"The seats of the Peeresses were not nearly full, and most of the beauties were absent; but, to the amazement of everybody, Lady Coventry was there, and, what surprised me more, looked as well as ever. I sat next but one to her, and should not have asked her if she had been ill, yet they are positive she has few weeks to live. She was observed to be 'acting over all the old comedy of eyes' with her former flame, Lord Bolingbroke, an unscrupulous rake, who seems to have striven for years to make her the victim of his pa.s.sion."

Her conduct, indeed, seems never to have been very discreet.

"Her levities," says a chronicler of the time, "were very publicly talked of, and some gallantries were ascribed to her which were greatly believed. However, they were never brought home to her; and, if she were guilty, she escaped with only a little private scandal, which generally falls to the lot of every woman of uncommon beauty who is envied by the rest of her s.e.x."

During the summer of 1760 the unhappy lady lay at the point of death, in her stately home at Croome Court, bravely awaiting the end.

"Until the last few days," says Mr Horace Bleackley, "the pretty Countess lay upon a sofa, with a mirror in her hand, gazing with yearning eyes upon the reflection of her fading charms. To the end her ruling pa.s.sion was unchanged; for when she perceived that her beauty had vanished she asked to be carried to bed, and called for the room to be darkened and the curtains drawn, permitting none to look upon her pallid face and sunken cheeks."

Thus, robbed of all that had made life worth living, and bitterly realising the vanity of beauty, Lady Coventry drew her last breath on October 1st 1760. Ten days later, ten thousand persons paid their last homage to her in Pirton churchyard.

Three weeks before Maria Gunning blossomed into a Countess her younger sister Betty had been led to the altar under much more romantic conditions, after one of the most rapid and impetuous wooings in the annals of Love. A few weeks before she wore her wedding-ring, the man who was to win her was not even known to her by sight; and what she had heard of him was by no means calculated to impress her in his favour.

The Duke of Hamilton, while still young, had won for himself a very unenviable notoriety as a debauchee in an age of profligacy. He had drunk deep of every cup of questionable pleasure; and at an age when he should have been in the very prime of his manhood, he was a physical wreck, his vitality drained almost to its last drop by shameful excesses.

Such was the man who entered the lists against a legion of formidable rivals for the guerdon of Betty Gunning's hand. It was at a masquerade that he first seems to have set eyes on her; and at sight of her this jaded, worn devotee of pleasure fell headlong in love. Within an hour of being introduced he was, Walpole says,

"making violent love to her at one end of the room, in my Lord Chesterfield's house, while he was playing at pharaoh at the other; that is, he neither saw the bank nor his own cards, which were of 300 each. He soon lost a thousand."

Such was the first meeting of the lovely Irish girl, and the man whom she was to marry--a man who, even in the thraldom of a violent love, could not refrain from indulging his pa.s.sion for gambling. So inflamed was he by this new beauty who had crossed his path that, to quote our entertaining gossip again,

"two nights afterwards, being left alone with her, while her mother and sister were at Bedford House, he found himself so infatuated that he sent for a parson. The doctor refused to perform the ceremony without licence or ring--the Duke swore he would send for the Archbishop. At last they were married with the ring of the bed-curtain, at half an hour after twelve at night, at Mayfair Chapel.

The Scotch are enraged, the women mad that so much beauty has had its effect."

If the wooing be happy that is not long in doing, the new d.u.c.h.ess should have been a very enviable woman; as no doubt she was, for she had achieved a splendid match; the daughter of the penniless Irish squireen had won, in a few days, rank and riches, which many an Earl's daughter would have been proud to capture; and, although her Ducal husband was "debauched, and damaged in his fortune and his person," he was her very slave, and, as far as possible to such a man, did his best to make her happy.

Translated to a new world of splendour the Irish girl seems to have borne herself with astonishing dignity and modesty. She might, indeed, have been cradled in a Duke's palace, instead of in a "dilapidated farmhouse in the wilds of Ireland," so naturally did she take to her new _role_. When Her Grace, wearing her d.u.c.h.ess's coronet, made her curtsy to the King one March day in 1752,

"the crowd was so great, that even the n.o.ble mob in the drawing-room clambered upon tables and chairs to look at her. There are mobs at the doors to see her get into her chair; and people go early to get places at the theatre when it is known that she will be there."

A few weeks after the marriage, the Duke of Hamilton conducted his bride to the home of his ancestors; and never perhaps has any but a Royal bride made such a splendid progress to her future home. Along the entire route from London to Scotland she was greeted with cheering crowds struggling to catch a glimpse of the famous beauty, whose romantic story had stirred even the least sentimental to sympathy and curiosity. When they stopped one night at a Yorkshire inn, "seven hundred people," we are told, "sat up all night in and about the house merely to see the d.u.c.h.ess get into her post-chaise the next morning."

Arrived at her husband's Highland Castle she was received with honours that might almost have embarra.s.sed a Queen, and which must have seemed strange indeed to the woman whose memories of sordid life in that small cottage on the outskirts of Dublin were still so vivid. Indeed no Queen could have led a more stately life than was now opened to her.

"The Duke of Hamilton," says Walpole, to whom the world is indebted for so much that it knows of the Gunning sisters, "is the abstract of Scotch pride. He and the d.u.c.h.ess, at their own house, walk into dinner before their company, sit together at the upper end of their own table, eat off the same plate, and drink to n.o.body under the rank of an Earl. Would not indeed," the genial old chatterbox adds, "one wonder how they could get anybody, either above or below that rank, to dine with them at all? It is, indeed, a marvel how such a host could find guests of any degree sufficiently wanting in self-respect to sit at his table and endure his pompous insolence--the insolence of an innately vulgar mind, which, unhappily, is sometimes to be met even in the most exalted rank of life."

Perhaps the proudest period in d.u.c.h.ess Betty's romantic life was when, with her husband, the Duke, she paid a visit, in 1755, to Dublin, the "dear, dirty" city she had known in the days of her poverty and obscurity, when her greatest dread was the sight of a bailiff in the house, and her highest ambition to procure a dress to display her budding charms at a dance. Her stay in Dublin was one long, intoxicating triumph. "No Queen," she said, "could have been more handsomely treated." Wherever she went she was followed by mobs, fighting to get a glimpse of her, or to touch the hem of her gown, and blissful if they could win a smile from the "darlint d.u.c.h.ess" who had brought so much glory to old Ireland.

Her wedded life, however, was destined to be brief. Her husband had one foot in his premature grave when he put the curtain-ring on her finger; but, beyond all doubt, his marriage gave him a new if short lease of life. She became a widow in 1758; and before she had worn her weeds three months she had a swarm of suitors buzzing round her. The Duke of Bridgewater was among the first to fall on his knees before the fascinating widow, who, everybody now vowed, was lovelier than ever; but he proved too exacting in his demands to please Her Grace. In fact, the only one of all her new wooers on whom she could smile was Colonel John Campbell, who, although a commoner, would one day blossom into a Duke of Argyll; and she gave her hand to "handsome Jack" within twelve months of weeping over the grave of her first husband.

"It was a match," Walpole says, "that would not disgrace Arcadia. Her beauty had made enough sensation, and in some people's eyes is even improved. She has a most pleasing person, countenance and manner; and if they could but carry to Scotland some of our sultry English weather, they might restore the ancient pastoral life, when fair kings and queens reigned at once over their subjects and their sheep."

It was under such Arcadian conditions that Betty Gunning began her second venture in matrimony, which proved as happy as its promise.

Probably the eleven years which the Dowager-d.u.c.h.ess had to wait for her next coronet were the happiest of her life; and when at last Colonel Jack became fifth Duke of Argyll she was able to resume the life of stately splendour which had been hers with her first Duke. By this time her beauty had begun to show signs of fading.

"As she is not quite so charming as she was," says Walpole, "I do not know whether it is not better to change her t.i.tle than to retain that which puts one in mind of her beauty."

But what she may have lost in physical charms she had gained in social prestige. She was appointed Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen Charlotte; and was one of the three ladies who acted as escort to the Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz to the arms of her reluctant husband, George III. It is said that when the young German bride came in sight of the palace of her future husband, she turned pale and showed such signs of terror as to force a smile from the d.u.c.h.ess who sat by her side. Upon which the frightened young Princess remarked, "My dear d.u.c.h.ess, you may laugh, for you have been married twice; but it is no joke for me." Her life as Lady of the Bedchamber appears to have been by no means a bed of roses, for Charlotte proved so jealous of the attentions paid to the beautiful d.u.c.h.ess by her husband, the King, that at one time she contemplated resigning her post. The letter of resignation was actually written and despatched; but Her Grace, who did not approve altogether of its language, added this naive postscript before sending it, "Though _I_ wrote the letter, it was the Duke who dictated it."

Boswell, when describing a visit he paid to Inverary Castle, in Johnson's company, gives us no very favourable impression of the d.u.c.h.ess's courtesy as hostess. When the Duke conducted him to the drawing-room and announced his name,

"the d.u.c.h.ess," he says, "who was sitting with her daughter and some other ladies, took not the least notice of me. I should have been mortified at being thus coldly received by a lady of whom I, with the rest of the world, have always entertained a very high admiration, had I not been consoled by the obliging attention of the Duke."

During dinner, when Boswell ventured to drink Her Grace's good health, she seems equally to have ignored him. And while paying the utmost deference and attention to Johnson, the only remark she deigned to make to his fellow-guest was a contemptuous "I fancy you must be a Methodist." In fairness to the d.u.c.h.ess it should be said that Boswell had incurred her grave displeasure by taking part against her in the famous Douglas Case in which she was deeply interested; and this was no doubt the reason why for once she forgot the elementary demands of hospitality as well as the courtesy due to her rank; and why, when Johnson mentioned his companion by name, she answered coldly, "I know nothing of Mr Boswell."

The d.u.c.h.ess saw her daughter, Lady Betty Hamilton, wedded to Lord Stanley, the future Earl of Derby, a union in which she paid by a life of misery for her mother's scheming ambition; and died in 1790, thirty years after her sister Maria drew the last breath of her short life behind drawn bed-curtains in her darkened room.

To Betty Gunning, the squireen's daughter, fell the unique distinction of marrying two dukes, refusing a third, and becoming the mother of four others, two of whom were successive Dukes of Hamilton, and two of Argyll.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE MYSTERIOUS TWINS

A century and a half ago the "Douglas cause" was a subject of hot debate from John o' Groats to Land's End. It was discussed in Court and castle and cottage, and was wrangled over at the street corner. It divided families and estranged friends, so fierce was the partisanship it generated; and so full was it of complexity and mystery that it puzzled the heads of the wisest lawyers. England and Scotland alike were divided into two hostile camps, one declaring that Archibald Douglas was son of Lady Jean Douglas, and thus the rightful heir to the estates of his ducal uncle; the other, protesting with equal warmth and conviction that he was nothing of the sort.

Dr Johnson was a stalwart in one camp; Boswell in the other. "Sir, sir,"

Johnson said to his friend and biographer, "don't be too severe upon the gentleman; don't accuse him of a want of filial piety! Lady Jane Douglas was _not_ his mother." "Whereupon," Boswell says, "he roused my zeal so much that I took the liberty to tell him that he knew nothing of the cause, which I most seriously do believe was the case." For seven years the suit dragged its weary length through the Courts; the evidence for and against the young man's claim covers ten thousand closely-printed pages; but although Archibald won the Douglas lands, his paternity remains to-day as profound a mystery as when George III. was new to his throne.

Forty years before the curtain rose on this dramatic trial which, Boswell declares, "shook the security of birthright in Scotland to its foundation," the Lady Jean, only daughter of James, second Marquess of Douglas, was one of the fairest maids north of the Tweed--a girl who combined beauty and a singular charm of manner with such abounding vitality and strength of character that she did not require her high rank and royal descent to make her desirable in the eyes of suitors. She was, moreover, the only sister of the head of her family, the Duke of Douglas, who seemed little disposed to provide an heir to his vast estates; and these there seemed more than a fair prospect that she would one day inherit.

It was thus but natural that many a wooer sought Lady Jean's hand; and had she cared for coronets she might have had her pick of them. On the evidence of the man who ultimately became her husband she refused those of the Dukes of Hamilton, Buccleuch and Atholl, the Earls of Hopetoun, Aberdeen and Panrnure, _c.u.m multis aliis._ However this may be, we know that she had several love romances; and that one at least nearly led to the altar while Jean was still a "wee bit la.s.sie." The favoured suitor was the young Earl of Dalkeith, heir to the Buccleuch Dukedom, a young man who may have been, as Lady Louisa Stuart described him, "of mean understanding and meaner habits," but who was at least devoted to her ladyship, and in many ways a desirable _parti_. The d.u.c.h.ess of Buccleuch was frankly delighted with the projected marriage of her son with Lady Jean Douglas, "a young lady whom she had heard much commended before she saw her, and who since had lost no ground with her"; and, no doubt, the fair Douglas would have become Dalkeith's Countess had it not been for the treacherous intervention of Her Grace of Queensberry, whose heart was set on the Earl marrying her sister-in-law.

The marriage day had actually been fixed when a letter was placed in Lady Jean's hand, when on her way to the Court--a letter in which the Earl claimed his release as he no longer loved her. That the letter was a clever forgery never occurred to Lady Jean, who was so crushed by it that it is said she fled in disguise to France to hide her shame and her humiliation. Such was the tragic ending to Lady Jean's first romance, which gave her such a distrust of man and such a distaste for matrimony that for thirty years she vowed she would listen to no avowal of love, however tempting.

During the long period, while youth was slipping from her, Lady Jean appears to have lived alone at Drumsheugh House, near Edinburgh, where she made herself highly popular by her affability, admired for her gifts and graces of mind, and courted for her rank and her lavish hospitality--paying occasional visits to her brother, the Duke of Douglas, whose devotion to her was only equalled by the alarm his eccentric behaviour and his mad fits of jealousy and temper inspired in her. That the Duke, who is described as "a person of the most wretched intellect, proud, ignorant, and silly, pa.s.sionate, spiteful and unforgiving," was scarcely sane is proved by many a story, one alone of which is sufficient to prove that his mind must have been unbalanced.

Once when Captain Ker, a distant cousin, was a guest at the castle, he ventured to remonstrate with his host on allowing his servants, especially one called Stockbrigg, to rule over him; whereupon

"the poor Duke," to quote Woodrow, "who for many years had been crazed in his brain, told this familiar, who persuaded him that such an insult could only be wiped out in blood. On which the Duke proceeded to Ker's room and stabbed him as he was sleeping."

It is little wonder that Lady Jean declined to live with a brother who was thus a slave to his own servants and to a temper so insane; but although their lives were led apart, and although, among many other mad delusions, the Duke was convinced that his sister had applied for a warrant to "confine him as a madman and she to sit down on the estate and take possession of it," he was generous enough to make her a liberal allowance, and to promise that, if she married and had children, "they would heir his estate."

Such was the state of affairs at the time this story really opens. Lady Jean had carried her aversion to men and matrimony to middle-age, happy enough in her independence and extravagance; while the Duke, still unwed, remained a prey to his jealousies, his morbid fancies and his insensate rages; and it is at this time that Colonel Stewart, the "villain of the play," makes his appearance on the stage.

Ten years earlier, it is true, John Stewart, of Grandtully, had tried to repair his shattered fortunes by making love to Lady Jean, who, although then a woman of nearly forty, was still handsome enough, as he confessed later, to "captivate my heart at the first sight of her." She was, moreover (and this was much more to the point), a considerable heiress, with the vast Douglas estates as good as a.s.sured to her. But to the handsome adventurer Lady Jean turned a deaf ear, as to all her other suitors; and the "Colonel," who had never won any army rank higher than that of a subaltern, had to return ignominiously to the Continent, where for another ten years he picked up a precarious living at the gaming-tables, by borrowing or by any other low expedient that opportunity provided to his scheming brain. The Duke of Douglas, who cordially detested this down-at-heels cousin, called him "one of the worst of men--a papist, a Jacobite, a gamester, a villain"--and his career certainly seems to justify this sweeping and scathing description.

Such was the man who now reappeared to put his fate again to the test--and this time with such success that, to quote his own words,

"very soon after I had an obliging message from Lady Jean telling me that, very soon after my leaving Scotland, she came to know she had done me an injustice, but she would acknowledge it publicly if I chose. _Enfin_, I was allowed to visit her as formerly, and in about three months after she honoured me with her hand."

Was ever wooing and winning so strange, so inexplicable? After refusing some of the greatest alliances in the land, after turning her back on at least half-a-dozen coronets, this wilful and wayward woman gives her hand to the least desirable of all her legion of suitors--a man broken in fortune and of notorious ill-fame: swashbuckler, gambler and defaulter; a man, moreover, who was on the verge of old-age, for he would never see his sixtieth birthday again. The Colonel's motive is manifest. He had much to gain and nothing to lose by this incongruous union. But what could have been Lady Jean's motive; and does the sequel furnish a clue to it? She was deeply in debt, thanks to her long career of extravagance; and, to crown her misfortune, her brother threatened to withdraw her annuity. But on the other hand she was still, although nearly fifty, a good-looking woman, "appearing," we are told, "at least fifteen years younger than she really was"; and thus might well have looked for a eligible suitor; while her marriage to a pauper could but add to her financial embarra.s.sment. There remained the prospect of her brother's estates, which would almost surely fall to her children if she had any, if only to keep them out of the hands of the Hamiltons, whom the Duke detested. And this consideration may have determined her in favour of this eleventh hour marriage, with its possibilities, however small, of thus qualifying for a great inheritance.

Thus it was, whatever may be the solution of the mystery, that, one August day in 1746, Lady Jean was led to the altar by her aged pauper lover, and a few days later the happy pair landed at Rotterdam, with a retinue consisting of a Mrs Hewit (Lady Jean's maid) and a couple of female servants, leaving her ladyship's creditors to wrangle over the belongings she had left behind at Edinburgh.