therefore a mind to desire you to bring him over tw^o or three pair of laced ruffles. He does not, hov^ever, desire that his hands should be the only fine part about him, and there- fore wishes Mr. Selwyn may choose him that are not deep nor too dear.
some
Child.
Two pairs for winter and two for spring
would be sufficient for this campaign, and
as Lord B. much admires the taste and
elegance of Colonel St. John's Parisian
clothes, he wishes Mr. Selwyn would order
Le Due to make him a suit of plain
velvet. By plain is meant without gold
and silver ; as to the colours, pattern
and design of it, he relies on Mr. S.'s
taste. A small pattern seems to be the
reigning taste amongst the macaronis at Almack's, and is,
therefore, what Lord B. chooses. Le Due, however, must
be desired to make the clothes bigger than the generality
of macaronis, as Lord B.'s shoulders have lately grown
very broad. As to the smallness of the sleeves and length
of the waist. Lord B. desires them to be outre, that he
may exceed any macaroni's now about town, and become
the object of their envy."
67
K 2
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
Lord Bolingbroke accepted a post at Court in 1768, in the same month that La.dj Di sent in her resignation to the Queen and, according to Selwyn, received a very- gracious letter in reply.
The story of the time which preceded the divorce is to be gleaned from the pages of Lady Mary Coke's journal.* She tells of the efforts of the Duke of Bedford to arrange matters amicably ; of the death of Lady Di's baby on October 28th, 1767, just six weeks after its birth, an event which caused a temporary lull in the proceedings. The Duke of Marlborough, who took a most active interest in the affair, prevailed on Lord Bolingbroke to withdraw his petition, but it was only for a time. The child had, indeed, been the apple of discord, but the affair had gone too far to be patched up and Lady Di herself seems to have been most anxious to get it finally settled. The Duke of Marlborough, Lady Mary says, was very kind to his sister and helped her with money, although she tells us later that he did not forget, according to his custom, to take interest on it and dunned her at a time when she said she had not five guineas in her purse. The Marlboroughs were much away this year, until the " Talk of the Town " had subsided and the Pembrokes went abroad for the same reason.
The Duchess of Marlborough brought her two little girls, the elder of whom was said to resemble Lady Di, to Bedford House, one day about this time and Lady
* Letters and Journals of Lady Mary Coke, edited by the Hon. James Home. Lady Mary was born 1726 and died 181 1.
68
By kind permission of Colonel Lascelles.
Boy-Bacchanals.
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
Mary Coke, who was there at the time, says that she spoke of her sister-in-law as being so agreeable and a great loss to society and expressed herself anxious to see an end to the affair.
At last the divorce proceedings began. Prior to the establishment of the Divorce Court, in 1857, the actual dissolution of a valid marriage with freedom to the parties to marry again was the valued privilege of the rich, involving, as it did, first, an action in Westminster Hall for the recovery of damages ; secondly, proceedings in the Ecclesiastical Court for a separation from bed and board ; and, thirdly, a private Act of Parliament wholly dissolving the tie of matrimony and conferring in express terms upon both parties the right of re-marriage. It was the practice of the Bishops in the House of Lords, when one of these Bills was in committee, to move an amendment prohibiting this re-marriage and the Bill thus amended went down to the Commons, who, as a matter of course, struck out the amendment, whereupon the Bishops gave way and the Bill was passed in its original form.
Lord BoHngbroke took all these steps, first recovering ^500 and costs, then obtaining from the Consistory Courts of the Bishop of London a definitive sentence of divorce and finally obtaining an Act of Parliament, which received the Royal assent on the loth of August, 1768, which made the divorce absolute and allowed both Lord BoHng- broke and Lady Di to marry again. Lord BoHngbroke agreed to aUow her ;f8oo a year and seems to have acted in a spirit of fairness and even liberality.
71
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
Two days later, on August 12, 1768, Lady Di and Topham Beauclerk were married at St. George's, Hanover Square, where their names still appear in the register. The only witnesses were Lord Spencer *, son of the old Duchess of Marlborough's favourite. Lord John Spencer, who had been created Earl Spencer in 1756, and his wife, Margaret Poyntz, whose wedding festivities made one of the social events of the winter of 1755. It must have been a very quiet function in the ugly dark old church which has been the scene of so many brilliant ceremonies both before and since and probably made a striking contrast to her first marriage. In the register the bride signed her name Diana Beauclerk and then struck it out and wrote Diana Spencer in a beautifully clear hand.
And so the deed was done.
* Lady Mary Coke says that Lord Charles Spencer gave away the bride, but his name does not appear in the register.
IVooll'cdiiig Collection
Baby Fauns.
72
Fro)n Dryden's Fables
Ejtffmved by W. N. Gardiner.
Tailpiece to Theodore and Honoria.
CHAPTER VI.
" T ADY DI SPENCER was married at St. George's on Saturday morning," writes Gilly Williams to George Selwyn. " They are in town, at Topham's house, and give dinners. Lord Ancram dined there yesterday, and called her nothing but Lady Bolingbroke the whole time." Later on he writes : " Topham goes on with his dinners. Report says that neither of them will live a twelve-month, and if it is so, their life ought to be a merry one."
Topham Beauclerk, whose fascinating personality had overshadowed Lady Di's life at a time when that life offered
73 L
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
her very little worth having, was the only son of Lord Sidney Beauclerk, and the great-grandson of Charles IL and Nell Gwynn. Nell Gwynn, that "impudent comedian,"
By kind permission of the Duchess of St. Albans.
After a pastel by F. Cotes, R.A.
J^ /)tSMe^£^
as Evelyn calls her, " the indiscreetest and wildest thiag that ever was in a court," seems to have handed down her beauty and her undoubted wit as a legacy to her descendant,
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LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
who also possessed in a large measure the talent of " raconteur " which distinguished his royal ancestor *
His father, Lord Sidney, "Worthless Sidney," or "Sid the Beggar," as his contemporaries called him, had a fair share of these qualities himself, added to a perfect passion for fortune-hunting. "The man in England that gives the greatest pleasure and the greatest pain," writes Lady Mary Wortley Montagu in 1727, "is a youth of royal blood, with all his grandmother's beauty, wit, and good qualities. In short, he is, Nell Gwynn in person with the sex altered, and occasions such fracas amongst the ladies of gallantry that it passes description." Lady Mary inserts a little poem in this letter, of which Lord Sidney is the hero ; it treats of the infatuation of the old Duchess of Cleveland and of his hopes of being made her heir. As he was not successful in this attempt, he tried to persuade Lady Betty Germaine, Swift's correspondent, to marry him in her old age and failing in this scheme, he turned his attention to his own sex. After fruitlessly pursuing Sir Thomas Reeve, the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas and attending him assiduously while on circuit, in the hopes of securing his fortune, he finally persuaded Mr. Topham, of Windsor, to leave him his estates of Clewer, Brocas and Didworth, and his fine collection of pictures, prints and drawings. He eventually married Miss Mary Norreys, of Speke Hall, Lancashire, an ancient moated
* The first Duke of St. Albans, son of Charles II. and Nell Gwynn, married Lady Diana de Vere, daughter and heiress of the Earl of Oxford. She was noted for her beauty.
75 L2
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
house mentioned in Domesday Book.* He died in i744t and Lady Sidney in 1766, when she left her son "consider- able moveables" and, report said, ^3,000 a year. We know nothing further of her except that she was thirty-six years of age when she married and that Dr. Johnson denied her a sense of humour. " She had no notion of a joke, sir," he said ; " had come late into life, and had a mighty unpliable understanding." He passed this judgment on his friend's mother after a drive in a coach with that lady, her son and Bennett Langton, during the course of which she seemed incapable of perceiving that the scheme of buying a house, near a rather undesirable place of public amusement called Cupar's Gardens, was only suggested in joke. She grew angry and said that " an old man should not put such things into young people's heads," a rebuke which was doubtless received by the great moralist with the scorn it merited. A mighty unpliable understanding, indeed !
Topham Beauclerk was born in 1739 and called after Mr. Topham, whose property he inherited. He went to Trinity College, Oxford, in November, 1757, two months after Lady Di's first marriage and here he made friends with Bennett Langton and through him with Dr. Johnson, t- Langton, or " Lanky " as he was called on account of his
* The Norreys family is descended in the female line from the ancient family of Salusbury. Mrs. Thrale was a IVIiss Salusbury, and visited Speke Hall in company with Dr. Johnson.
t It is sometimes stated that he is buried in Westminster Abbey, but there is no memorial to him. There is a monument to his brother, the naval hero, Lord Aubrey Beauclerk.
J Born 1709, died 1784.
76
:§'}
Q
3 .5
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
great height (as Beauclerk was called "Beau" on account of his good looks), was a man of good disposition and average talents ; slow, mild, steadfast and a devoted friend. He was a good classic scholar, a great talker, though not a brilliant one ; he fancied that he had a gift for reading aloud and confessed that he had " no turn for economy." Probably his chief characteristic was a very pronounced religious temperament and in this, as in so many other points, he was strangely unlike the youth who was keeping up the wild traditions of his family, who was an infidel at heart and whose gifts all lay in the direction of sparkling brilliancy, but who was destined to be his intimate and life-long friend.
Bennett Langton,* a hero-worshipper by nature, went to London on purpose to make acquaintance with Dr. Johnson ; an undertaking in which he succeeded, being favoured by fortune and the kindness of his landlady. The great man was very gracious to his admirer who was presented to him at his levee and shortly afterwards visited him at Oxford. Here he made the acquaintance of Beauclerk and struck up a fi-iendship with him, which caused quite a stir among his London friends. " The moral, pious Johnson and the gay, dissipated Beauclerk were companions," says Boswell. " What a coalition," says Garrick.t " I shall have my old friend to bail out of the Round House."
But the fi-iendship ripened fast. Beauclerk "was too polite, and valued learning and wit too much to offend Johnson by sallies of infidelity or hcentiousness, and Johnson deHghted in the good qualities of Beauclerk and
* Born 1737, died 1801. t Born 1717, died 1779.
79
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
hoped to correct the evil." He was also fascinated by his resemblance to the Stuarts, for whom he always professed much admiration and Topham, although he inherited Nell Gwynn's beauty, had a decided resemblance to Charles 11. It is very difficult to give even an approximate estimate of the talents which distinguished this remarkable man. His learning, his wit, his satire, his imaginative powers, were all poured forth in conversation and no record remains except the universal testimony of contemporaries as to its excellence and the few samples given us in the pages of Boswell's " Life." Perhaps the former is the most con- vincing, for we feel that the eloquence which delighted such men as Johnson and Burke,* Gibbon t and Garrick, Charles FoxT- and Lord Charlemont,§ must have had a fine and distinguished flavour of pungent wit ; II but when we read the actual words he is supposed to have said we are conscious of a feeling of disappointment. After all, who can bottle froth and pour it out again retaining all its original sparkle ? Written conversation generally lacks that spontaneity which charms us in spoken words and we lose the play of the features, the sound of the voice, the half-expressed word, the smile, the look that completed a phrase, the thousand and one things that make up the
* Born 1729, died 1797.
t Born 1737, died 1794.
X Born 1748, died 1806.
§ Born 1728, died 1799.
II Dean Barnard in the poem which he wrote, after being set down rather rudely by Johnson, and in which he mentioned all that he hoped to learn from the company of wits, says that Burke will teach him how to speak, and " Beauclerk to converse."
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LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
whole. Undoubtedly, Boswell is the king of biographers, for he tries to make his characters live before us and speak in their own words and succeeds so well that he almost shares in the impersonal glory of Plato. We hear Socrates
By kind permis sum of Colonel Lasceltes.
Infant Pan.
Speak and we hear Johnson ; but who can say how much of the philosophy of the one belonged to the transcriber of the immortal Dialogues, or how much of the pompous verbosity of the other was due to his biographer ? Boswell, indeed, had the gift of mimicry, a most retentive memory
8i M
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
and probably was guilty of a surreptitious note-book; he has certainly retailed Johnson's conversation with great accuracy and in the spirit of its utterance, as far as we can judge from other sources and from the Doctor's own writings, but then it must be remembered that he had made an exhaustive study of his master. Lord Pembroke said that Dr. Johnson owed much to his "bow-wow" manner and Beauclerk must have depended a great deal on the cool, quiet and rather caustic way with which he was wont to bring out his good things.
"Goldsmith," said Lord Macaulay, "lived in what was intellectually far the best society of the kingdom; in a society in which no talent or accomplishment was wanting, and in which the art of conversation was cultivated with splendid success. There probably were never four talkers more admirable in four different ways than Johnson, Burke, Beauclerk, and Garrick ; and Goldsmith was on terms of intimacy with them all." In Hardy's Life of Lord Charlemont we find one of the most detailed accounts of Beauclerk's character, and one which gives a good idea of the variety of his accomplishments and the versatility of his mind. He says : " He possessed an exquisite taste, various accomplishments, and the most perfect good breeding. He was eccentric, often generous, entertaining a contempt for the generality of the world, which the politeness of his manners could not always conceal; but to those whom he liked, most generous and friendly. Devoted at one time to pleasure, at another to Hterature, sometimes absorbed in play, sometimes in books, he was, altogether, the most
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LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
accomplished and, when in good humour and surrounded by those who pleased his fancy, one of the most agreeable men that could possibly exist."
One of the chief charms of his conversational powers seems to have been his spontaneity, and this quality was very
4/ler a painting by Lady Diana Eeauclerk.
Jingraved in colours by Mariana Bovi.
Venus.
much envied by Dr. Johnson, who, accustomed to throne in taverns and to talk to a room which expected great things of him, never left much to chance. " Everything," he once said, " comes from Beauclerk so easily that it appears to me I labour if I say a good thing." Mrs. Thi:ale, who certainly
83 M 2
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
was not prejudiced in his favour — " Lord, how I did hate that horrid Beauclerk ! " she says somewhere — bore testimony to the veracity of his stories and to Dr. Johnson's appreciation of the ease with which they were uttered. " Beauclerk was jfirst upon the languid list of ton people. Dr. Johnson, who was all emphasis himself, felt ipris of such a character : a man of quality, who disdained effect in conversation, to which he never came unprepared."
It was doubtless this mixture of learning and the world, of folly and wisdom, of frivolity and solidity which con- stituted the charm of Beauclerk's character and gave a spice to his lightest word. When he became one of the shining lights of Dr. Johnson's circle and an acknowledged wit, he did not desert the haunts of fashion and he aimed at being considered faultlessly turned out.
We know that he was the " example of all who wished, without incurring the censure of foppery, to become con- spicuous in the gay world " and that his fringant equipage of grey and silver delighted the town. Besides these brilliant social qualities, he possessed others of not quite so attractive a quahty. He was irritable, sardonic, " acid " and as ill-health increased his temper became more difficult. He was very absent-minded also and was once found asleep in bed by his footman who went to announce the arrival of some friends whom he had invited to dinner.
Shortly after leaving Oxford he became engaged to a Miss Draycott, but she seems to have perceived that he cared more for her lead-mines than for herself and broke off the engage- ment after the license had been procured. Topham, evidently
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LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
without much regret, started soon after on the Grand Tour and was accompanied part of the way by Langton. Dr. Johnson gave him an introduction to Baretti at Milan, but he appears to have amused himself so well in Paris that he was some time before he arrived to present it. "I beg you will show Mr. Beauclerk all the civilities which you have in your power," Johnson writes in the first letter, " for he has always been kind to me." And he writes again December 21, 1762, " I gave a letter to Beauclerk, who, in my opinion and in his own, was hastening to Naples for the recovery of his health ; but he has stopped in Paris, and I know not when he will proceed. Langton is with him."
He arrived at Milan at last, having lost, according to report, ^10,000 to a thief at Venice and Baretti, who was afterwards tried for his life in London,* gave him introduc- tions to many prominent people. "How little does travelling supply to the conversation of any man who has travelled ; how little to Beauclerk," says Johnson, after his return and we may be sure that however much he had enjoyed his experience abroad he did not bore his acquaintance with long accounts of his adventures and that he was heartily glad to find himself in his old familiar haunts again.
Of his life at this time there is a good deal to be
* On the occasion of Baretti's trial (1769), Johnson, Goldsmith, Burke, Garrick and Beauclerk all appeared in the witness box and testified to his good character. He was accused of stabbing a man in the street, but was acquitted, as it was proved that he only acted in self-defence. As an instance of his dry humour, there is a story told of an Italian who visited him in prison and asked him to recommend him to his pupils in case he should be hanged. To this rather cold-blooded request, Baretti replied: "You rascal! if I were not in my own apartment I would kick you down-stairs."
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LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
gleaned from the pages of Boswell, but the stories in which Johnson figures with his two young friends, his "Beau" and his " Lanky," are almost too well known to need more than a passing reference and the later examples of Beauclerk's wit are somewhat disappointing. Beggars, how- ever, must not be choosers and for want of newer or of more convincing material, let us pass in review the old stock of anecdotes which have, let it be acknowledged, the inestimable benefit of being given us by a contem- porary whose testimony is above fear or reproach and whose opportunities of observing the subject of this sketch were innumerable.
We have, then, the celebrated " Frisk" story. Beauclerk and Langton — the idea must surely have originated with the former — called at Johnson's lodgings in the Temple at three o'clock in the morning. The philosopher appeared in a shirt and wearing a little black wig instead of a night-cap. He was armed with a poker and prepared for burglars. We can imagine how he must have laughed when he perceived his gay companions on the doorstep. " What, is it you, you dogs ? Til have a frisk with you," he says and quickly dressing he is soon 'with them. They wander into Covent Garden, where Johnson's grotesque appearance excites the mirth and fear of the market-gardeners; they make a bowl of Bishop's punch at an adjoining tavern, they row down the river as far as Billingsgate and John- son and Beauclerk prolong the revel far into the day, leaving Langton to go to a breakfast party with " some un-idea'd girls," chaffing him doubtless unmercifully on
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LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
the change of conversation from their own brilliancy to society platitudes.
There is another well-known story of Johnson staying with Beauclerk at Windsor and being inveigled into a
By ki»d permission of Colonel Lascelles.
Landscape.
churchyard during Divine Service, where he stretched himself full length on a tombstone and was likened to Hogarth's " Idle Apprentice" by his irreverent young friend. Beauclerk used to delight Johnson by giving " experiments in natural philosophy" here, a science for which he always had a great
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LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
aptitude.* In 1764 the Literary Club was formed at Sir Joshua Reynolds's suggestion, the original members being: — Sir Joshua Reynolds,t Dr. Johnson, Burke, Goldsmith, -t Dr. Nugent, Sir J. Hawkins, Beauclerk, Langton and Chamier, who was Secretary of the War OiEce and a friend of Beauclerk's. Afterwards the number was greatly increased and counted Garrick among its members. The Club was held at the Turk's Head Tavern in Gerrard Street, Soho and met every Monday night, when the chair was taken by the members in succession. Conversation ran on any topic under the sun, politics alone being excluded and we can easily imagine that Beauclerk found himself greatly in his element. Here Johnson spoke in measured periods, or descended suddenly and unawares on anyone who disagreed with him ; here Burke, a bad listener but an eloquent speaker, although possibly not a witty one, delighted a smaller and more select audience than the one to which he was accustomed at St. Stephen's ; here Langton talked in his slow, long-winded way and here Beauclerk himself, with all the raciness of his original wit, showed : " the elegance and fascination of his manners, his inexhaustible fund of agreeable information, his delightful conversational powers, his love of literature, and his constant and enviable flow of animal spirits," which "ren-
* In the imaginary academy which Johnson and Boswell planned during their tour in the Hebrides and which was to be governed entirely by the members of the Literary Club, Beauclerk was to be given the chair of Professor of Natural Philosophy, a science which would be sub-divided into many parts in these days.
•j" Born 1723, died 1792.
J Born 1728, died 1774.
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LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
dered him an universal favourite as well with the grave and wise as with the dissipated and gay."
Here is another testimony to his powers, from a fellow- debater, who, though a most "unclubbable man," must have had plenty of opportunities of testing their merit : — " His conversation was of the most excellent kind ; learned, witty, polite, and where the subject required it, serious, and over all his behaviour there beamed such a sunshine of cheerfulness and good humour as communicated itself to all around him."*
* Sir J. Hawkins.
Woolbeding Collection.
Little Gipsy.
89
N
nryden-s Failes. Bugramd by F. Sarlolozz:. R.A.
Tailpiece to " The Cock and the Fox."
CHAPTER VU.
TT was no wonder that Lady Di fell under the spell of fascination which Beauclerk exercised over all with whom he came in contact and if we • had not the testi- mony of Burke and Lady Louisa Stuart as to his cruelty and ill-treatment of his wife, we might have hoped that she would have passed the rest of her life in happiness by the side of one so liberally endowed by nature with all those instincts of culture and refinement which she possessed herself. But in her long life, so full of incident and interest, of artistic accomplishment, of love, admiration and friendship, domestic happiness does not seem to have ever played a part, although probably in her early married life she may have had some semblance of it, while the glamour of Beauclerk's fascination dazzled her and the
90
DESIGN FOR A CEILING.
From a water-colour drawiiig by Lady Diana, Beauclerk. By kind pen^iission of Colonel Lascelles.
To face page 90.
By kind fiemtisston o/ De Vere Beauclerk, Esq.
Artist iinknirwii.
Portrait of Lady Diana Beauclerk.
N 2
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
ill-humour he displayed as his health grew worse, was only noticeable in occasional outbursts of cynicism and petu- lance. From the first Lad)^ Di attracted her husband's friends and in after life she always retained their esteem. Johnson, it is true, held aloof at first and when Boswell expatiated on her charms, he answered, roughly enough, that one should never mingle vice with virtue; but as time went on he must have laid aside his prejudices as he was constantly in her society and testified in after years to the devotion with which she nursed her husband through one of his many illnesses. He had a very strong opinion on the subject of divorce and was never backward in airing it in any company. About this time he met Lord Bolingbroke at the Thrales' while staying at Brighton and deliberately turned his back on him. The worthy brewer was annoyed at this treatment of a distinguished guest and one who cannot very often have affected such company and remonstrated with the Doctor, who replied with sarcasm ; " I am not obliged. Sir, to find reasons for respecting the rank of him who will not condescend to declare it by his dress or some other visible mark : what are stars and other signs of superiority made for ? " The next evening he sat down by Lord Bolingbroke and harangued loudly on the use and abuse of divorce. Many people gathered round to hear what was said and when Mr. Thrale at last managed to tell him to whom he was talking, he said: "Why, Sir, I did not know the man. If he will put on no other mark of distinction, let us make him wear his horns ! "
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LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
Having said his say and entered his protest on the subject of the divorce, Dr. Johnson accepted Lady Di's hospitaUty and became a regular guest at the dinners in v^^hich her husband delighted. The society into which she was thrown so much, the society of such men as Johnson, Gibbon, Hume, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Garrick, Goldsmith, Burke and Charles Fox, must have been very congenial to her and certainly contributed to ripen her genius j possibly also, the cessation of her duties at Court and her appear- ance at all the great social functions of the day, gave her more leisure to accomplish the work by which she is now so well known. She must, even at first, have had a good deal of spare time on her hands. Beauclerk, who had forfeited his membership to the Literary Club by his non- attendance during the past years, was re-elected ;* he resumed his wonted life and dawdled away the morning at Dr. Johnson's levee and spent his evenings, as often as not, in the society of his chosen companions at some tavern from which he did not return until the small hours of the morning. Lady Di's leisure hours were evidently spent with a pencil in her hand, as the mass of work she has left behind her testifies and her hand gained in surety and dexterity as she applied herself more and more to the art she loved. She " found herself" very early and seems always to have realised the aim and scope of her talent and to have aimed at perfecting it as far as lay in her power. She had a clear and
* He attended about forty dinners at the Literary Club between 1775, the date when the records commence, and 1780, the date of his death.
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LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
distinct conception of the joyous and decorative nature of her work ; she recognised both the extent and the limitations of her talent — a talent so much in harmony with the age in which she lived — and she used it in the branch of art in which it was most likely to make itself felt. We hear a great deal of her large pictures which were drawn to illustrate Horace Walpole's tragedy " The Mysterious Mother," but are, unluckily, unable to form any idea of their merit ; we know that she decorated whole rooms at Little Marble Hill with singular success, but these, too, have perished and the only examples of her more ambitious work which remain are the pastel portraits of which a good many are still to be found. Excellent as they undoubtedly are, it is in the more modest walks of art that her genius manifests itself to the greatest extent ; it is in her designs for Wedgewood, her drawings for Bartolozzi, her inimitable water-colour drawings which breathe the spirit of a woodland Arcady and have all the decorative quality which distinguished the art of the century in which she lived. Here we find the little chubby children in drawing whom she excelled, for she drew a child in the manner of one who had studied child-life and loved it; the child bacchanals with grape- crowned heads, the Cupids and the baby Pans, laughing, quarrelling, playing in the woodland groves just where we. should expect to find them. There is a curious affinity between the frisking goat she loves to introduce and their companions, the little goat-footed mischievous creatures who are nearly always to be found lurking in
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LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
some corner of her pastorals and the whole compositions suggest that link between humanity and the animal world, between both these and the supernatural world which makes the fascination of mythology.
Next in order come her portrait sketches and of these we have some admirable examples, Charles James Fox, the Duchess of Devonshire and her two daughters, all of which are of the first order and possibly we might add the caricature of Gibbon to this Hst as although intentionally grotesque, it was evidently a speaking likeness.
It is difficult to say what influence Sir Joshua Reynolds had on her art. He admired her talent and was often heard to say that many of her drawings might be studied as models. He dined perpetually at the Beau- clerks', as both Boswell and his own note-books record, and must have often talked to her both of art and of that art-education which was just then spurring him on with a new enthusiasm. In the year 1769, which followed Lady Di's marriage, he gave his first lecture to the Academy students and on April 26 the Royal Academy opened its first exhibition of one hundred and thirty-six pictures and closed it on May 27, during which time we may be sure she visited the gallery and stood before the President's picture of the two beauties, Mrs. Crewe and the Mrs. Bouverie who was afterwards to marry her favorite brother Lord Robert Spencer. But we cannot trace very much of the master's influence in her work. She was essentially a designer and the glamour of colour
96
By kind permission of the Earl nfPcmiroke.
Hawking Party.
O
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
which was in his eyes, had very little attraction for her. She used it indeed frequently, but with a sparing hand and her pictures, although they often owe much of their charm to a touch of pink rose or to a wash of that particularly pure pale blue which she affected, do not rely so much for their effect on colour as on design and composition.
As to the sources of her inspiration, she sought them as we have seen, in studying and copying the works of the old masters, to which she added a perpetual study of nature. She drew her own children, she used her friends and relations as models, she sketched many a glade in Richmond Park and elsewhere for use in her composi- tions ; she was never idle.. But it is hard to say how much she owed to the great portrait painters, how much to her friendship with Sir Joshua, to the study she must certainly have given to the works of Gainsborough and Romney. It is probable that she owed some of her technique to the minor artists of the day, whose work was more analagous to her own, but beyond a certain hatching treatment of landscape which suggests Gainsborough's methods, it is not easy to trace any effects of the influence of the three great artists just mentioned. In the year 1769, Gainsborough was still in Bath; Romney was working hard in Newport Street, Longacre; Raeburn was in Scot- land and was only thirteen years of age, and in this year Lawrence and Shee were born. There is no record of her meeting Angelica Kauffmann, who was living in Golden Square and who, in this same year, made the mistake of her life by marrying a valet instead of his master. Morland at
99 02
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
this time, was only six years old, but in after life she owed a good deal to him and some of her work — notably " The Gipsies," now in the South Kensington Museum, which was painted in 1792, has a distinct resemblance to his style of composition and treatment. This influence can be traced also in many of her sketches of village life, but it is diflicult to explain how some of her bacchanalian children should have been attributed to him, as they are in quite another manner.
In her portrait sketches, although the more finished ones such as the portrait of the Duchess of Devonshire which was engraved by Bartolozzi is more in the manner of Gainsborough, she certainly owed something to Henry Bunbury ; her own, however, are free fi-om the affectation which spoils so many of his. From another point of view and considering another side of her talent, she resembles Cipriani, with whose work she must often have come in contact when drawing for Bartolozzi. The vignettes which she drew in pencil and red chalk for the illustrations of Dryden's "Fables" and Biirger's "Leonora" are very similar in design and treatment to some of his which are preserved in the British Museum and in her drawings of temples and the pseudo-classical furniture of mythology, she seems to have copied the same models. Here again, she is free from the sentimentality which is Cipriani's besetting sin, as she is free from the artificiality of de Loutherbourg and Zuccherelli to whose work her own has been likened, although it cannot be compared to the more accomplished technique of these professional artists.
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LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
Cosway was one of the fashionable artists of the day. He made charming pencil sketches, generally of the whole figure, with the face alone highly finished and coloured, contrasting with the grey tone of the whole picture; a
By Aitid permission o/the Earl of Pembroke.
After a water-colour sketch.
Nymphs and Fauns.
system on which Thomas Edridge founded his pencil portraits, the figures of which were slightly sketched in and the heads highly finished. Benjamin West, who illus- trated Pope's " Rape of the Lock," also adopted the plan of colouring the face of his pencil portraits, but these
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LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
trickeries do not ever seem to have tempted Lady Di, who worked either in pen and ink or water-colour for
choice.
Stothard was only fourteen at this date and would never have had much in common with her ; neither had Flaxman with his academic perfection, or Blake, who was to illustrate " Leonora," at just about the same time she was to engage on her version of it, with his strong mysticism.
But perhaps, after all, it is to France rather than to England that we should look for the sources of inspiration in modern work. It is doubtful if she ever saw any of the painting of the exquisitely decorative French school, but she must have known it by engravings and very certainly she lived in the charmed seclusion of that eighteenth - century Arcadia which is represented in so many of their chef d'oeuDres. She worked in the spirit of these artists whether consciously or unconsciously and her composition often reminds one of Fragonard.
If, as a French critic has asserted, the artist should be the interpreter of the ideals and aspirations of humanity in general and not strive for original or individual expression, if he should be as the chorister in a church or as the drum of the regiment, then the great decorative artists of this period fulfilled their mission.
The eighteenth century, as it has revealed itself to us, was an age of irresponsible gaiety, of luxury and outward bravery, of gorgeous apparel and decorative furniture ; an age, moreover, when masquerades were every-day occurrences
I02
By kind permission of Colonel Lascelles.
School-children.
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
and it was not unusual for fine ladies and gentlemen to dress as shepherds and shepherdesses and play at hay- making. In such a time the art which gave us fetes champetres and dances by moonlight under a ruined colonnade was as true to the spirit of the age as it was true to the canons of art itself. If it had not been so, would the delicate conceptions of the poet-painter Watteau have given us the strange sense of artificial reality which they actually convey ? The gracious figures of ladies sitting on a bench in the dusk, their attendant cavaliers on the grass at their feet, the half-mysterious figure of Pierrot himself with his loose white garments and his inevitable guitar strike us as perfectly natural personages in this sylvan drama.
It is only a step farther to discover Pan and his pipes half-hidden in some nook of blue -green woodland country, with perhaps the towers of an hospitable chateau peeping over the boughs of the trees. It is hardly incongruous, so closely do the probable and the improbable overlap each other in this age of transition.
The inimitable decorator Fragonard, who loves to place his shepherdesses in deserted gardens where broken sundials are over-grown with roses, also brings in little fat cupids and gods of love, who mingle quite naturally with their surroundings ; Lady Di, too, had the familiar spirits of her pencil, which like Watteau's Pierrots and Fragonard's shepherdesses and cupids, are never quite out of the picture and which, in her case, are the little goat-footed Pans who frolic and frisk, make love and
105 P
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LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
war, quarrel and play practical jokes and are righteously- chastised in the compositions which have something of the sweep of Fragonard and are all her own in their delightful vivacity.
Wootbeding Collection.
Cupids Gardening.
io6
LADY HERBERT AND HER CHILDREN. (?)
From a water-colour drawing by Lady Diana Beauclerk. By kind permission of Colonel Lascelles.
To face page 107.
Engraved by F. Bartolozzi, R.A.
Headpiece to " Leonore,'
CHAPTER VIII.
'IpHE Beauclerks lived in many houses during the course of the twelve years of their married life. In 1766 Topham rented a house at Cookham Ferry from Sir James Lowther* and in the lease he is described as of Charles Street, Berkeley Square. Whether this is the house to which he brought Lady Di in 1768, where they gave so many dinners and entertained their friends, it is hard to say, but it seems
* Sir James Lowther, afterwards first Earl of Lonsdale, married 1761 to Lady Mary Stuart, daughter of the Earl of Bute.
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LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
probable that it was, as there is no record of their having another town house before 1773, when they bought one in the newly-built Adelphi Terrace. The house at Windsor seems to have been let or sold, as there is no mention of it ; they took, instead, a villa at Muswell Hill, furnished it with great luxury and had beautiful gardens and greenhouses, besides an observatory and a laboratory fitted up with all the latest improvements. Muswell Hill was then a rural spot with some pretensions to beauty and had romantic memories of Arabella Stuart. It had a well, too, which in former times had been the object of a yearly pilgrimage and was a quiet, secluded place, where its owners had leisure to ride their hobbies and to cultivate their tastes, as well as to receive the friends who were always willing to leave the crowds of London for this charming retreat. The house has been pulled down, a fate in which many houses lived in by Lady Di have shared, and the dreary Alexandra Palace reigns in its stead.
The same fate has been decreed for another house which they owned at Twickenham and which was probably taken on account of its vicinitj to Strawberry Hill. It was called Little Marble Hill, and stood in the grounds of Marble Hill,* which was built for Lady Suffolk. Marble Hill is a square stone house of dignified aspect and contains a mahogany staircase which nearly caused a war with Spain. George II., who gave ^10,000 towards the building expenses, also presented the mahogany for the staircase fi-om his possessions
* Marble Hill has lately been bought by the County Council ; the grounds are to be preserved as a park and the house will possibly be utilised as a museum.
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LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
in the West Indies ; but owing to the indiscreet zeal of one of his naval officers, charged with the commission, it was col- lected on Spanish ground and a good deal of diplomacy had to be exerted before the incident was closed. Lady Suffolk was deaf and rather disagreeable, but she had her good
Draiun by S. Owen, Esq,
Engraved by W. Cooke.,
Little Marble Hill.
qualities ; she loved art and literature for their own sake and was very true to her friends. Pope laid out the grounds at Marble Hill and in spite of the uncultivated state of the garden at present, the master hand can still be traced in the general design. Swift stocked the cellars and of the excel- lence of the wine we cannot doubt; and Gay had his special room reserved for him. Horace Walpole,* too, dearly loved
* Born 171 8, died 1797. 109
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
a gossip with this deaf old woman and would often step over from his castle in his lavender-coloured suit and exchange a bushel of London news for her strawberries and cream, or talk over the old times, which always interested him. Lady- Suffolk died in 1767, however and by the time the Beauclerks occupied the small house her nephew Lord Buckinghamshire and his second wife, who was afterwards a good friend to Lady Di, were living at Marble Hill. Little Marble Hill was Lady Di's special delight, possibly her own property. We are told that " Lady Di fitted up the house with great elegance, and adorned many of the rooms with her own painting" and it is unfortunate, for many reasons, that the house was destroyed, nothing being left of it but the foundations.
One of the rooms was adorned with festoons of lilac and must have given her a good deal to do at the time. It inspired Horace Walpole to add a postscript to his " Parish Register," in which, if exception be taken to the metre — and in an age of unblushing effrontery in regard to verse it doubtless passed muster — it surely presents a charmingly descriptive picture of the room.
Here genius in a later hour,
Selected its secluded bower,
And threw around the verdant room
The blushing lilac's chill perfume.
So loose is flung each bold festoon —
Each bough so breathes the touch of noon —
The happy pencil so deceives,
That Flora, doubly jealous, cries,
" The work's not mine — yet trust these eyes,
'Tis my own Zephyr waves the leaves."
no
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
The wreaths or festoons of Ulac were painted in water- colour on green paper and had geranium, ivy and -periwinkle in the panels of the " surbase." Horace Walpole also describes another room painted with honeysuckle wreathed round pictures of children : " there is a baby Bacchus, so drunk ! and so pretty ! borne in triumph by Bacchanalian children," he says. He also tells us that she never made sketches, but painted quickly and directly and he laments, that owing to the fugitive nature of water-colours, these decorations are not likely to last more than a couple of summers.
Horace Walpole was by this time on very intimate terms with the Beauclerks; he liked their society and from the first he was a warm admirer of Lady Di's talents. He men- tions going to Muswell Hill on several occasions, on one of which he meets Banks and Solander,* with florists and natural historians, and on another he goes with his hosts to the auction of poor "Dicky" Bateman's household gods. " I had dined at Muswell Hill," he whites, " and the next day the Beauclerks', Miss Lloyd t and I went to old Windsor to see poor Mr. Bateman's t auction. It was a melancholy sight to
* Sir Joseph Banks, naturalist and explorer, born 1740, died 1820, had just returned from a voyage round the world with Captain Cook; Dr. Solander, a Swedish naturalist, born 1736, died 1782, who also took part in the expedition.
t Miss Lloyd had lived with Lady Di when Lady Bolingbroke and left her to take the post of housekeeper at Kensington Palace.
J Sir C. H. Williams in " Isabella, or the Morning," has an allusion to Mr. Bateman : —
" See, Betty, see who's there."
"'Tis Mr. Bateman, ma'am, in his new chair."
" Dicky's new chair ! the charming'st thing in town,
"Whose poles are lackered and whose lining's brown."
Ill
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
me in more lights than one. I have passed many pleasing days with him and Lady Hervey, and felt an additional pain by reflections on my child Strawberry." He was quite repaid for this visit by the joy of acquiring a cargo of old chairs which he had envied their late owner ever since he had picked them up at out-of-the-way farmhouses in 1761 — the auction took place in 1773 — and for which he had given three-and-sixpence and a crown apiece. The Beauclerks and " the Virgin," as he calls Miss Lloyd, returned with him and passed two days at Strawberry.
Muswell Hill was evidently regarded as a show place and we find from a letter written by Mrs. Boscawen to Mrs. Delany in 1776 that the Beauclerks had to protect them- selves from the curious by issuing tickets to view, after the manner of the master of Strawberry. Mrs. Boscawen com- plains that although she met Lady Di taking an airing and knew that Mr. Beauclerk was in town, she was not admitted to see the conservatory, which " was all she aspired to," without a ticket. " Resistance, you know, always makes one more obstinate, so Mrs. Leveson has wrote to Sir Joshua Reynolds to beg he will obtain the necessary passport," she writes. But the best idea of the place comes from the somewhat effusive pen of Boswell, written in the year 1773, when they had just bought the house in the Adelphi and after one of the illnesses which were only too frequent with Topham. He says : — " I am now at Mrs. Thrale's villa at Streatham, a delightftil spot. Dr. Johnson is here too. I came yesterday to dinner, and this morning Dr. Johnson and I return to London, and I go with Mr. Beauclerk to see his
112
By kind permissio7i of Colonel Lascelles.
Peasants.
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
elegant villa and library, worth ^3,000, at Muswell Hill, and return to dine with him. . . . Dr. Johnson went with me to Beauclerk's villa, Beauclerk having been ill. It is delightfiil, just at Highgate. He has one of the most numerous and splendid private libraries that I ever saw ; greenhouses, hothouses, observatory, laboratory for chemical experiments. In short, everything princely."
The thought that naturally arises in the mind on reading of all this luxury is, how were the means found to pay for it ? Topham raised money in various ways to eke out his own fortune and, in particular, borrowed ^5,000 of his brother- in-law, the Duke of Marlborough, giving his library as security and he probably was not over hasty in paying his bills, but even so he must have often been in financial difficulties. He was by nature extravagant and accustomed to gratifying every whim and Lady Di, on her side, accustomed to the profuse expenditure of Blenheim and Marlborough House, had no idea of money, as she found out later to her cost.
It will be seen that if Lady Di did not have a happy home she had at least an interesting life, surrounded by friends who were sympathetic to her tastes and in houses where everything was arranged with that regard to comfort and decorative beauty which distinguished everything which Topham Beauclerk undertook. She had three children — Charles George, Mary and Elizabeth, to whom she was devoted and who became an increasing delight to her and she kept up cordial relations with her own family. In December 1772 we find the Beauclerks taking part in a
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LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
large Christmas party at Blenheim. Lady Louisa Stuart tells us that the Duchess of Marlborough had strange stories to tell of the manners and customs of Topham Beauclerk a prop OS of this visit and remarks that the " elegant and accomplished gentleman was, however, what the French
call cynique in person and habits beyond what one could have thought possible in anyone but a beggar or
From, a sketch in the British Mitsfiim.
a gipsy, and gives us a sketch of his character which is not by any means as pleasing as some others we have quoted. She says : — " In the latter part of Mr. Beauclerk's life the man of pleasure grew morose and savage, and Lady Di had much to suffer from his temper- so had his children, to whom he was a selfish tyrant, without indulgence or affection. I used to hear much of him from Mrs. Herbert, who learned it fi-om Lady Herbert." * This version of his treatment of his wife corresponds too exactly with the account given by Burke
* Elizabeth, daughter of Topham Beauclerk, married to Lord Herbert in 1787. This extract is taken from some MSS. notes by Lady Louisa Stuart in a copy of Selwyn's letters, in the possession of the Earl of Home. She also retails a " bon mot," which she says that Lady Di made to Lady Mary Coke on the report of Lady Louisa's engagement to the widower, Lord Stafford, a
116
Mary and Elizabeth Beauclerk.
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
and corroborated by Sir Joshua Reynolds, which has been handed down to us by Miss Burney, for any shadow of doubt to remain as to its veracity.
Lady Di was ill during this visit and remained in bed for three weeks. She was seriously ill, for Horace Walpole tells us that she was " given over at Blenheim," but luckily her strong constitution pulled her through. Was this the occasion when, to quote an old book of anecdotes in the Manuscript Room of the British Museum, Topham Beauclerk says that " Dr. James, on being sent for to Lady Diana Beauclerk, after she had stated very fully and earnestly her complaint. He damned his Taylor that he had made one Pocket an inch and a half higher than the other, without ever having attended to what she said ! " Perhaps it was, as, in those times, inattention was likely to be less dangerous than the remedies which he would probably have tried. At any rate, she recovered and seems to have had good health generally, unlike her husband, who suffered from what Johnson called a " hypocondriack disorder " and was nearly always in pain. As we have gleaned from contemporary literature some idea of Beauclerk's conversational powers, it may be interesting to glance over some of the correspondence which passed between him and Lord Charlemont. It gives a good idea of his style of writing and some insight into the life he was leading at the time and the allusions to his wife
man much older than herself. " Soh ! your friend Lady Louisa Stuart is going to marry her grandfather, is she? If she can hold her nose and swallow the dose at once it may do very well. But most people would be apt to take a little sweetmeat in their mouth afterwards ! "
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LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
are interesting and prove that he could be thoughtfiil and attentive M^hen he Hked and also that they seemed on good terms v^ith each other.*
* The letters are taken from the Historical Manuscripts Commission : the allusions to private matters, which were omitted in that publication, have been supplemented from the original letters.
Child Pan.
118
-p-l-s.ws^.i-'' f'l -'-a^)}*!^
.Zu^/„ fj„-j,m J3rDuc/tM DtUn :
J^nyravet/ Su S' M^trie/jzzt
CUPIDS.
From an engraving by Bartolozzi, after Lady Diana Beduclerk.
To face page iiQ-
Frotn Dryden's Fabies,
Engraved by F. Bartolozzi,R.A.
Headpiece to "The Cock and the Fox."
CHAPTER IX.
T
OPHAM BEAUCLERK to the Earl of Charlemont :—
Adelphi, London, 1773.
Enclosed I send you the drawing of Mr. Walpole's frames, which I did not receive till last night. I hope you received a letter from me some time ago. I mention this that I may not appear worse than I am, and likewise to hint to you that when you receive this, you will be two letters in my debt. I hope your Parliament has finished all its absurdities, and that you will be at leisure to come over here to attend to your club,* where you will do much
* The Literary Club, of which Lord Charlemont had latley been elected a member.
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LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
more than all the patriots in the world ever did anybody, viz., you will make very many of your friends extremely happy, and you know Goldsmith has informed us, that no form of Government ever contributed either to the happiness or misery of anyone. I saw a letter from Foote* with an account of an Irish tragedy. The subject is Manlius, and the last speech, which he makes when he is pushed off from the Tarpeian rock is, " Sweet Jesus, where am I going ? " Pray send me word if this is true. We have a new comedy here, which is good for nothing Bad as it is, however, it succeeds very well and has almost killed Goldsmith with envy. I have no news, either literary or political, to send you. Everybody, except myself and about a million of vulgars, are in the country. I am closely confined.
Topham Beauclerk to the Earl of Charlemont : —
Adelphi, London, November 20, 1773.
I delayed writing to you, as I had flattered myself that I should have been able to have paid you a visit at Dublin before this time, but I have been prevented, not by my own negligence and indolence, but by Lady D., who is so near her time, that I could not, probably, have returned before she was brought to bed, and somebody had put it into her head that there was great danger in passing the Irish seas, which made it impossible for me to
* Samuel Foote. 120
By kind permission of Colonel Lascelles.
Nymph and Cupid.
R
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
leave her under those apprehensions in her present situation. I am rejoiced to find by a Hint in your Letter, that Lady Charlemont is in the same way. I have yet remaining so much Benevolence towards Mankind, as to wish that there may be a son of yours, educated by you, as a Specimen of what Mankind ought to be. I hope, however, that this event will happen time enough for you to return to this Country in the spring, and that neither paternal nor maternal fondness will prevent it.
Goldsmith the 'other day put in a paragraph into the newspapers in praise of Lord Mayor Townshend.* The same night we happened to sit next to Lord Shelburne at Drury Lane ; I mentioned the circumstance of that paragraph to him. He said to Goldsmith that he hoped that he had mentioned nothing about Malagrida in it. " Do you know," answered Goldsmith, " that I never could conceive the reason why they call you Malagrida, for Malagrida was a very good sort of man." You see plainly what he meant to say, but that happy turn of expression is peculiar to himself, Mr. Walpole says that this story is a picture of Goldsmith's whole life.
Johnson had been confined for some weeks in the Isle of Sky. We hear that he was obliged to swim over to the main-land, taking hold of a cow's tail. Be that as it may. Lady Diana has promised to make a drawing of it. Our poor clubt is in a miserable decay; unless you come and relieve it, it will certainly expire.
Would you imagine that Sir J. Reynolds is extremely
* James Townshend, Lord Mayor of London, 1773. f The Literary Club.
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anxious to be a member of Almack's ? You see what noble ambition will make men attempt : that den is not yet opened, consequently I have not been there, so for the present I am clear upon that score.
I suppose your confounded Irish politics take up your whole attention at present. If they could but have obtained the absentee tax, the Irish Parliament would have been perfect. They would have voted themselves out of Parliament, and lessened their estates one-half of the value. This is patriotism with a vengeance. I have heard nothing of your peacock's eggs. The Duke of Northumberland tells me if they are put into tallow or butter that they will never hatch ; I mention this to you, as worthy of your notice.
Mr. [Horace] Walpole promised me to send you a drawing of his frames, but he has been so much engaged with Lord Orford's affairs that he has probably forgot it ; I will put him in mind of it the next time that I see him.
There is nothing new at present in the literary world. Mr. [William] Jones of our club is going to publish an account in Latin of the Eastern poetry,*" with extracts translated verbatim and in verse; I will order Elmsly to send it to you when it comes out; I fancy it will be a very pretty book.
Goldsmith has written a prologue for Mrs. Yates,t
* "Poeseos Asiaticas commentariorum libri sex." London: 1774. t Anna Maria Yates, who made her first appearance at a Dublin theatre about 1752.
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LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
which she spoke this evening before the opera ; it is very good ; you will see it soon in all the newspapers, otherwise I would send it to you.
I hope to hear in your next letter that you have fixed your time for returning to England; we cannot do without you. If you do not come here, I will bring all the club over to Ireland to live with you, and that will drive you here in your own defence. Johnson shall spoil your books. Goldsmith pull your flowers, and Boswell talk to you; stay then if you can.
The Earl of Charlemont to Beauclerk : —
[Undated.~\
Your experienced partiality towards me, and my thorough confidence in your justly founded opinion of the love I bear you, assures me that you have not attributed my long silence either to negligence, laziness, or forgetfiilness, but that, on the contrary, you have done me the justice to believe that some invincible obstacle could alone have pre- vented me so long from answering your very kind and friendly letter.
In your last you were, I think, a little smart upon our Irish politics and patriotism. You abused us for our limi- tation bill, and for our intended tax upon absentees, and seemed to insinuate that our self-denial in these two acts savoured strongly of that genius for blunder which has often been imputed to us. I am not indeed much sur- prised that any one who writes from London should conclude that every one who votes against his own
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LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
particular interest may be deemed guilty of an egregious bull ; but, though we are very far from being virtuous, we are not, however, quite so far gone in the refinement of modern politics as you are on your side of the water, and there yet remain some few amongst us, too few indeed, who might be induced for the public utility to give up some small private advantage. Don't tell me that this appears ridiculous to you — indeed it does not. For though a sentiment of this kind would be laughed at at Arthur's and perhaps hooted out of St. Stephen's Chapel, yet you, my friend, upon cool consideration and when not at Almack's, will most certainly approve of it.
What wretched beings would this too fashionable principle of giving up nothing to the public make of us, supposing it pushed as far as it will go. If every one was to act according to what his passions prompted him to deem his own emolument, without any regard to others, is there a single crime against society of which he would not be guilty, any criminal gratification which he would ever refuse himself? Society would be at an end, and we should be reduced to the state — if such state ever existed, which I do not believe — of unsociable savages, each man waging continual war, offensive and defensive, against all his fellow-creatures .
It may perhaps be said that laws would restrain us — a weak curb indeed are laws without morals, witness the shoals of wretches who every week die gallantly at Tyburn, and the much more numerous shoals of those who deserve, but are above the same fate !
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LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
I have yet a thousand things to say to you, but I see you yawn. My trite moraHty has set you asleep. Man was born for society — without it he can have no enjoyment,
By kind permission o/ Colonel Lascelles.
Infant Pan and Goat Dancing.
and without morals it cannot subsist ; and what are morals but the giving up our own partial pleasure to the benefit of the whole }
But whither am I going ? I thought to write a few lines and I have prattled away a volume. See what it is to
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LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
write to you. The pleasure of talking with you is a temporary cure for all my ailments, and I could go on for a sheet and an hour longer, if prudence with regard to myself, and a little consideration for your time and patience, did not luckily restrain me.
I have a cargo of stones ready to send to you, and only wait to add some specimens of the Giants' Causeway which I daily expect. My most affectionate compliments to all my brethren of the club, and particularly to Johnson, Reynolds, and Goldsmith : this last need not, I am sure, be jealous of the " School for Wives "* — worse stuff I never read.
Topham Beauclerk to the Earl of Charlemont : —
I cannot tell you how much I am obliged to you for your very friendly letter. I did not suspect that you were one of the many that think the misfortunes of your friends is a sufficient reason for renouncing them. But ill health produces bad spirits, and anything that revives them does great good to the body; nothing can do that more to me than hearing from you that you still honour me with the same friendship which you showed me formerly.
I am much obliged to you for your present. I hear the ship is arrived, but they are not yet come home. I send you no politics. The newspaper is at present as good authority as any. It tells the -events of the day, and as for any schemes in future, I believe the ministry have
* Comedy by Hugh Kelly, acted at Drury Lane, 1774.
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LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
none. Lord Carlisle was named first commissioner, as a proof, I suppose, of the wisdom of the ministry, but I hear to-day that he will not go. All to whom they have offered it have refused, so much for that project. I am very sorry that your health is so indifferent ; you work too hard at your polities and vex yourself about them. Let the ministry alone and they will ruin themselves completely ; they have ruined the country already, so that is out of the question.
Our club flourishes very much ; you flattered us last year with a chance of seeing you. Independent of the pleasure I should receive, I wish you would come ; the journey would do you good. I am so much better this year (by having left off all medicine except laudanam, of which I take 400 drops every day) that I shall be able sometimes to enjoy your company, which was not the case for these two years last past. Charles Fox misrepre- sents me ; I am very regular.
Topham Beauclerk to the Earl of Charlemont : —
Adelphi, London, February 12, 1774.
I have this moment received your letter, and I need not tell you how happy it has made me, that your little girl and Ly. Charlemont are both well, and yourself so much better. I can now give you a better reason for not writing sooner to you than for any other thing that I ever did in my Hfe. When Sir C. Bingham came from Ireland, I, as you may easily imagine, immediately enquired after you. He told me that you was very well, but in great affliction, having
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just lost your child. You cannot conceive how I was shocked with this news, not only by considering what you suffered upon this occasion, but I recollected that a foolish letter of mine, laughing at your Irish politics, would arrive just at that point of time. A bad joke at any time is a bad
By kind pertiiissiojt of the Duchess of St. Albans.
Pastoral Scene.
thing, but when any attempt at pleasantry happens, when a person is in great affliction, it certainly is the most odious thing in the world. I could not write to comfort you \ you will not wonder therefore that I did not write at all. I must now entreat you to lay aside your politics for some time, and to consider that the taking care of your health is
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LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
one of the most public spirited things that you can possibly do, for, notwithstanding your vapour about Ireland, I do not believe that you can very well spare one honest man. Lady D. has been brought to bed of a son about three weeks ;
By fciitdfemtission of Colonel Lascelles,
Girl with Owls.
she and the child are both perfectly well ; she desires me to propose a match between my son * and your daughter, which she thinks ought to be resolved upon immediately. Our politicans on this side of the water are all asleep, but I hear
* Charles George Beauclerk, born 1774.
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LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
they are to be awakened next Monday by a printer who is ordered to attend the bar of the House, for having abused Sir Fletcher Norton. They have already passed a vote, nem. con.^ that Sir Fletcher's character is immaculate, and will most certainly punish the printer very severely, if a trifling circumstance does not prevent them, viz., that the printer should, as he most probably will, refuse to attend.
Our club has dwindled away to nothing ; nobody attends but Mr, Chambers, and he is going to the East Indies. Sir Joshua and Goldsmith have got into such a round of pleasures that they have no time. And now, my lord, let me set you right as to the use of a friend. It is not, as you express it, to tire him with morality, but, when he perceives that his friend is got into a scrape, to inform him of the great inconveniences that he is likely to suffer from it, and of the comfortable situation that he would have, been in, had he left undone those things which had brought him into those disagreeable circumstances. I remember that is well put off in one of Dancourt's farces called " Le Gallant Viscomte." A man there is introduced making love to a dyer's wife. The husband detects him, and orders his men to dye him green. His friends come about him, and one of them, after upbraiding him for some time, tells him that he may thank himself, for had he not followed other men's wives, but staid at home and minded his business, he would never have been dyed green. His answer is the only one that ought to be made to all such advisers. What ? Voild des morales bien placies / I do not mean to hint by this that some advice may be of service, but I believe you will agree vdth me, that
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the generality of friends are of this sort. You deserve this for saying that your letters tire me. In my next I will send you a long history of all our friends, and particularly an account how twelve hundred thousand pounds may be paid without advancing one shilling. This is certainly very convenient, and, if you can [get] rid of all your feehng and morality before my next letter arrives, you may put it in practice, as probably it has not yet been introduced into Ireland.
The Earl of Charlemont to Topham Beauclerk : —
Provostship of Trinity College, Dublin,
July —, 1774.
The Dean of Derry has brought me a most excellent piece of news — am I to believe it ? or is it too good to be true ? He tells me that you intend to redeem your character by shewing that, however you may delay fulfill- ing your promise, you are incapable of breaking it. This summer, he assures me, you propose to visit Ireland and me. Are these things so ? But why have I not heard it from yourself ? Why do you not double my pleasure by giving me that of expectation, as well as that of enjoyment — L'un, comme vous le scavez, vaut bien I'autre. The summer, too, is wasting away, and I hear no tidings of you. My last letter yet remains unanswered. This last circumstance however may perhaps promise well. Who knows but that you may intend to answer my letter in person ! In this hope I will at least indulge myself, and will daily expect
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LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
the happiness of seeing you. I send you enclosed a paper, which I beg you would communicate to your friends, as I wish that the contents of it should be known, and especially by people of consequence and of erudition. They are going to undo us, and to take away from us that small quantity of morals and of learning which yet remains us — we have been long fleeced and plundered of our money, but a tax is now in agitation upon our virtues. The provost or head of our university is, as you may have heard, lately deceased, and, if fame says true, they are going to give us for provost one who is at once a professed lawyer and a professed politician — id est. The inclosed paper contains a few of the many reasons against such a nomination, and I wish it to be shewn, though by no means published, in order that thinking people, and they who value literature, and wish well to their sister country, may be apprised of the dangerous predicament in which we now stand. The opinions of such men may possibly be of weight, enough to make even Caesar ashamed. Johnson, among others, should exert himself and exclaim against this horror. He is a member of our university, and ought not silently to see it ruined. The fact is, that the intended nomination is no other than a parliamentary job, and you will easily conceive that, if once an office of this nature and importance be disposed of in this manner, it will become a perpetual precedent for future times. The place of provost will be a sinecure, and it will be for ever hereafter regarded and held out as a lure or a gratification for apostate patriots or for needy courtiers. The university meanwhile, which
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LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
at this instant requires all the vigilance, diligence and abilities of the wisest and most experienced head to reinstate it in that situation from which it is already fallen during the incumbency of the late heedless provost, will be totally undone, and the kingdom will essentially suffer, not only by the loss of such a seminary, but by the money which will be spent out of it in Scotch universities ; for we are not rich enough to send our sons to Oxford or to Cambridge. The next step will probably be to find out some quirk by which fellowships also, which are now the reward of intense study, and only to be got by answering well on the strictest examination, may be given away at the will of the minister ; and thus we shall lose the only incitement to learning which yet remains amongst us ; for it is now long since Irishmen have lost all hopes of preferment in the learned professions. Sensible of our national incapacity and studious of our wel- fare, it has long been the charitable practice of England kindly to send us her attorneys for judges, and her country schoolmasters and shabby curates for bishops and arch- bishops. I write this in order that thinking people, and they who value L[eland]. . The cause of morals, the cause of learning, is his cause, and ought to be the cause of every good man.
But I have prolonged my letter to an unconscionable length, and that too upon a subject perhaps not very inter- esting to you — you however, as a literary man and a citizen of the world, can not be indifferent to the cause of literature and the welfare of a nation. Besides, when I write to you I always put down whatever is uppermost in my mind, and
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LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
I do confess myself interested even to agitation in the matter, which has been the principal subject of this letter. Charles . Fox a member of the Turk's head [club] ! *
Topham Beauclerk to the Earl of Charlemont : —
MuswELL Hill,
July 1 8, 1774.
That it was my full intention to visit you in Ireland, and that it still remains so, is as true, as that I love and esteem you more than any man upon the earth, but various accidents have hitherto hindered me, the last of which has been a violent disorder, which obliges me to a very severe discipline, and a constant attendance upon doctor Turton, but in spight of him, or Nature itself, I will very soon pay you a visit. Business, it is true, I have none to keep me here, but you forget that I have business in Lancashire, and that I must go there, when I come to you. Now you will please to recollect, that there is nothing in this world, I so entirely hate, as business of any kind, and that I pay you the greatest compliment I can do, when I risk the meeting with my own confounded affairs, in order to have the pleasure of seeing you, but this I am resolved to do. The dean t of Derry is quite a new acquaintance ; he says he is a scholar and I believe him to be so. He seemed a good natured man, and a man of parts, and one proof I am sure he gave of
* The Literary Club,
•f Thomas Barnard, dean of Derry, 1769 ; appointed bishop of Killaloe in 1780 ; translated to Limerick in 1794.
136
By kind permission of the Earl of Ilchester.
The Right Honble. Charles James Fox.
From a sketch at Holland House.
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
his understanding, by expressing a strong desire to be acquainted with you. I had recollection enough, however, not to give him a letter to you, as I suspected that a cer- tain thing called politics might be the cause of a difference between you, particularly as he told me that he was an
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By kind permtssion of the Earl of Ilchester,
Sketch and Inscription on the back of the Portrait of the Right Honble. C. J. Fox, now at Holland House.
intimate friend of Rigby's ; and if the old proverb is true ' Noscitur a socio,' I guessed, that he was not a man after your own heart. His wife, I never saw but once, and that was at the play, and then the dean and I seemed to be both of a mind in trying to avoid her company and
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LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
conversation as much as possible.* I agree with you, that there never W2is a more scandalous thing than making the man* provost, that is made. Your last,t however, I believe, from what I have heard, was not much better. But why should you be vexed to find that mankind are fools and knaves ? I have known it so long that every fresh instance of it amuses me, provided it does not immediately ajffect my friends or myself. Politicians do not seem to me to be much greater rogues than other people, and as their actions affect individuals less than other kinds of villainy do, I cannot find that I am so angry with them. It is true, that the leading men in both the countrys at present are, I believe, the most corrupt, abandoned people in the nation, but that being the case, is it not better that Rigby should be employed in making a provost, or in betraying his friend by the meanest and blackest ingratitude ? But, now I am on this worthy subject of human nature, I will inform you of a few particulars relating to the glorious discovery of Otaheite which Dr. Hawksworth said placed the king above all the conquerors in the world, and if the glory is to be estimated by the mischief, I do not know whether he is not right. When Wallis first anchored off the island two natives came alongside of the ship, without fear or distrust, to barter their goods with
* John Hely Hutchinson, appointed provost of Trinity College, Dublin, by letters patent, 15 July 1774.
t Francis Andrews, provost of Trinity College, Dublin, 1758-74. In con- temporary satires, Andrews was referred to as "Don Francesco Andrea Bumperoso." Letters of provost Andrews will be found in Eighth Report of Royal Commission on Hist. MSS., 1881, part i., p. 192.
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LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
our people. A man called the boat keeper, who was in a boat, that was tied to the ship, attempted to get the things from them without payment. The savages resisted and he struck one of them with the boat hook, upon which they immediately paddled away. All night the people upon the island were in motion, lights were seen, and drums were heard beating, and in the morning great numbers came in canoes of all sizes about the ship. They behaved, however, in the most peaceable manner, still offering to exchange their commodities for anything that they could obtain from us. The same trick was played them by attempting to take away their things by force. This enraged them and as they had come prepared to defend themselves with such weapons as they had, they immediately began to fling stones, one of which went into the cabbin window. Wallis upon this ordered the centinel to fire, and the guns loaded with grape shot to be fired. This as you may imagine immediately dispersed them. Some were drowned, many killed, and some few got on shore, where a great number of the natives were assembled. Wallis then ordered the great guns to be played, according to his phrase, upon them. This drove them to the hills, where he still ordered the same pastime to be continued in order to convince them, as he says, that our arms could reach them at such a distance. . . . These particulars I had from a man, who went the last voyage, and had them from the gunner of Wallis's ship. We have one of the natives here, who was wounded in that infernal massacre. There is another curiosity here, Mr.
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LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
Woolbeding^ Cellectwi.
Bruce * ; his drawings are the most beautiful things you ever saw, and his adventures more wonderful than those of Sinbad the sailor and perhaps as true.
I am much more afflicted with the account you sent me of your health, than I am at the corruption of your ministers. I always hated politicks, and I now hate them ten times worse, as I have reason to think, that they contribute to your ill health, and then I will allow them to be perfectly pernicious. You do me great justice in thinking, that whatever concerns you, must interest me, but as I wish you most sincerely to be perfectly happy, I cannot bear to think that the villainous proceedings of others should make you miserable, for in that case undoubtedly you will never be happy.
Charles Foxt is a member of the Turk's head, but not till he was a patriot, and you know the song : More
joy in Heaven if one repent. There is nothing new,
but Goldsmith's * Retaliation,'
which you certainly have
seen."
* "Travels to discover the source of the Nile, 1768-1773." By James Bruce.
t Charles Fox and Beauclerk were very intimate. On one occasion Beau- clerk visited Fox the morning after he had lost a large sum of money at cards, expecting to find him very much de- pressed. Fox was reading Herodotus in the original. "What would you have me do," he said calmly, "when I have lost my last shilling ? "
142
Infant Pan.
FromVryderisFabUs. ^ Engraved by F. Bartohzzi, R. A.
Tailpiece to "Cymon and Iphigenia."
CHAPTER X.
TN 1773, the Beauclerks were settled in their new house in Adelphi Terrace and we find Boswell dining there on April 20, in company with Dr. Johnson, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Lord Charlemont (he was elected in this year), and some other members of the Literary Club, for the express purpose of balloting for Boswell's admission into that distinguished society. He was proposed by Johnson and probably seconded by Beauclerk, who, he said, was "very zealous" for him. He gives some account of the conversation. Johnson and Garrick discuss Goldsmith's ignorance, always a fruitful topic with his brethren of the club and Johnson praises his historical work, contrasting it with that of
143
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
Robertson, whom he calls a writer of romance. They talk of Pope, of Milton, of erecting monuments to distinguished people and at last the gentlemen go away to their club, and Boswell remains behind in a state of anxiety which even the " charming conversation of Lady Diana Beauclerk could not entirely dissipate," until the welcome news comes that he is elected. We have another picture of an entertainment given in this house and in this year ; this time from the pen of Horace Walpole. He had evidently been terribly bored and had probably suffered from twinges of his enemy the gout ; at all events, he writes a very peevish account of it in a letter to Lady Ossory, dated 'December 14,
1773 '
" I dined and passed Saturday at the Beauclerks, with
the Edgecumbes, the Garricks, and Dr. Goldsmith, and
was most thoroughly tired, as I knew I should be, I who
hate the playing off a butt. Goldsmith is a fool, the more
wearing for having some sense ! It was the night of
the new comedy called 'The School for Wives,'* which
was exceedingly applauded, and which Charles Fox says is
execrable. Garrick has at least the chief hand in it. I
never saw anybody in a greater fidget, nor more vain when
he returned, for he went to the play-house at half an hour
after five, and we sat waiting for him till ten, when he was
to act a speech in ' Cato ' with Goldsmith ! that is the
latter sat in t'other's lap, covered with a cloak, and, while
Goldsmith spoke, Garrick's arms, that embraced him, made
* By Hugh Kelly, t Addison's " Cato."
144
By kijtd permission of Coionel Lascelles,
Children Playing.
U
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
foolish actions. How could one laugh when one had expected this for four hours ? "
Rather a severe test for a twice-repeated joke truly ; no wonder that it was less successful than on the first occasion, when the parts being reversed and the idea new, a large audience was kept for some time in shrieks of laughter.
The largest piece of work which Lady Di executed in these years was accomplished in the short space of a fort- night and as, although it has vanished among forgotten things in a lumber-room in these latter days, it was enormously well thought of at the time and had a room built for its reception, it may be well to consider it here. It consisted of seven large drawings in " sut-water," designed to illustrate Horace Walpole's tragedy " The Mysterious Mother," * and although the flattered author's praise of these drawings is rather fulsome and has moreover a proprietary tinge as being, in a sense, the inspirer of so much talent, still we must remember that to satisfy the ideals of an author and to execute such a large piece of work in such a short time was a tour de force, showing no small ability on the artist's side.t
* These drawings are presumably at Carne House in the possession of the Earl of Portarlington, but cannot be traced.
t Horace Walpole mentions Lady Diana in his "Anecdotes of Painting." He says : " Has any painter ever approached a scene, a character of Shakespeare that approached to the prototype as near as Shakespeare himself attained to nature? Yet is there a pencil in a living hand as capable of pronouncing the passions of our unequalled poet : a pencil not only inspired by his insight into nature, but by the graces and taste of Grecian artists ; but it is not fair to excite the curiosity of the public, when both the rank and bashful merit of the possessor, and a too rare exertion of superior talents, confined the proof to a narrow circle. Whoever has seen the drawings and bas-reliefs, designed and executed by Lady Diana Beauclerc, is sensible that these imperfect encomiums are far short of the excellence of her works."
147 U 2
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
Horace Walpole had caused a revival of Gothic architec- ture in England, whether for good or ill, by his erection of his Gothic castle at Strawberry. He had a passion for the middle ages and he loved his castle because it represented to him his ideals ; the castle and its contents filled his mind and, in turn, affected his imagination. Perhaps this is the only way we can account for his writings, which are full of blood and thunder and romance of the most lurid type, being so different from what we should have expected of the fastidious, critical and cynical letter-writer. Be this as it may, he tells us that in 1764 he dreamed he was in an ancient castle and that he saw a gigantic hand in armour resting on the banister of the staircase. From this rather suggestive vision, he evolved the history of " The Castle of Otranto " in which giants in armour clank and groan at night-time in deserted chambers and enormous helmets drop from the skies and despairing damsels escape down trap- doors into secret passages. The whole paraphernalia of the melo-drama is there and we are spared nothing ; even the characters in the story get satiated and fail to be moved by these peculiar occurrences. The literary world, however, received this story with enthusiasm. It was published at first anonymously, but afterwards with the author's name and encouraged by its success he wrote the tragedy which Lord Byron admired so much and which caused him to say that Walpole was " the author of the first romance and of the last tragedy in our language." "The Castle of Otranto" certainly was the forerunner of many tales of romance and adventure, but of the tragedy we can only say that if it is a
148
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
type of what tragedy should be, it is lucky that we are not favoured with any more. The story, which he said that he took from life, although he afterwards discovered one very
By kind permission of Colonel Lascelles.
Landscape with Cupids Bathing.
much like it in a novel by the Queen of Navarre, would be inadmissible in these days. It is badly constructed and very stilted in the dialogue and is both unsavoury and
149
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
uninteresting. Such as it is, however, it seems to have inspired Lady Di very happily.
"Just at present I am the vainest creature in the uni- verse," he writes to Lady Ossory in December, 1775. "Lady Di has drawn the scenes for my tragedy, which, if the subject were a quarter as good as the drawings, would make me a greater genius than Shakespear, as she is superior to Guido and S. Rosa. Such figures ! such dignity ! such simplicity ! Then there is a cedar hanging over the castle, that is more romantic than when it grew on Lebanon."
We can imagine Lady Di's pleasure at this generous appre- ciation of her work and the interest she must have taken in the construction of the hexagonal tower which was "hung on," as Walpole said by Mr. Essex, an architect from Cambridge.
The year 1775 had opened badly, for Beauclerk had had a serious illness in January. Dr. Johnson writes to Boswell at this date : " Poor Beauclerk is so ill that his life is thought to be in danger. Lady Di nurses him with very great assiduity " ; and in March of the same year he is ill again for the Doctor writes again to Boswell and tells him that though Beauclerk is in great pain it was hoped he was not in danger and that he was going to consult Dr. Heberden to try the effect of a " new understanding." The new understanding evidently was successful, as in April he is walking up Johnson's Court with Boswell and delighting the latter by confessing to a veneration for the well-known spot.
It was in March of this year that Boswell won a small " bett " from Lady Di by venturing to ask Dr. Johnson what he did with the carefully scraped orange skins which he always
150
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
put in "his pocket after squeezing out the juice into a drink which he made for himself at the Club. This proceeding had puzzled Beauclerk and Garrick very much, but no one had liked to ask him what he did with the skins. Boswell, who boldly put the question, was not made much wiser by the
imitsm
if-:., ir ^ .
f'^rf'
.<f:
<■
'ir.--'
'^^<^5% .^K..
By kind permission of Colonel Lascelles.
Child and Sheep.
answer, but he won his bet all the same. Another scrap referring to Lady Di is to be found in his pages. He discussed " Mrs. V." with her — probably Mrs. Vesey who had what Walpole called " Babels," in imitation of Mrs. Montagu where she collected "all the graduates and candidates for
151
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
fame " and whose malapropisms were notorious — and during the discussion Lady Di said that she understood that " Mrs. V." was an idiot. Bozzy replied that he had been introduced to her and that she was so much less of an idiot than he had expected that he did not think her an idiot at all. "I think," said Lady Di, " she is bad enough, if that is all a lawyer can find to say for her, that she is only less an idiot than he imagined," and on Bozzy reflecting on the different species of idiots that are loose upon the world, the land idiots and the water idiots and so on : "I think," says Lady Di, " that is worth writing down." This does not read brilliantly after the lapse of a century and more and Bozzy evidently recorded it in order to introduce the compliment to himself, but it is probably quite accurate and was certainly spontaneous.
We are, as usual, greatly indebted to Horace Walpole for his stray notes on the Beauclerks' doings in the years 1775 and 1776. In December of the former year he mentions a party at their house at which Garrick recited an ode written by Mr. Cumberland in praise of Gray's odes and which was so involved that Beauclerk said he could not understand it and asked Garrick to read it backwards and see if the effect were not just as good. " He did, and it was," is Walpole's comment. In June, 1776, he writes to Lady Ossory a letter which must be transcribed in full as it gives two pictures of their life which cannot be neglected. He writes :
" Had there been any news I should have heard — nay,
152
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
perhaps I did, for I called at Mr. Beauclerk's in the evening where I found Lord Pembroke, Lord Palmerston, Garrick, Burke, the Dean of Derry, Lord Robert Spencer, and Mr. Gibbon ; but they talked so loud (not the two last) and made such a noise and Lord Palmerston so much more noise with trying to talk that it was impossible to know what they said, under a distance of a mile from there .... To make a decent letter I'll transcribe some lines I found on my table on Sunday night. I had dined at Lady Blandford's and the Beauclerks and Mr. Gibbon and M. Le Texier * had been to drink tea with me in the meantime. The last wrote the lines in a moment and they are certainly good for impromptus :
"Si vous aviez sgu, qu'aujourd'hui
Dut venir dans votre castel La plus aimable mylady
Qui n'a nulle autre ai son pareil. Vous n'auriez bouge du ceans
Et sans courir la pretantaine Vous auriez attende cent ans
Plutot que perdre telle aubaine. Pourtant dans icelle visite
Nous serions bien desappointe Sans la bonne Dame Marguerite
Qui nous a fait d'excellent the. Elle a suspendu nos regrets
Et nous a prouve comme un livre Par ses soins et son s^avoir vivre
Qu'a tels maitres sont tels valets."
* M. Le Texier, whom Walpole preferred as an actor to Garrick, is often spoken of in the annals of the day. He seems to have stage-managed amateur theatricals in v/hich he himself took part, as well as to have given recitations of plays. He was greatly in request in society.
153 X
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
I am to have Mr. Essex to-morrow from Cambridge to try if he can hang me on anywhere another room for Lady Di's drawings."
These drawings he continued to praise and we find mention of them in nearly all his letters. He talks of her original genius ; he says that her compositions unite the several qualities of Guido's grace, Albano's children, Poussin's expression, Salvator's boldness in landscape and Andrea Sacchi's simplicity in composition and then he laughs at himself and says " How an author's vanity can bestow bombastic panegyric on his flatterers ! " and winds up with saying : " I know how prejudiced I am apt to be ; sometime or other you will see whether I am so in this instance."
By-and-bye the beauty of the casket he has built for these works of art delights him and he expresses his satisfaction freely. In July, 1777, he writes to the Rev. W. Mason : " I don't know anybody so much in the wrong as you are for not coming to me this summer ; you would see such a marvellous closet, so small, so perfect, so respectable ; you would swear it came out of Havering in the Bower, and that Catherine de Valois used to retire into it and write to Owen Tudor. Lady Di's drawings — no oiFence to yours — are hung on Indian blue damask, the ceiling, door, and surbase are gilt, and in the window are two brave fleur-de-lis and a lion of England all royally crowned in painted glass, which, as Queen Catherine never did happen to write a billet-doux in this closet, signifies Beauclerc, the denomination of the tower. This
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
cabinet is to be sacred and not shown to the profane, as the drawings are not for the eyes of the vulgar. Yours shall have a place, which is the greatest honour I can do them. Miss Pope, the actress, who is at Mrs. Clive's, dined here yesterday, and literally shed tears, though she did not know the story. I think this more to Lady Di's credit than a tom-tit pecking at painted fruit."
In this cabinet was hung Lady Di's portrait by Powell after Sir Joshua Reynolds and later on a cabinet which was decorated with plaques after her designs and in which he kept his treasures, was placed here. Vanity of vanities ! it is sad to think that these drawings which rose to fame so suddenly and were so royally housed are now among the vanished things which have left no trace behind them.
Woolbeding Colleeiion.
Child.
^SS
X 2
From Drydeii-s Fables. Eiisrmiid by Gardititr.
Tailpiece to "Palamon and Arcite." Book I.
CHAPTER XI.
"TV yfY little hexagon finished. Mr. Beauclerk and Lady Di dined here to-day ; he looks so much less ill than he did that one need never despair of any recovery after his and Lazarus's," wrote Horace Walpole in 1777-
Beauclerk's constitution, never a good one, was being gradually weakened by successive illnesses, by perpetual late hours and dissipation, by constant pain and by the inordinate use of opiates in which he indulged. His illnesses were frequent and he suffered much, but he seems to have had a great power of recuperation. In June of 1766, the
156
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERIC.
Beauclerks stayed at Strawberry Hill for four or five days " so I had both content and exercise for my philosophy," says the master of the house and after that they went to Bath for Beauclerk's health. There are several letters preserved in the Selwyn correspondence which appear to have been written at this date. George Selwyn, in spite of his friendship for " Bully," was on the best of terms with Lady Di and constantly expresses his sympathy for her. " Poor Lady Bol, quelle triste perspective pour ellef" he wrote to Lord Carlisle in ^'J^'Jy "j'en suis veritablement touche " and in January, 1768, he mentions that she dined with him in company with Lady Sarah Bunbury and others. It is true that a few weeks later when he entertained Horace Walpole, just after the appearance of his " Historic Doubts," he regrets being unable to secure Bully who is dining with his brother and that he himself constantly dined with Bully and the Baptist and records having " all the St. Johns in the world " to dinner, but the fact remains that he was ever a good friend to Lady Di and did not lose touch with* her through all her misfortunes. In later years they had a common interest and we find Lady Di consulting him on the choice of a school for her daughters Selwyn's devotion to his adopted child Maria Fagnani, or Mie-Mie as she was called, is too well known to need any comments here.* The following letter, which is undated, was probably written
* Maria Fagnani married 1792 the Earl of Yarmouth, afterwards third Marquis of Hertford. She died in Paris 1856.
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
in August 1776, as Madame Fagnani, the mother of the child, came to London in that month and had one of her interviews with Selwyn concerning the fate of Mie-Mie. In these years Selwyn was kept in a state of constant anxiety, not knowing if he were really to have possession of his little ward or no and all that he obtained in the present instance was a promise of keeping her with him for another year. He was certainly an excellent person to consult on such a subject, as he had taken infinite pains to find out the best school and appears to have either visited Mie-Mie or received a letter from the schoolmistress informing him of her welfare, every day of the week. There is a letter from Lady Harbord to Lady Bingham in the Selwyn correspondence with an account of Miss Terry's school at Campden House and several notes from Miss Terry herself assuring the anxious guardian that the child is well, that she is having a party at high romps, that she is sorry he is so uneasy and that her spirits are not depressed. " She is very lively ; ate a good dinner, and behaves just like other children." Finally, being evidently worried to death by the over-anxious Selwyn, she hopes he will come and stay his hour or more if he likes and that if he suspects the dear child is neglected, he can take her away !
To this doubtless excellent " seminary for young ladies " Elizabeth and Mary Beauclerk were sent in 1776 and their mother, to whom Miss Terry does not write as often as she did to Selwyn, writes to the latter in some anxiety :
15B
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
- »
12, South Parade, Bath,
Thursday^ Nofu. 1776.
Will you excuse my reminding you of your promise? I have not heard from Campden House,* which perhaps may be one reason for my thinking this place detestable. The fog has been choking me all the morning, and now the sun is blinding rne; A thousand children are running by the windows. I should like to whip them for 'not being mine. I will not trouble you any longer, with my ill-humour. If you are so good as to write, pray let me know if your distresses about the Fagnanis are yet at an end.
I am, Sir,
Your most obedient humble servant,
D. BEAUCLERK.
A delightfully spontaneous note, which is followed by
another, dated :
Bath, !?^ov. 21, 1776.
I am vastly obliged to you for your long letter ; indeed,
it was not at all a . I dare not write the word because
you seem to have such an objection to it ; and as I am quite ignorant of its t sens radical, it is better not to use it.
* Campden House was built by Sir Baptist Hicks. It was afterwards leased for the space of five years, by Queen Anne for her son the Duke of Gloucester. It \<^as burnt down in 1862.
t In Jesse's edition of the Selwyn correspondence, it Is suggested that the word omitted was " bore," which was then considered a slang and vulgar expression by some.
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LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
I have wrote once more to Mrs. Terry, and I hope that nothing but the children not being perfectly well will pre- vent them coming with you. I am perfectly at ease about their journey, approve of the cavalcade, and still more of the private orders. I must insist upon Mary's sitting back- wards, at least part of the way. I would not have Mie-Mie crowded for the world, and should be quite unhappy if I thought my girls were the least trouble to you or her.
Bob * is here, and tired to death already. Entre nous^ this is a most detestable place ; and to make it complete, the Princess Amelia f is here, poking about in every corner. It is impossible to stir without meeting her, and as I have no hopes of her being gracious enough to take notice of me, I am obliged to avoid her. Perhaps you think that her taking notice of one would be a still better reason for avoiding her.
The Fawkeners are gone; I do not know where. Mr. B. sends his compliments to you. I think my signing my name is as unnecessary as your doing it.
The last letter of this series refers to a house she has taken at Bath for Selwyn :
4, Russell Street, Bath,
Wednesday^ 1776. I have just taken a house for you in one of the most airy situations here. It must be taken for a month certain,
* Probably Lord Robert Spencer.
t Princess Amelia, second daughter of George II. She died October 31, 1786, at the age of 75. She had a house at Gunnersbury, and frequently saw Lady Di when at Richmond and her daughters attended her balls, so that she must have become " gracious."
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LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
and as much longer as you please. I thought this would be no objection, as it is so good a house, and as it grows very difficult to get good houses. Mr. Wade found it out for me, and is proud of having got it so cheap (five guineas a week), which is at least a guinea cheaper than he could have got it had it ever been let before.
By kind perfnission of Colonel L-ascelles.
Cupids and Goats.
I have been too ill to go out to-day, therefore was obliged to trust to Mr. Wade about the house; indeed he is a better judge than I. There is another circumstance, which I hope is no objection, that it is within a few doors of us ; for we were obliged to leave the South Parade, it was so intolerably close, and we are now in Russell Street, near the Circus : your house is in Bennet Street, close by. The house consists, below,
163 Y 2
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
of two rooms and a small one for a servant ; two rooms over that; three very good bedchambers over that; and four garrets over all. Mr. Wade says they are very good rooms, and the cleanest, best furnished in the town. The offices also are good : they provide you with linen, remarkably good also, you paying for the washing.
I am quite out of breath, for I never did so much business in my life before, or wrote so long a letter. If, after all, you should disapprove of what I have done, I shall be in a fine fidget. So my poor little girls have the chicken pox ? When do you come ? Pray let me know. Fires are ordered in your house, that it may be quite aired, and it will be ready to receive you immediately. Part of this letter was dictated by Mr. Wade ; part by my fobtman ; part by my maid ; which makes an agreeable mixture of style : I hope you like it. Mr. Beauclerk is not at all well : all his pains have returned. I am very disinterested, you must allow, in taking this house directly, for by tibat means I can have no hopes of Mary and Elizabeth coming here. You will be very ingenious if you can decipher this letter — I cannot myself.
Here the letters stop abruptly, leaving us in the dark as to whether Selwyn was pleased with his house or whether the Beauclerk girls found another escort and arrived safely at Bath. If Lady Di had preserved Selwyn's letters, so numerous that he did not think it necessary to sign his name, we might have had a much more complete picture. It is
164
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
however, possible that the following note, which is un- dated, may have been written after Selwyn's arrival at Bath and after the girls had also found their way to the same place, although there is nothing to prove where it was written. It runs :
Dear Mr. Selwyn,
The girls shall wait upon Mie-Mie whenever you please to send for them. I have no servants, but if it is not convenient for you to send for them, I can con- trive it somehow or other ; only let me know the day and hour. Mr. Beauclerk continues very ill. The doctors say they cannot pronounce one way or the other for some days to come. I am worried and agitated too much to have the pleasure of dining with you myself: I wish you would come here sometimes ; it would be a charity.
Ever yours,
D. B.
According to Gibbon, Beauclerk and he had ar- ranged to go to Bath together in the Spring of this same year, but Beauclerk had thrown him over at the last minute. He does not seem to have borne him any malice, but writes to his step-mother in December,
British MuseiiTn.
Caricature of Edward Gibbon.
165
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
1776, that he hears most favourable accounts of his friend's recovery. In March, 1777, he writes to her again : —
" Lady Dy tells me that she w^as once in your company at Dr. Delacour's for whom both she and Beauclerk express a veneration almost equal to your own. As little or no conversation passed between you, she had only an opportunity of admiring the harmony of your voice and the beauty of your teeth, on which she bestows lavish encomiums. They mean to visit Bath again this Spring, and I am very desirous that you should be acquainted with her. You will find her one of the most accomplished women in the World, and she will soon discover in you qualities more valuable than those which are now the objects of her encomiums."
In his letters to Lord Sheffield there are several allusions to the Beauclerks, but none of great interest. He men- tions once that they dine with him and in November, 1778, sends them a message of condolence to Brighton which he says must be a " damned place " at this time of year and on March 14 he writes : — " This moment Beauclerk, Lord Ossory, Sheridan, Garrick, Burke, Charles Fox and Lord Cambden (no bad set you will perhaps say) have left
IVoolbedtng Collection.
Child with Umbrella.
me.
166
From Dryden's Fables. Engraved by F. Bartoloszi, R. A .
Headpiece to "Palamon and Arcite." Book III.
CHAPTER XII.
/^F the years which preceded Beauclerk's death in the spring of 1780, we have but scanty record. Horace Walpole mentions en passant that he wants an astronomer Hke Beauclerk to help him to understand a camera-obscura which he bought and whose mechanism he cannot under- stand ; he mentions the portrait which Lady Di drew in 1778 of her cousin the fascinating Duchess of Devonshire, which was engraved by Bartolozzi and tells his cor- respondent, the Rev. W. Mason : " I shall not leave my little hill for the dinner at the Royal Academy on Thurs- day, only to figure the next day in the newspapers in the list of the Mascenars of the age. Lady Di Beauclerk has
167
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
drawn the portrait of the Duchess of Devonshire, and it has been engraved by Bartolozzi. A CastiHan nymph con- ceived by Sappho, and executed by Myron, would not have had more grace and simpHcity ; it is the divinity of Venus piercing the veil of immortality. The likeness is perfectly preserved, except that the paintress has lent her own expression to the Duchess, which you will allow is very agreeable flattery ; what should I go to the Royal Academy for ? I shall see no such chef d'oeuvre there." Considering that Gainsborough's great picture of the Duchess was exhibited in this year, we can, I fear, only regret that Walpole's partiality for his friends should lead him to exaggerated praise of what was really excellent in itself His friend Mason wrote back and asked him to procure a print ; a request which he does not hold out much hope of being able to frilfil. The Duke of Marlborough paid for the plate, he says and would only allow two hundred impressions to be taken ; Lady Di herself has not one left, as everyone, either from taste or fashion, "tore them away " and he himself has already begged one for the Duke of Gloucester.
In 1780, her drawing of her two daughters was engraved by Bartolozzi and in that year Walpole, still greatly taken up with his seven pictures in the Beauclerk Tower, made an arrangement with Sandby to reproduce them in his new " Acqua-tinta," so that if by chance the original should perish, some idea of their beauty might be handed down to posterity. It is unfortunate that he did not carry out this idea.
168
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
On January 20, 1779, Garrick died. He had retired from the stage some years back, but must have been a great loss in the Beauclerks' society * There seems to have been a good deal of illness about just then, as
After a drawing by Lady Die
z Beauclerk.
The Duchess of Devonshire.
Engraved by F. Bartolozzi.
" Bully " was reported to be ill or dying t and at one time actually dead and Beauclerk's own life was getting near the end. Poor Bully reappears intermittently in the literature of the day. He loses his money and pursues
* Topham Beauclerk attended his funeral in Westminster Abbey and was in the same carriage with Whitehead the poet laureate, Dr, Burney, and Mr. Wallace. f Lord Bolingbroke died May 5, 1787.
169 Z
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
heiresses, he is or is not, engaged to the vivacious Miss Pelham, he thinks he will dabble in politics until that craze wears off; he is an inefficient pitiful figure of a man to the last. He is seen to best advantage in his letters to George Selwyn when writing to propose that he and two other vagabonds, Charles Fox and Richard FitzPatrick, should share in his turkey, or when writing little notes about his sons which seems to suggest that he had some real affection for them. But it is only an occasional gleam. "Lord Bolingbroke I hear will live," says Walpole in July of this year. " At first they thought he had taken laudanum. It would have been a monstrous injustice in opium to have killed him, when it will not despatch Beauclerk." Does this not suggest that in spite of his friendship for the latter, he was aware of his uncontrolled temper and of his cruelty to his wife and children of which we have heard from other sources ?
The truth is that Beauclerk was a strange mixture of good and evil and that his health reacted very strongly on his mind until, in the end, his lacerated nerves over- ruled and spoiled the native sweetness of his disposition. It is a sad and humiliating thought that we are so dependent on the fibre of our being for the development of character, but so it is. Beauclerk had the quality of quick recovery and of mastering for the time the ills of his body and we find that in 1779, he was as active as ever in the intervals between his illnesses in building the library in Great Russell Street and picking up books to increase its value. Malone writes to Lord Charlemont in
170
LADY DIANA BEAUCLERK.
April 1779 that Beauclerk is a formidable antagonist as to picking up old books and gives us a fair idea of his habits by observing that he sends his servant to the book- sellers by six or seven in the morning on the day when the sales commence and succeeds in running away with anything rare ; a proceeding which does not inconvenience either Beau- clerk or his servant as it is the hour when he usually goes to bed and merely causes the latter to be half an hour later than usual. In the Autumn of this year the Beauclerks moved into the fine house in Great Russell Street to which had been added a library which Horace Wal- pole said reached half way to Highgate and quite put the
Museum's nose out of joint. Lady Herbert and children.
It was then called Thanet ''>■<>'" "Sl^tchly Lady DtanaBeaucUrk at nuBrmsltMuseHm.
House having been built by the
Earl of Thanet and had since been inhabited by Lord Lovell, afterwards Earl of Leicester, a great-grandson of Lord Chief Justice Coke and by Francis Marqu