The Ladies": A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty Part 17

He would have said more, but the Queen of the Blues swam up, protesting and vowing she had never seen such a G.o.ddess as Miss Maria Walpole; that were she to marry the Emperor of the world, 'twould be vastly below the merit of such glowing charms. And so forth.

'Tis a lady that paints all her roses red and plasters her lilies white, and whether 'tis malice, I can't tell, but believe 'tis possible to blast by praise as well as censure, by setting the good sense of one half the world and the envy of the other against the victim. So she shrugged and simpered and worked every muscle of her face, in hopes to be bid to the wedding; but Mr. Walpole only bowed very grave and precise, and turned away, and I with him. And no more circles for me, my dear; and here I conclude, and my next shall be the epithalamium.

_18th May_, 1759.

Kitty, child, when you was married, did you look about you from under your hat?--did you take a sly peep at the World, the Flesh, and the Devil, and wonder which was the bridegroom? I did, but I'll never tell which he proved to be! Well, Maria was married two days since, and Horry Walpole favoured me today with a glimpse of the letter he writ to his friend Montagu on the occasion. 'Twas very obliging; but you know all he writes is writ with one eye on the paper and one on posterity, so 'tis no wonder if he squints a little by times. However, here's to our letter.

"The original day was not once put off--lawyers and milliners all canonically ready. They were married in Pall Mall just before dinner, and we all dined there, and the Earl and the new Countess got into their post-chaise at eight and went to Navestock alone. On Sunday she is to be presented and to make my Lady Coventry distracted. Maria was in a white and silver night gown, with a hat very much pulled over her face. What one could see of it was handsomer than ever. A cold maiden blush gave her the sweetest delicacy in the world."

So far our doting uncle, Kitty; but 'tis indeed a fair creature. I saw the long soft brown eyes lifted once and flash such a look at the bridegroom-- I dare to swear Lord Waldegrave wished away then the twenty years between them. Poor Lady Coventry, indeed! Her race is run, her thread is spun, her goose is cooked, and any other trope you please; for what signifies all the white lead at the 'pothecary's compared to the warm brown of Maria's complexion and her long eyelashes!

Lady Elizabeth Keppel had a gown worthy of the Roman Empress she looks, with that beak nose and nutcracker chin. 'Twas a black velvet petticoat, embroidered in chenille, the pattern a great gold wicker basket filled to spilling over with ramping flowers that climbed and grew all about her person. A design for a banqueting hall rather than a woman; or indeed a committee of Bluestockings might have wore it to advantage. She had winkers of lace to her head, and her hoop covered so many acres that one could but approach at an awful distance and confidences were impossible--a sure reason why the modish ladies will soon drop the hoop.

I saluted the bride after the ceremony and says I:--

"Maria, my love, I attend your presentation on Sunday, and I bring my smelling-bottle for Lady Coventry. 'Tis already said her guards will now be transferred to your ladyship, together with a detachment from each ship of the Fleet, to secure so much beauty."

She has the sweetest little dimple in either cheek, and twenty Cupids hide under her lashes.

"I have no wish, Madam, to dethrone my Lady Coventry, if even 'twere possible," says she. "That lady has occupied the throne so long, that 'tis hers by right, and the English people never weary of an old favourite."

'Twas two-edged, Kitty, as you see, and I will report it to the other lovely Maria, and 'twill be pretty to see the rapiers flash between the two. 'Tis not only the men carry dress swords, child. But I thought Miss Maria a downy nestling, with never a thought of repartee, till now. 'Tis born in us, child. It begins with our first word and is our last earthly sigh.

_May_, 1759.

Well, was you at the presentation, Lady Desmond, for I did not see your la'ship.

Says you: "How was that possible with the Irish Sea between us? So out with the news!"

The company was numerous and magnificent, and Horry Walpole in his wedding garment of a white brocade with purple and green flowers. 'Twas a trifle juvenile for his looks, but I blame him not; for my Lady Townshend would choose for him, though he protested that, however young he might be in spirits, his bloom was a little past. I could see he was quaking for his nuptialities--lest Maria should not be in full beauty.

T'other Maria,--Coventry,--in golden flowers on a silver ground, looked like the Queen of Sheba; and were not our Monarch anything but a Solomon, I would not say but--A full stop to all naughtiness! But I must tell you her last _faux pas_, for you know, child, she's as stupid as she's pretty. She told the King lately that she was surfeited with sights. There was but one left she could long to see. What, think you, it was?--why, a coronation!

The old man took it with good humour; but Queen Bess had made a divorce between her lovely head and shoulders for less.

Well, into the midst of this prodigious a.s.semblage, with Uncle Horry quaking inwardly and making as though Walpole nieces were presented every day, comes the fair Waldegrave, gliding like a swan, perfectly easy and genteel, in a silver gauze with knots of silver ribbon and diamonds not so bright as her eyes. I dare swear not a man there but envied my Lord Waldegrave, and many might envy the beauty her husband--a good plain man, grave and handsome. But the bride! She swam up to His Majesty, like Venus floating on clouds, and her curtsey and hand-kissing perfect. Who shall talk of blood in future, when a milliner's daughter can thus distinguish herself in the finest company in Europe? 'Tis true 'tis mixed with the Walpole vintage; but when all's said and done, who were the Walpoles? If you get behind the coa.r.s.e, drinking Squire Western of a father, you stumble up against Lord Mayors and what not! So 'tis a world's wonder, and there I leave it.

As for Maria Coventry--do but figure her! I saw her pale under her rouge when the bride entered, and her eyes shot sparks of fire, like an angry G.o.ddess. Could they have destroyed, we had seen her rival a heap of ashes like the princess of the Arabian Nights. I tendered her my smelling-bottle, but she dashed it from her, and then, smiling in the prettiest manner in the world, says to my Lord Hardwicke:--

"'Tis said women are jealous of each other's good looks, my Lord, but 'tis not so with me. I am vastly pleased with my Lady Waldegrave's appearance.

'Tis far beyond what was to be expected of her parentage. She looks vastly agreeable, and I hope she will favour me with her company."

'Twas cleverer than I supposed her, and sure enough she did nothing but court the bride, and now the two beauties go about to the sights and routs together and are the top figures in town, and all the world feasts its eyes upon two such works of nature--and Art it must be added, so far as Maria Coventry is concerned; she is two inches deep in white lead, and the doctors have warned her 'twill be the death of her. Kitty, I found my first gray hair yesterday. 'Tis my swan song. I am done with the beaux and the toasts and the fripperies. When I spoke to Harry Conway at the Court, his eyes were so fixed on Lady Waldegrave that he heard me not till I had spoke three times. Get thee to a nunnery, f.a.n.n.y! I shall now insensibly drop into a spectatress. What care I! To ninety-nine women life ends with their looks, but I will be the hundredth, and laugh till I die!

Why, Kitty, your appet.i.te for news grows by what it feeds on. Sure you are the horseleech's true daughter, crying, "Give, give!" You say I told you not of Charlotte Walpole's marriage. Sure, I did. Maria married her sister well--to young Lord Huntingtower, my Lord Dysart's son. 'Tis a girl of good sense. She loved him not, nor yet pretended to, but says she to Maria:--

"If I was nineteen, I would not marry him. I would refuse point-blank. But I am two-and-twenty, and though 'tis true some people say I am handsome, 'tis not all who think so. I believe the truth is, I am like to be large and heavy and go off soon. 'Tis dangerous to refuse so good a match.

Therefore tell him, sister, I accept."

And 'twas done. I had this from Maria herself, who took it for an instance of commendable good sense; but I know not--somehow I would have a girl less of a Jew with her charms. Anyhow, stout or no, she will be my Lady Countess Dysart when his father dies; and now sure, there are no more worlds left for the Walpole girls to conquer. Their doting Uncle Horry could never predict such success. The eldest girl's husband is now Bishop of Exeter.

Poor Maria Coventry is dead--the most lovely woman in England, setting aside only t' other Maria. 'Twas from usage of white lead, Kitty, and tell that to all the little fools you know! It devoured her skin, and she grew so hideous, that at the last she would not permit the doctors to see her ruined face, but would put out her hand between the curtains to have her pulse took. She was but twenty-seven years of age.

There was not a woman in the Three Kingdoms but envied the Gunnings, and was 't not yourself told me, "the Luck of the Gunnings" was become a proverb in Ireland, and the highest wish for a girl? What will the sermonizers say now? That 'tis best to be homely and live to eighty? I know not; but 'tis as well the choice is not given, for I believe there is not ten women living but would choose as did Maria Coventry. Her beauty was her G.o.d, and if she sacrificed herself on the altar, 'tis but what the G.o.ds look for.

Sure, I am Death's herald, for I must tell you my Lord Waldegrave is dead of the smallpox, and the beauty a widow after but four years' marriage. I saw her but yesterday, full of sensibility and lovely as Sigismonda in Hogarth's picture. She had her young daughter, Lady Elizabeth, in her lap, the curly head against her bosom, the chubby cheek resting on a little hand against the mother's breast. Sure never was anything so moving as the two--exact to the picture Mr Reynolds painted.

She has a great tenderness for his memory, and well she may, when the position he raised her to is considered. 'T is like a discrowned queen, for her jointure is small, and she is now no more consequence to his party, so his death has struck away her worldly glory at a blow. Indeed, I pitied her, and wiped away her floods of tears with tenderness that was unaffected. But for such a young woman, I won't believe the scene is closed. What--are there no marquises, no dukes, for such perfection?

But 't is brutal to talk so when she is crying her fine eyes out. I wipe my naughty pen and bid you adieu.

_Two days later._

I attended Mrs Minerva Montagu's reception, and there encountered the Great Cham of Literature, Dr Johnson, rolling into the saloon like Behemoth. Lady Waldegrave's bereavement was spoke of and says he:--

"I know not, Madam, why these afflictions should startle us. Such beauty invokes ill fortune, lest a human being suppose herself superior to the dictates of Providence."

"Certainly she is the first woman in England for beauty," says I, very nettled; "but 't is to be thought she had chose a little less beauty and rather more good fortune, had she been consulted. 'T is hard she should be punished for what she could not help!"

"Let her solace herself with her needleworks, Madam. A man cannot hem a pocket handkerchief and so he runs mad. To be occupied on small occasions is one of the great felicities of the female train and makes bereavement more bearable."

'T is a bear roaring his ignorance of the world, my dear. But he has a kind of horse sense (if the female train would but let him be) that makes him endurable and even palatable at times.

Mrs. Montagu informed us 't is rumoured that my Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (who you know is her cousin's cousin) thinks to return to England after being absent half a lifetime. I have a prodigious curiosity to see such a rarity. As for her beauty, that must be vanished, but her biting wit may outlive it, and Heaven send her here safe, I pray, to give a lash to the follies of more than one I could name, had I the malice. Were she to write a book of her life, 't would be the best reading in the world, could one wash their eyes and mind after reading it.

1764.

Kitty, my dear, have you forgot that, when my Lord Waldegrave died, I writ, "Are there no dukes to pursue the lovely widow?" Give honour to the prophet! She refused the Duke of Portland, that all the fair were hunting with stratagems worthy of the Mohawks. She refused this, that, and t'

other. And the town said: "Pray who is the milliner's daughter, to turn up her nose at the first matches in England? Has she designs on the King of Prussia,--for our own young monarch is wed to his Charlotte,--or is it the Sultan, or His Holiness the Pope that will content her ladyship?"

No answer. But, Kitty, 't is me to smell a rat at a considerable distance, and I kept my nostrils open! Our handsome young King has a handsome young brother,--His Royal Highness the Duke of Gloucester,--and this gentleman has cast the sheep's eye, the eye of pa.s.sion, upon our lovely widow! What think you of this? That it cannot be? Then what of the King Cophetua and other historic examples? I would have you know that in the tender pa.s.sion there's nothing that cannot be. It laughs at obstacles and rides triumphant on the crest of the impossible. I knew it long since, but 't is over the town like wildfire now.

Meeting my Lady Sarah Bunbury yesterday, says she:--

"Lady f.a.n.n.y, sure you know the Duke of Gloucester is desperately in love with my Lady Waldegrave. Now don't mask your little cunning face with ignorance, but tell me what's known. What have you heard from Horry Walpole?"

"Nothing, your la'ship," says I, very demure.

"Well," says she, "'t is reported the King has forbid him to speak to his fair widow, and she is gone out of town. He has given her two pearl bracelets worth five hundred pound. That's not for nothing surely. But for what?"

"Indeed, 't is an ambiguous gift, Madam," says I, whimsically; "and may mean much or little. Give me leave to ask whether 't is Pursuit or Attainment as your la'ship reads it?"

But she tossed her head, the little gossip, and off she went.

I can tell you thus much, Kitty: the Walpoles are main frightened. It may be a cast-back to the principles of the milliner mother. And there was never the difference between her and Sir Edward Walpole that there is between Maria and a Prince of the Blood. Her birth is impossible. My Lady Mary c.o.ke asking me if the mother were not a washerwoman, says I, "I really cannot determine the lady's profession."

Poor Lady Mary is run clean mad with jealousy and spite, for 't is not so long since she believed herself on the way to be a Royal d.u.c.h.ess, imagining the late Duke of York to be her lover--a gentleman so pa.s.sionately in love with himself as to leave no room for another. She wore her blacks when he died, like a widow. But, spitfire as Lady Mary is, 't is too true Maria is playing with fire, and there should be nothing between him and her mother's daughter. She is indeed more indiscreet than becomes her. His chaise is eternally at her door; and, as my Lady Mary says, she is lucky that anyone else countenances her at all. If they do, 't is as much from curiosity as any n.o.bler emotion. Indeed, I fear her reputation's cracked past repair. Meeting Horry Walpole last night at the French Emba.s.sador's, he was plagued with staring crowds, and he made off after braving it a while. I hear the King is highly offended and the Queen yet more. She has a great notion of birth; and though poor, the Mecklenburg family has as good quarterings as any Royals in Europe. For my part, Kitty, I know not. Yet, if we seek for pedigree in horse and dog, 't is to be supposed worth something in Adam's breed also. And this ill-behaviour in Maria confirms me.