Love Romances of the Aristocracy written by Thornton Hall

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Turning to a neighbour he asked who the lovely girl was. "You must
indeed be a stranger to London," was the answer, "if you do not know
the beautiful Lady March, the toast of the town!" Lady March! Could that
exquisite flower of young womanhood be the ugly, awkward girl he had
married so strangely as a boy? Impossible! He proceeded to the box,
introduced himself, and found to his delight that the beautiful girl was
indeed none other than Lady March, whom he had every right to claim as
his wife. A few too brief years of happy wedded life followed; and when
the Earl died in the prime of manhood his Countess, unable to live
without him, began to droop and, within a few months, followed him to
the grave.

Such was the singular romance to which Lady Sarah Lennox owed her being,
a romance which was to have a parallel in her own life. As a child in
the nursery she gave promise of charms at least as great as those of her
mother. And she was as merry and full of mischief as she was beautiful.

One day (it is her son who tells the story) she was walking with her
nurse and her aunt, Lady Louisa Conolly, in Kensington Gardens, when
George II. chanced to stroll by. Breaking away from her guardian the
pretty little madcap ran up to the King and exclaimed in French: "How do
you do, Mr King? You have a beautiful house here, _n'est-ce pas_?"
George was so delighted with the child's _naivete_ that he took her up
in his arms, gave her a hearty kiss, and would not release her until she
had promised to come and see him.

And how the King and his "little sweetheart," as he called her, enjoyed
these visits! and the merry romps they had together!

"On one occasion," says Captain Napier (Lady Sarah's son
of much later days), "after a romp with my mother, the
King suddenly snatched her up in his arms, and, after
squeezing her in a large china jar, shut down the cover
to prove her courage; but soon released her when he found
that the only effect was to make her, with a merry voice,
begin singing the French song of Malbruc, with which he
was quite delighted."

But these happy days of romping with a King came too soon to an end. On
her mother's death Lady Sarah, then only five years old, was carried off
to Ireland, to the home of Lady Kildare. There she remained for eight
years, when she returned to England and the guardianship of her eldest
sister, Lady Holland. As soon as George heard of the return of his
little playmate he sent for her, hoping to resume the romps of early
years. But Lady Sarah, though prettier than ever, proved so shy and so
embarrassed by the King's familiarities that at last he exclaimed in
disgust: "Pooh! she has grown too stupid!"

But if Lady Sarah's shyness had cost her the King's favour, her beauty
and girlish grace quickly won for her another Royal friend--none other
than George's grandson and heir to the throne, then a handsome boy
little older than herself, and at least equally diffident. Every time
the young Prince saw her he became more and more her slave, until his
conquest was complete. He was only happy by her side; while she found
her dogs and squirrels more entertaining company than the King-to-be.

Lady Sarah was now blossoming into young womanhood. Every year added
some fresh touch of beauty and grace. She was the pet and idol of the
Court, captivating young and old alike by her charms and winsomeness.
Horace Walpole raved about her. When she took part in a play at Holland
House, of which he was a spectator, he wrote:

"Lady Sarah was more beautiful than you can conceive....
When she was in white, with her hair about her ears and
on the ground, no Magdalen by Correggio was half so
lovely and so expressive."

And Lord Holland, her brother-in-law, draws this alluring picture of
her:

"Her beauty is not easily described otherwise than by
saying she had the finest complexion, most beautiful
hair, and prettiest person that was ever seen, with a
sprightly and fine air, a pretty mouth, and remarkably
fine teeth, and excess of bloom in her cheeks."

Although the Prince's passion for her was patent to all the Court, she
seems either not to have seen it or to have been indifferent to it--an
indifference which naturally only served to feed the flames of his love.
One day shortly after he had succeeded to the throne, George, the shyest
of Royal lovers, determined to unbosom himself to Lady Sarah's friend,
Lady Susan Strangways, since he could not summon up courage to declare
his passion to the lady herself. After turning the conversation to the
Coronation, "Ah!" he exclaimed with a sigh, "there will be no Coronation
until there is a Queen." "But why, sir?" asked Lady Susan in surprise.
"They want me to have a foreign Queen," George answered, "but I prefer
an English one; and I think your friend is the fittest person in the
world to be my Queen. Tell her so from me, will you?"

A few days later when the King met Lady Sarah, he asked: "Has your
friend given you my message?" "Yes, sir." "And what do you think of it?
Pray tell me frankly; for on your answer all my happiness depends. What
do you think of it?" "Nothing, sir," Lady Sarah answered demurely, with
downcast eyes. "Pooh!" exclaimed the King, as he turned away in dudgeon,
"nothing comes of nothing."

Thus foolishly Lady Sarah turned her back on a throne, which there is
small doubt might have been hers for a word. Why that word was not
spoken will always remain a mystery. It was said that her heart had
already been won by Lord Newbattle, a handsome young gallant of the
Court; but what was taken for a conquest seems to have been but a
passing flirtation. How little Lord Newbattle's heart was involved was
shortly proved when, on learning that Lady Sarah had been thrown from
her horse and had broken her leg, he made the heartless remark, "That
will do no great harm, for her legs were ugly enough before!"

The news of this accident, however, had a very different effect on the
young King, who was consumed with anxiety about the girl he still loved
passionately, in spite of her coldness. He promptly sent the Court
surgeon to attend to her; kept couriers constantly travelling to and fro
to bring the latest bulletins, and knew no peace until she was restored
to health again. When at last she was able to return to London he was
unremitting in his attentions to her. He was never happy apart from her;
and, in fact, his intentions became so marked that his mother, the
Princess-Dowager, and the ministers were reduced to despair.

Secret orders were given that the young people were never to be allowed
to be together. The Princess, indeed, carried her interference to the
extent of breaking in on their conferences, and rudely laughing in Lady
Sarah's face as she led her son away. "I felt many a time," the insulted
girl said in later years, "that I should have loved to box her ears."
But Lady Sarah, who seems at last to have awakened to the attractions of
the alliance offered to her, was not the girl to sit down tamely under
such interference with her liberty. Her spirit was aroused, and she
brought all her arts of coquetry to her aid.

If she could not see the King at Court she would see him elsewhere. When
George took his daily ride he was sure to meet or overtake Lady Sarah,
attired in some bewitching costume; or to see her daintily plying her
rake among the haymakers in the meadows of Holland House, a picture of
rustic beauty well-calculated to make his conquest more complete.

Once, it is said, when she had not seen her Royal lover for some days
she even disguised herself as a servant and intercepted him in one of
the corridors of the Palace. The coy and cold maiden who had told the
King that she "thought nothing" of his advances, had developed into the
veriest coquette who ever set her heart on winning a man. Such is the
strange waywardness of woman; and by such revolutions she often courts
her own defeat.

That King George still remained as infatuated as ever is quite probable.
Had it been possible for him to have his own way, Lady Sarah Lennox
might still have won a crown as Queen of England. But the forces arrayed
against him were too strong for so pliant a monarch. In a weak moment,
despairing of winning the girl he loved, he had placed his matrimonial
fate unreservedly in the hands of the Privy Council; and from this
surrender of his liberty there was no escape.

Colonel Graeme had been despatched to every Court on the Continent, in
quest of a suitable bride for him; and his verdict had been given in
favour of Charlotte Sophia, the unattractive daughter of the Duke of
Mecklenburg Strelitz. The die was cast; and George, just when happiness
was within his reach, was obliged to bury the one romance of his young
life and to sacrifice himself to duty and his Royal word. To Lady Sarah
the news of the arranged marriage was no doubt a severe blow--to her
vanity, if not to her heart. It was a "bolt from the blue," for which
she was not prepared. But she was too proud to show her wounds.

"I shall take care," she wrote to her friend, Lady
Susan, on the very day on which the blow fell, "I shall
take care to show that I am not mortified to anybody; but
if it is true that one can vex anybody with a reserved,
cold manner, he shall have it, I promise him. Now as to
what I wish about it myself, excepting this little
message, I have almost forgiven him. Luckily for me I did
not love him, and only liked, nor did the title weigh
with me. So little, at least, that my disappointment did
not affect my spirits more than an hour or two, I
believe. I did not cry, I assure you, which I believe you
will, as I know you were more set on it than I was. The
thing I am most angry at is looking so like a fool, as I
shall, for having gone so often for nothing, but I don't
much care. If he was to change his mind again (which
can't be, tho') and not give me a very good reason for
his conduct, I would not have him; for if he is so weak
as to be governed by everybody, I shall have but a bad
time of it."

A few days later, the Royal betrothal was made public. At the wedding
Lady Sarah tasted the first fruits of revenge, when she was by common
consent, the most lovely of the ten beautiful bridesmaids who, in robes
of white velvet and silver and with diamond-crowned heads, formed the
retinue of George's homely little bride. During the ceremony George had
no eyes for any but the vision of peerless beauty he had lost, who,
compared with his ill-favoured bride, was "as a queenly lily to a
dandelion."

The ceremony was marked by a dramatic incident which crowned Lady
Sarah's revenge, and of which her son tells the following story. Among
the courtiers assembled to pay homage to the new Queen was the
half-blind Lord Westmorland, one of the Pretender's most devoted
adherents.

"Passing along the line of ladies, and seeing but dimly,
he mistook my mother for the Queen, plumped down on his
knees and took her hand to kiss. She drew back startled,
and deeply colouring, exclaimed, 'I am not the Queen,
sir.' The incident created a laugh and a little gossip;
and when George Selwyn heard of it he observed, 'Oh! you
know he always loved Pretenders.'"

But if Lady Sarah had lost a crown there was still left a dazzling array
of coronets, any one of which was hers for the taking. Her beauty which
was now in full and exquisite flower drew noble wooers to her feet by
the score; but to one and all--including, as Walpole records, Lord
Errol--she turned a deaf ear. Picture then the amazement of the world of
fashion when, within a year of refusing a Queendom, she became the bride
of a mere Baronet--Sir Thomas Bunbury, who had barely reached his
majority, and who, although he was already a full-blown Member of
Parliament and of some note on the Turf, was scarcely known in the
circles in which Lady Sarah shone so brilliantly.

More disconcerting still, Lady Sarah was avowedly happy with her
baronet-husband.

"And who the d----," she wrote to her bosom-friend, Lady
Susan, "would not be happy with a pretty place, a good
house, good horses, greyhounds for hunting, so near
Newmarket, what company we please in the house, and
L2,000 a year to spend? Pray now, where is the wretch who
would not be happy?"

And no doubt she was happy, with her dogs and horses, her peacocks and
silver-pheasants, and her genial sport-loving husband who simply
idolised her. Even after five years of this rustic life she wrote to
Lady Susan, who was now also a wife:

"Good husbands are not so common, at least I see none
like my own and your description of yours, from which I
reckon that we are the two luckiest women living. As for
me, I should be a monster of ingratitude if I ever made a
single complaint and did not thank God for making me the
happiest of beings."

It was fortunate that she had an idolatrous husband; for even in Arcadia
she could not, or would not, keep her coquetry within decent bounds. She
flirted outrageously with the neighbouring squires and with such men of
rank as drifted her way; but the baronet saw no cause for alarm or
resentment. He was frankly delighted that his wife had so many admirers.
He basked genially in the reflected glory of his wife's conquests!

And Lady Sarah might have lived and died the baronet's adored wife had
not Lord William Gordon crossed her path. Lord William was young,
handsome, full of romance, a dangerous rival to the bucolic and stolid
baronet, under whose unobservant eyes he carried on an open flirtation
with his wife. Before Lady Sarah realised her danger, she had drifted
into a _liaison_ with the handsome Scot, which could only have one
termination. One morning in February 1769 Sir Thomas awoke to find his
nest empty. Lady Sarah had flown, and Lord William with her.

Then followed for Lady Sarah a brief period of fearful joy, of
intoxicating passion. Far away near the Scottish border she and her
lover spent halcyon days together. Their favourite walk by the banks of
the Leader is known to-day as the "Lovers' Walk." It was a foolish
paradise in which they were living, and a rude awaking was inevitable.
After three months of bliss Lord William's family brought such pressure
to bear on him that the lovers were compelled to separate--he to travel
abroad, she to find a refuge from her shame under the roof of her
brother, Charles, Duke of Richmond, at Goodwood, where, with her child
(but not Sir Thomas Bunbury's), she spent a dozen years in penitence and
isolation.

The life which had dawned so fairly seemed to be finally merged in
night. Her betrayed husband had procured a divorce; and although he was
chivalry itself in his forgiveness of and kindness to her, she realised
that there was no hope of reunion with him. Days of weeping, nights of
remorse, were her portion. But though she little dared to hope it,
bright days were still in store for her--a happy and honourable
wifehood, and the pride and blessing of children to rise up to do her
honour.

It was the coming of the Hon. George Napier, an old Army friend of her
brother, that heralded the new dawn for her darkened life. There were
few handsomer men in England than this tall, stalwart son of the sixth
Lord Napier, who is described as "faultless in figure and features."
When he met Lady Sarah, under the roof of his old friend, her brother,
he was still mourning the wife whom he had recently buried in New York;
but the sight of such suffering and beauty allied touched a heart which
he had thought dead to passion. That she was as poor as he was, and many
years older mattered nothing to him. He soon realised that his only hope
of happiness lay in winning her. In vain the lady protested that she was
not fit to be his wife.

"He knows," she wrote to Lady Susan, "I _do_ love him;
and being certain of that, he laughs at every objection
that is started, for he says that, loving me to the
degrees he does, he is quite sure never to repent
marrying me."

Lady Sarah's family put every possible obstacle in the way of the
proposed union, but the masterful soldier had his way; and one August
day in 1781 Captain Napier led his tarnished but loved and loving bride
to the altar. For many years poverty was their lot; but they laughed at
their empty purse and found their reward in mutual devotion and the
sight of their children growing in strength and beauty by their side. Of
their five sons, three won laurels on many battlefields and died
generals; one of the trio was the famous conqueror of Scinde, another
was the historian of the Peninsular War.

When, after twenty-three years of ideally happy life together, Colonel
Napier (as he had become) died, his widow was disconsolate.

"How I wish I could go with him," she wrote; "the
gentlest, bravest man who ever brought sunshine and
solace into a woman's darkened heart."

But Lady Sarah was destined to walk life's path alone for nearly twenty
years longer, finding her only comfort in watching the careers of her
gallant boys.

To add to her misfortunes her last days were spent in darkness. The eyes
that had melted with love and sparkled with mischief, could no longer
even look on the sons she loved.

A pathetic story is told of these last clouded days of Lady Sarah's
life. In the year 1814, when, although an old woman she had still twelve
years to live, she was present at a sermon preached by the Dean of
Canterbury in aid of an Infirmary for the cure of diseases of the eye.
As the preacher drew a pathetic picture of King George, a liberal patron
of the Infirmary, spending his days in darkness among the splendours of
his palace, tears were seen to stream down Lady Sarah's cheeks, until,
overcome by emotion, she asked her attendant to lead her out of the
church.

Who shall say what sad and tender memories were evoked by this picture
of her lover of fifty years earlier, in his darkness and isolation, shut
out like herself by a dark barrier from the joy and light of life. Among
the mental pictures that thronged her brain was, probably, that of a
dainty maiden, rake in hand, glancing archly from under her bonnet at a
gallant young Prince, whose eyes spoke love to hers as he rode
lingeringly by; and that other picture of the same maid, with downcast
eyes, declaring that she "thought nothing" of her Royal lover's vows,
though they carried a crown with them.

CHAPTER XVII

THE COUNTESS WHO MARRIED HER GROOM

Life has seldom dawned for any daughter of a noble house more fair or
full of promise than for the infant Lady Susanna Cochrane, second
daughter of John, fourth Earl of Dundonald. All that rank and wealth and
beauty could give were hers by birth. Her mother was an Earl's daughter,
and had for grandfather the Duke of Atholl. Her paternal grandmother was
Lady Susanna Hamilton, daughter of the Duke of Hamilton; and on both
sides she came from a line of fair women, many of whom, like her mother,
had ranked among the most beautiful in all Scotland.

Such was the splendid heritage of Lady Susanna when she opened her eyes
on the world two centuries ago; and, during the earlier years of her
life, it seemed that Fortune, who had already dowered her so richly,
could not smile too sweetly on her. She grew to girlhood and young
womanhood more beautiful even than her mother or her two sisters, Anne
and Catherine, of whom the former became a Duchess at sixteen; while
Catherine was not long out of the schoolroom before her hand was won by
the Earl of Galloway.

As for Susanna, the loveliest of the "three Graces"--"Scotland's
fairest daughter," to quote a chronicler of the time--she counted her
high-placed lovers by the score almost before she had graduated into
long frocks; and Charles, sixth Earl of Strathmore, was accounted the
luckiest man north of the Tweed when he won her for his bride.

It was an ideal union, this of the beautiful Lady Susanna with the
stalwart and handsome young Earl--"the fairest lass and bonniest lad" in
all Scotland; and none who saw their radiant happiness on their
wedding-day could have dreamt how soon tragedy was to close so bright a
chapter of romance.

For a few short years the young Earl and his Countess were ideally
happy.

"I never thought," Lady Strathmore wrote to a friend,
"that life could be so sweet. The days are all too short
to crowd my happiness into."

Then, when the sky was fairest, the blow fell.

One May day in the year 1728, the young Earl went to Forfar to attend
the funeral of a friend, and among his fellow-mourners were two men of
his acquaintance, James Carnegie, of Finhaven, and a Mr Lyon, of
Brigton, the latter a distant relative of the Earl.

After the funeral the three men sat drinking together, as was the custom
of the time, and then adjourned to a tavern in Forfar, where they
continued their potations until all three were, beyond all doubt, in an
advanced state of intoxication, and ripe for any mischief.

From the tavern they went, uproariously drunk, to call on a sister of
Carnegie, where Mr Lyon not only became quarrelsome, but with drunken
jocularity, had the audacity to pinch his hostess's arms. It was with
the utmost difficulty that Lord Strathmore induced his two companions to
leave the house, in which one of them had so far forgotten what was due
from him as a gentleman; and it was scarcely to be wondered at that an
unseemly brawl began almost as soon as they were in the street.

Mr Lyon began to conduct himself more outrageously than before, now that
the modified restraint of a lady's presence was removed. With boisterous
horseplay, he pushed Carnegie into a deep gutter which ran by the
roadside, and from which Carnegie emerged covered with mud and raging
with fury. Such an insult could only be wiped out with blood; and,
drawing his sword, Carnegie rushed at his tormentor. The Earl, in order
to avert a tragedy, imprudently threw himself between the two
antagonists, with the intention of diverting the blow. Carnegie's sword
entered his body, passing clean through it; and he fell to the ground a
dying man. Two hours later the young Earl gasped his life out in the
tavern, where he had drunk "not wisely, but too well."

Thus a drunken brawl, following on a funeral, made a widow of the
beautiful Countess of Strathmore just when life was at its brightest and
best, and when the days seemed all too short to hold her happiness.

As for James Carnegie of Finhaven, he was brought to trial on a charge
of murder, and every nerve was strained to bring him to the gallows.
That this was not his fate, in spite of the terrible provocation he had
received, and the obviously accidental nature of the tragedy, he owed
entirely to the skill and eloquence of his counsel, Robert Dundas of
Arniston, who played so cleverly on the feelings and self-importance of
the jury that they returned a verdict of acquittal.

The widowed Countess mourned her lord deeply and sincerely. More
beautiful than ever (she was barely twenty when this tragedy came to
cloud her life), and richly dowered, many a wooer sought to console her
with a new prospect of wedded happiness. She had naught to say to any of
them. She preferred to live alone with her memories, and to find solace
in good works. And thus for seventeen years she lived, a model of all
that is beautiful in womanhood, captivating all hearts by her sweetness
and graciousness, and by a beauty which sorrow only served to refine and
make more lovely still.

Thus we find her in 1745, a gracious and lovely woman, still young,
dispensing her charities and hospitalities, and esteemed everywhere as a
model of all the proprieties. But she was still a woman. Romance and
passion were by no means dead in her; and to this "eternal feminine" we
must look for an explanation of the strange event which now follows in
her story.

Among the Countess's many servants was one George Forbes, a young and
strikingly handsome groom, who had been taken on as stable-boy by her
late husband. Forbes was a simple, manly fellow, a peasant's son, and
with no ambition beyond the state of life to which he had been born. He
was proud of the fact that he had served his mistress well, and that she
liked him. That Lady Strathmore valued her groom was proved by the fact
that she chose him as her escort whenever she went riding, and that she
promoted him to the charge of her stables--a proof of confidence which
no doubt he had earned. But that his high-placed mistress should regard
him otherwise than as a servant was an absurd idea which never entered
his head.

One day, however, the Countess summoned the groom to her presence, and,
to his amazement and embarrassment, told him that she had long grown to
love him, and that she asked nothing better of life than to become his
wife. Overcome with surprise and confusion, Forbes protested--"But my
lady, think of the difference between us. You are one of the greatest
ladies in the land, and I am no better than the earth you tread on."
"You must not say that," the Countess replied. "You are more to me than
rank or riches. These I count as nothing, compared with the happiness
you have it in your power to bestow."

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