Some Old Time Beauties - After Portraits by the English Masters, with Embellishment and Comment by Thomson Willing
page 45 of 58 (77%)
page 45 of 58 (77%)
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"Smiling Mary, soft and fair as down."
* * * * * She is mentioned otherwise as by Gay:-- "Bellenden we needs must praise, Who, as down the stairs she jumps, Sings 'Over the hills and far away,' Despising doleful dumps." Walpole says she was never mentioned by her contemporaries but as the _most perfect creature_ they had ever known. The present Duke wedded that charming child, Lady Elizabeth Leveson Gower, who sits on her mother's knee in that surpassingly fine picture by Lawrence, called "Lady Gower and Child." And his son is allied to the Princess Louise, the most comely of Victoria's daughters. After her sister's death, in 1760, her Grace of Argyll suffered a decline in health. She was ordered abroad for change. She was appointed to accompany the Princess Sophia Charlotte on her journey to England to be married to the King. As they neared the ceremony in London, the Princess became nervous. Her Grace essayed to quiet her fears. "Ah, my dear Duchess, _you_ may laugh at me, but _you_ have been married twice," said the Princess. The Duchess became one of the ladies of the bedchamber, and was in much favor with the Queen. In 1767, her father died at Somerset House, and her mother, the Hon. Mrs. Gunning, in 1770. There were three sisters in the family besides our heroines: Sophia Gunning died, an infant, in 1737; Lissy, who died |
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