Musidora, as described by Thomson, was the most beautiful woman of rank
in the kingdom. Every turn of her features, every form of her limbs, was
perfect, and grace accompanied every movement. She was tall, of the just
height; slender, but not thin; her features were delicate and noble; and
her ancestors, the Plantagenets, were in her represented by a faultless
sample of personal attributes. She was the daughter of a race which has
given to the world many heroes, one philosopher, and several celebrated
beauties--that of Somerset; and, as the descendant of the defenders of
Raglan Castle, might be expected to combine various noble qualities with
personal gifts. But she was cold, although a coquette. In the Duchess of
Devonshire it was the _besoin d'aimer_, the cordial nature recoiled into
itself from being linked to an expletive, that betrayed her into an
encouragement of what offered her the semblance of affection--into the
temptation of being beloved. To the Duchess of Gordon her conquests were
enhanced by the remembrance of what they might bring; but the Duchess of
Rutland viewed her admirers in the light of offering tributes to a
goddess. She was destitute of the smiles, the intelligence, and
sweetness of the Duchess of Devonshire; and conscious of charms,
received adoration as her due. "In truth," Sir Nathanial Wraxall, who
knew her well, writes, "I never contemplated her except as an enchanting
statue, formed to excite admiration rather than to awaken love, this
superb production of nature not being lighted up by corresponding mental
attractions."
This lady was united to one of the most attractive and popular of men,
but one of the most imprudent and convivial. The son of that celebrated
Marquis of Granby whom Junius attacked, the young Duke of Rutland was a
firm partisan of Pitt, whom he first brought into the House of Commons,
and at whose wish he accepted the government of Ireland in 1784. Never
was there such splendour at the vice-regal court as in his time. Vessels
laden with the expensive luxuries from England were seen in the Bay of
Dublin at short intervals; the banquets given were most costly; the
evenings at the castle were divided between play and drinking; and yet
the mornings found the young duke breakfasting on six or seven turkey's
eggs. He then, when on his progress, rode forty or fifty miles, returned
to dinner at seven, and sat up to a late hour, supping before he
retired to rest.
The duchess had little place in his heart, and the siren, Mrs.
Billington, held it in temporary thraldom; but constancy was to a man of
such a calibre impossible. Nevertheless, when the duke saw his wife
surrounded by admirers, whom her levity of manner encouraged, he became
jealous, and they parted, for the last time as it proved, on bad terms.
One evening, seeing him engaged in play, the duchess approached the
window of the room in which he sat, and tapped at it. He was highly
incensed by this interference with his amusements. She returned to
England, an invalid, in order to consult Doctor Warren, the father of
the late physician of that name. Whilst residing with her mother in
Berkeley Square, she heard that the duke was attacked with fever. She
sent off Doctor Warren to see him, and was preparing to follow him when
the physician returned. At Holyhead he had heard that the duke was no
more. He died at the early age of thirty-three, his blood having been
inflamed by his intemperance, which, however, never affected his reason,
and was, therefore, the more destructive to his health. His widow, in
spite of their alienation, mourned long and deeply. Never did she appear
more beautiful than when, in 1788, she reappeared after her seclusion.
Like Diana of Poictiers, she retained her wonderful loveliness to an
advanced age. Latterly, she covered her wrinkles with enamel, and when
she appeared in public always quitted a room in which the windows, which
might admit the dampness, were opened. She never married again,
notwithstanding the various suitors who desired to obtain her hand.
For a long time the Duchess of Gordon continued to reign over the Tory
party almost without a rival. When, at last, the Duchess of Devonshire
came forward as the female champion of the Foxites, Pitt and Dundas,
afterward Lord Melville, opposed to her the Duchess of Gordon. At that
time she lived in the splendid mansion of the then Marquis of Buckingham
in Pall Mall. Every evening, numerous assemblies of persons attached to
the administration gathered in those stately saloons, built upon or near
the terrace whereon Nell Gwyn used to chat with Charles II on the grass
below, as he was going to feed his birds in his gardens. Presuming on
her rank, her influence, her beauty, the Duchess of Gordon used to act
in the most determined manner as a government whipper-in. When a member
on whom she counted was wanting, she did not scruple to send for him, to
remonstrate, to persuade, to fix him by a thousand arts. Strange must
have been the scene--more strange than attractive. Everything was
forgotten but the one grand object of the evening, the theme of all
talk,--the next debate and its supporters. In the year 1780 events took
place which for some time appeared likely to shake the prosperity of the
Gordon family almost to its fall.
The duke had two brothers, the elder of whom, Lord William, was the
Ranger of Windsor Park, and survived to a great age. The younger, Lord
George, holds a very conspicuous but not a very creditable place in the
annals of his country. No event in our history bears any analogy with
that styled the "Gordon Riots," excepting the fire of London in the
reign of Charles II; and even that calamity did not exhibit the mournful
spectacle which attended the conflagrations of 1780. In the former
instance, the miserable sufferers had to contend only with a devouring
element; in the latter, they had to seek protection, and to seek it in
vain, from a populace of the lowest description, and the vilest
purposes, who carried with them destruction wherever they went. Even
during the French Revolution, revolting and degrading as it was, the
firebrand was not employed in the work of destruction; the public and
private buildings of Paris were spared.
The author of all these calamities, Lord George Gordon, was a young man
of gentle, agreeable manners, and delicate, high-bred appearance. His
features were regular and pleasing; he was thin and pale, but with a
cunning, sinister expression in his face that indicated
wrong-headedness. He was dependent on his elder brother, the duke, for
his maintenance, six hundred pounds a year being allowed him by his
Grace. Such was the exterior, such the circumstances of an incendiary
who has been classed with Wat Tyler and Jack Cade, or with Kett, the
delinquent in the time of Edward VI.
It was during the administration of Lord North that the Cordon Riots
took place, excited by the harangues and speeches of Lord George. On the
2d of June he harangued the people; on the 7th these memorable
disturbances broke out; Bloomsbury Square was the first point of attack.
In Pope's time this now neglected square was fashionable:
"In Palace Yard, at nine, you'll find me there;
At ten, for certain, sir, in Bloomsbury Square."
Baxter, the Nonconformist, and Sir Hans Sloane once inhabited what was,
in their time, called Southampton Square, from Southampton House, which
occupied one whole side of Bloomsbury Square, and was long the abode of
Lady Rachel Russell, after the execution of her lord. Like every other
part of what may be called "Old London," it is almost sanctified by the
memories of the lettered and the unfortunate. But the glory of
Bloomsbury Square was, in those days, the house of Lord Mansfield, at
the north end of the east side; in which that judge had collected many
valuables, among which his library was the dearest to his heart; it was
the finest legal library of his time. As soon as the long summer's day
had closed, and darkness permitted the acts of violence to be fully
recognised, Hart Street and Great Russell Street were illuminated by
large fires, composed of the furniture taken from the houses of certain
magistrates. Walking into Bloomsbury, the astounded observer of that
night's horrors saw, with consternation, the hall door of Lord
Mansfield's house broken open; and instantly all the contents of the
various apartments were thrown into the square, and set on fire. In vain
did a small body of foot-soldiers attempt to intimidate the rioters. The
whole of the house was consumed, and vengeance would have fallen on Lord
Mansfield and his lady had they not escaped by a back door a few minutes
before the hall was broken into; such was that memorable act of
destruction--so prompt, so complete. Let us follow the mob, in fancy,
and leaving the burning pile in Bloomsbury Square, track the steps of
the crowd into Holborn. We remember, as we are hurried along, with a
bitter feeling, that Holborn was the appointed road for criminals from
Newgate to Tyburn. It is now one blaze of light; in the hollow near
Fleet Market, the house and warehouses of Mr. Langdale, a Catholic--a
Christian like ourselves, though not one of our own blessed and reformed
church--is blazing; a pinnacle of flame, like a volcano, is sent up into
the air. St. Andrew's Church is almost scorched with the heat; whilst
the figures of the clock--that annalist which numbers, as it stands, the
hours of guilt--are plain as at noonday. The gutters beneath, catching
here and there gleams of the fiery heavens, run with spirituous liquors
from the plundered distilleries; the night is calm, as if no deeds of
persecution sullied its beauty; at times it is obscured by volumes of
smoke, but they pass away, and the appalled spectators of the street
below are plainly visible. Here stands a mother with an infant in her
arms looking on; there, a father, leading his boy to the safest point of
observation. We wonder at their boldness; but it is the direst sign of
affright--in their homes they are insecure--everywhere, anywhere, the
ruthless unseen hand may cast the brand, and all may perish. At this
early hour there seemed to be no ringleader--no pillage; it appeared
difficult to conceive who could be the wretch who instigated, who
directed this awful riot; but, at the windows, men were seen calmly
tearing away pictures from the walls; furniture, books, plate, from
their places, and throwing them into the flames. As midnight drew near,
the ferocious passions of the multitude were heightened by ardent
spirits; not a soldier, either horse or foot, is visible. "Whilst we
stood," says an eye-witness, "by the wall of St. Andrew's churchyard, a
watchman, with his lanthorn in his hand, passed on, calling the hour as
if in a time of profound security."
Meantime, the King's Bench Prison was enveloped in flames; the Mansion
House and the Bank were attacked. But the troops were killing and
dispersing the rioters on Blackfriars Bridge; a desperate conflict
between the horse and the mob was going on near the Bank. What a night!
The whole city seemed to be abandoned to pillage--to destruction.
Shouts, yells, the shrieks of women, the crackling of the burning
houses, the firing of platoons toward St. George's Fields, combined to
show that no horrors, no foes are equal to those of domestic treachery,
domestic persecution, domestic fury, and infatuation.
It was not alone the Roman Catholics who were threatened. Sir George
Savile's house in Leicester Square--once the peaceful locality in which
Dorothy Sydney, Waller's "Sacharissa," bloomed--was plundered and
burned. Then the Duchess of Devonshire took fright, and did not venture
to stay at Devonshire House for many nights after dusk, but took refuge
at Lord Clermont's in Berkeley Square, sleeping on a sofa in the
drawing-room. In Downing Street, Lord North was dining with a party his
brother, Colonel North, Mr. Eden, afterward Lord Auckland, the
Honourable John St. John, General Fraser, and Count Malzen, the Prussian
minister. The little square then surrounding Downing Street was filled
with the mob. "Who commands the upper story?" said Lord North. "I do,"
answered Colonel North; "and I have twenty or thirty grenadiers well
armed, who are ready to fire on the first notice."
"If your grenadiers fire," said Mr. Eden, calmly, "they will probably
fire into my house just opposite."
The mob was now threatening; every moment the peril was increasing. Mr.
St. John held a pistol in his hand; and Lord North, who never could
forbear cutting a joke, said, "I am not half so much afraid of the mob
as of Jack St. John's pistol." By degrees, however, the crowd, seeing
that the house was well guarded, dispersed, and the gentlemen quietly
sat down again to their wine until late in the evening, when they all
ascended to the top of the house, and beheld the capital blazing. It was
here that the first suggestion of a coalition between Lord North and
Fox, to save the country and themselves, was started, and afterward
perfected behind the scenes of the Opera House in the Haymarket. During
this memorable night George III, behaved with the courage which,
whatever their failings, has ever highly distinguished the Hanoverian
family. By the vigorous measures, late indeed, but not too late, which
he acceded to at the Council, London was saved. But the popular fury had
extended to other towns. Bath was in tumult; a new Roman Catholic chapel
there was burned. Mrs. Thrale, hearing that her house at Streatham had
been threatened, caused it to be emptied of its furniture. Three times
was Mrs. Thrale's town house attacked; her valuables and furniture were
removed thence also; and she deemed it prudent to leave Bath, into which
coaches, chalked over with "No Popery," were hourly driving. The
composure with which the rioters did their work seemed to render the
scene more fearful, as they performed these acts of violence as if they
were carrying out a religious duty rather than deeds of
execrable hatred.
It was not until two or three days after tranquillity had been restored
that Lord George Gordon was apprehended. Ministers were justly
reproached for not having sent him to the Tower on the 2d of June, when
he had assembled and excited the mob to extort compliance with their
wishes from the House of Commons. Such a step, when the House was
surrounded by multitudes, and when, every moment, it was expected that
the door would be broken open, would have been hazardous; had that
occurred, Lord George would have suffered instant death. General Murray,
afterward Duke of Atholl, held his sword ready to pass it through Lord
George's body the instant the mob rushed in. The Earl of Carnarvon, the
grandfather of the present earl, followed him closely with the
same intent.
The indignation of the insulted Commons was extreme, and the distress
and displeasure of Lord George's own family doubtless excessive. The
House of Commons had never been thus insulted before. It is difficult to
determine what could be Lord George's motives for the conduct which led
to these awful results, during the whole of which he preserved a
composure that bordered on insensibility; he was a perfect master of
himself whilst the city was in flames. Much may be laid to fanaticism,
and the mental derangement which it either produced or evinced. When too
late he tried in vain to abate the fury he had excited, and offered to
take his stand by Lord Rodney's[55] side when the Bank was attacked, to
aid that officer, who commanded the Guards, in its defence.
Lord George then lived in Weibeck Street, Cavendish Square, and
tradition assigns as his house that now occupied by Mr. Newby, the
publisher, No. 30, and for many years the house of Count Woronzoff, the
Russian ambassador, who died there. Lord George there prepared for his
defence, which was entrusted to the great Erskine, then in his prime,
or, as he was called in caricatures, with which the shops were full,
from his extreme vanity, _Counsellor Ego_. In February, 1781, the trial
took place, and Lord George was acquitted. He retired to Birmingham,
became a Jew, and lived in that faith, or under the delusion that he did
so. The hundreds who perished from his folly or insanity were avenged in
his subsequent imprisonment in Newgate for a libel on Marie Antoinette,
of which he was convicted. He died a very few years after the riots of
1780, in Newgate, generally condemned, and but little compassionated.
It appears from the letters addressed by Doctor Beanie to the Duchess of
Gordon, that she was not in London during the riots of June, 1780. The
poet had been introduced to her by Sir William Forbes, and frequently
visited Gordon Castle. We find him, whilst London was blazing, sending
thither a parcel of _Mirrors_, the fashionable journal, "Count Fathom,"
"The Tale of a Tub," and the fanciful, forgotten romance by Bishop
Berkeley, "Gaudentio di Lucca," to amuse her solitude. "'Gaudentio,'" he
writes, "will amuse you, though there are tedious passages in it. The
whole description of passing the deserts of Africa is particularly
excellent." It is singular that this dream of Bishop Berkeley's of a
country fertile and delicious in the centre of Africa should have been
almost realised in our own time by the discoveries of Doctor
Livingstone.
To his present of books, Doctor Beattie added a flask of whisky, which
he sealed with his usual seal, "The three graces, whom I take to be your
Grace's near relations, as they have the honour, not only to bear one of
your titles, but also to resemble you exceedingly in form, feature, and
manner. If you had lived three thousand years ago, which I am very glad
you did not, there would have been four of them, and you the first. May
all happiness attend your Grace!"
This graceful piece of adulation was followed by a tender concern for
"her Grace's" health. A sportive benediction was offered whilst the
duchess was at Glenfiddick, a hunting seat in the heart of the Grampian
Hills--a wild, sequestered spot, of which Doctor Beattie was
particularly fond.
"I rejoice in the good weather, in the belief that it extends to
Glenfiddick, where I pray that your Grace may enjoy all the health and
happiness that good air, goats' whey, romantic solitude, and the society
of the loveliest children in the world can bestow. May your days be
clear sunshine; and may a gentle rain give balm to your nights, that the
flowers and birch-trees may salute you in the morning with all their
fragrance! May the kids frisk and play tricks before you with unusual
sprightliness; and may the song of birds, the hum of bees, and the
distant waterfall, with now and then the shepherd's horn resounding from
the mountains, entertain you with a full chorus of Highland music! My
imagination had parcelled out the lovely little glen into a thousand
little paradises; in the hope of being there, and seeing everyday in
that solitude, what is
'Fairer than famed of old, or fabled since,
Of fairy damsels, met in forests wide
By errant knights.'
But the information you received at Cluny gave a check to my fancy, and
was indeed a great disappointment to Mrs. Beattie and me; not on account
of the goats' whey, but because it keeps us so long at such a distance
from your Grace."
When at Gordon Castle, the duchess occupied herself with pursuits that
elevated whilst they refreshed her mind. She promised Doctor Beattie to
send him the history of a day. Her day seems to have been partly engaged
in the instruction of her five daughters, and in an active
correspondence and reading. It is difficult to imagine this busy,
flattered woman reading Blair's sermons--which had then been recently
published--to her family on Sundays; or the duke, whom Doctor Beattie
describes as "more astronomical than ever," engrossed from morning to
night in making calculations with Mr. Copland, Professor of Astronomy in
Marischal College, Aberdeen. Beattie's letters to the duchess, although
too adulatory, were those of a man who respects the understanding of the
woman to whom he writes. The following anecdotes, the one relating to
Hume, the other to Handel, are in his letters to the Duchess of Gordon,
and they cannot be read without interest.
"Mr. Hume was boasting to the doctor (Gregory) that among his disciples
he had the honour to reckon many of the fair sex. 'Now tell me,' said
the doctor, 'whether, if you had a wife or a daughter, you would wish
them to be your disciples? Think well before you answer me; for I assure
you that whatever your answer is, I will not conceal it.' Mr. Hume, with
a smile and some hesitation, made this reply: 'No; I believe skepticism
may be too sturdy a virtue for a woman.' Miss Gregory will certainly
remember she has heard her father tell this story."
Again, about Handel:
"I lately heard two anecdotes, which deserve to be put in writing, and
which you will be glad to hear. When Handel's 'Messiah' was first
performed, the audience were exceedingly struck and affected by the
music in general; but when the chorus struck up, 'For the Lord God
Omnipotent reigneth,' they were so transported that they all, together
with the king (who happened to be present), started up, and remained
standing till the chorus ended; and hence it became the fashion in
England for the audience to stand while that part of the music is
performing. Some days after the first exhibition of the same divine
oratorio, Mr. Handel came to pay his respects to Lord Kinnoul, with whom
he was particularly acquainted. His lordship, as was natural, paid him
some compliments on the noble entertainment which he had lately given
the town. 'My lord,' said Handel, 'I should be sorry if I only
entertained them--I wish to make them better.'"
Beattie's happiest hours are said to have been passed at Gordon Castle,
with those whose tastes, in some respects differing from his own, he
contributed to form; whilst he was charmed with the beauty, the wit, the
cultivated intellect of the duchess, and he justly appreciated her
talents and virtues. Throughout a friendship of years her kindness
was unvaried;
"Ne'er ruffled by those cataracts and breaks
Which humour interposed too often makes."
The duchess felt sincerely for poor Beattie's domestic sorrows; for the
peculiarities of his wife, whom he designated as "nervous;" for the
early death of his son, in whom all the poet's affections were bound up,
and to whose welfare every thought of his was directed.
One would gladly take one's impressions of the Duchess of Gordon's
character from Beattie, rather than from the pen of political writers,
who knew her but as a partisan. The duchess, according to Beattie, was
feelingly alive to every fine impulse; demonstrative herself, detesting
coldness in others; the life of every party; the consoling friend of
every scene of sorrow; a compound of sensibility and vivacity, of
strength and softness. This is not the view that the world took of her
character. Beattie always quitted Gordon Castle "with sighs and tears."
It is much to have added to the transient gleams of happiness enjoyed by
so good and so afflicted a man. "I cannot think," he wrote, when under
the pressure of dreaded calamity--that of seeing his wife insane; "I am
too much agitated and _distrait_ (as Lord Chesterfield would say) to
read anything that is not very desultory; I cannot play at cards; I
could never learn to smoke; and my musical days are over. My first
excursion, if ever I make any, must be to Gordon Castle."
There he found what is indispensable to such a man--congeniality.
Amusement was not what he required; it was soothing. It was in the
duchess's presence that he wrote the following "Lines to a Pen:"
"Go, and be guided by the brightest eyes,
And to the softest hand thine aid impart;
To trace the fair ideas as they arise,
Warm from the purest, gentlest, noblest heart;"
lines in which the praise is worth more than the poetry. The duchess
sent him a copy by Smith of her portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds, a
picture to which reference has been already made.
In 1782 the duchess grieved for the death of Lord Kaimes, for whom she
had a sincere friendship, although the religious opinions of that
celebrated man differed greatly from those of Beattie. Lord Kaimes was
fifty-six years an author, in company with the eccentric Lord Monboddo,
the author of the theory that men have had tails. Lord Kaimes passed
some days at Gordon Castle shortly before his death. Monboddo and he
detested each other, and squabbled incessantly. Lord Kaimes understood
no Greek; and Monboddo, who was as mad and as tiresome about Greek and
Aristotle, and as absurd and peculiar on that score as Don Quixote was
about chivalry, told him that without understanding Greek he could not
write a page of good English. Their arguments must have been highly
diverting. Lord Kaimes, on his death-bed, left a remembrance to the
Duchess of Gordon, who had justly appreciated him, and defended him from
the charge of skepticism. Lord Monboddo compared the duchess to Helen of
Troy, whom he asserted to have been seven feet high; but whether in
stature, in beauty, or in the circumstances of her life, does
not appear.