"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 assemblage, 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 coarse, 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
goddess. 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, Fanny! 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 appetite 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 god, and if she sacrificed herself on the altar, 'tis but what the
gods 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 passion, 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 passion
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.