Love Romances of the Aristocracy written by Thornton Hall

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Pope, however, understated the Earl's vigour or his indomitable spirit;
for he not only succeeded in getting to the sea-shore, but as far as
Lisbon, where he died in the following October, but a few months after
his second nuptials. My Lady Peterborough and Monmouth lived to see many
more years, and by her dignity and sweetness to win as much approval in
the Peerage as in the lowlier sphere of the stage.

Anastasia Robinson was the first star of the stage to wear a coronet,
but where she led the way, there were many dainty feet eager to follow;
and, curiously enough, it was Gay's famous _Beggar's Opera_ that pointed
the way to three of them.

Any one who chanced to drop in at a certain coffee-house at Charing
Cross, kept by a Mr Fenton, in the days when the first George was King,
might--indeed, he could not have failed to--have made the acquaintance
of a "little witch" (as Swift called her) with a voice of gold, who was
destined one day to be a Duchess. This little elf with the merry eyes,
dancing feet, and the voice of an angel, was none other than Mrs
Fenton's daughter by a former husband, a naval officer, and the prime
favourite of all the wits and actors whom her fame drew to the
coffee-house.

She sang for her stepfather's customers, danced for them, charmed them
with her ready wit, and sent them into fits of laughter by her childish
drolleries. Of course there was only one career possible for her, they
all declared. She must go on the stage, and then she could not fail to
take London by storm. She had the best masters money could secure for
her; and when she reached her eighteenth birthday Lavinia Fenton made
her first curtsy on the Haymarket stage as Monimia, in _The Orphan_. Her
_debut_ was electrifying, sensational. Such beauty, such grace, such
wonderful acting were a revelation, a fresh stimulus to jaded appetites.
Within a few days she had London at her feet. She was the toast of the
gallants, the envy and despair of great ladies. Titled wooers tumbled
over each other in their eagerness to pay her homage; but Lavinia
laughed at them all. She knew her value; and her freedom was more to her
than luxury which had not the sanction of the wedding-ring.

Her real stage triumph, however, was yet to come. After appearing in the
_Beaux's Stratagem_ with brilliant success she was offered the part of
Polly Peachum in Gay's Opera, which was about to make its first bow to
the public. The salary was but fifteen shillings a week (afterwards
doubled); but the part was after Lavinia's own heart. For a few
intoxicating weeks she was the idol and rage of London; her picture
filled the windows of every print-shop; the greatest ladies had it
painted on their fans. Royalty smiled its sweetest on her.

Then, at the very zenith of her triumph, the startling news went
forth--"The Duke of Bolton has run away with Polly Peachum." And the
news was true. The popular idol, who had turned her back on so many
tempting offers, had actually run away with Charles Paulet, third Duke
of Bolton and Constable of the Tower of London; and the stage knew her
no more. For twenty-three years she was a Duchess in all but name, until
the Duke, on the death of his legal wife, daughter of the Earl of
Carberry, was at last able to put Lavinia in her place.

As Duchess, a title which she lived nine years to enjoy, she won golden
opinions by her modest dignity, her large-heartedness, and by the
cleverness and charm of her conversation, which none admired more than
Lord Bathurst and Lord Granville.

Duchess Lavinia had been dead thirty years when Mary Catherine Bolton,
who was to follow in her footsteps, was obscurely cradled in Long Acre
in 1790. Like Lavinia Fenton, Mary Bolton was born for the stage. As a
child the sweetness of her voice and the grace of her movements charmed
all who knew her. The greatest teachers of the day taught her to sing,
and when only sixteen she made a brilliant _debut_ as Polly, recalling
all the triumphs of her famous predecessor.

But it was as Ariel that she made her real conquest of London. "So
pretty and winning in pouting wilfulness, so caressing, her voice having
the flowing sweetness of music, she bounded along with so light a foot
that it scarcely seemed to rest upon the stage." It is little wonder
that Ariel danced her way into many hearts, and that even such a sedate
personage as Edward, second Lord Thurlow, should so far succumb to her
fascinations as to offer her marriage. Her wedded life was only too
brief, but she rewarded her lord with three sons; and a liberal share of
her blood flows in the veins of the Baron of to-day, her grandson.

Not many years after Mary Bolton had danced her way into the Peerage
London was losing its head over still another "Polly Peachum"--Catherine
Stephens, daughter of a carver and gilder in the West of London. Miss
Stephens, who like her predecessors in the _role_, sang divinely even as
a child, was but seventeen when she made her first stage curtsy, and won
fame at a bound, as Mandano in _Artaxerxes_. One triumph succeeded
another until she reached the pinnacle of success as Polly of the
_Beggar's Opera_.

Catherine Stephens had no lack of gilded and titled lovers; but she was
too much wedded to her art to listen to any vows or to be lured from it
even by a coronet. Although, however, she eluded her destiny until the
verge of middle age she was fated to die a Countess; and a Countess she
became when George Capel, fifth Earl of Essex, asked her to be his wife.
The Earl had passed his eightieth birthday, and was nearly forty years
her senior; but he made her his bride, though he left her a widow within
a year of their nuptial-day.

Since Catherine Stephens wore her coronet--and before--many an actress
has found in the stage-door a portal to the Peerage. Elizabeth Farren,
who was cradled in the year before George III came to his Throne, was
the daughter of a gifted and erratic Irishman, who abandoned pills and
potions to lead the life of a strolling actor, a career which came to a
premature end while his daughter was still a child. Fortunately for
Elizabeth, her mother was a woman of capacity and character, who made a
gallant struggle to give her children as good a start in life as was
possible to her straitened means; and by the time she was fourteen the
girl, who had inherited her father's passion for the stage, was able to
make a most creditable first appearance at Liverpool, as Rosetta, in
Bickerstaff's _Love in a Village._

So adept did she prove in her adopted art that within four years she
made her curtsy at the Haymarket as Miss Hardcastle, in _She Stoops to
Conquer_; and at once, by her grace and brilliant acting, won the hearts
of theatre-going London; while her refinement, at that time by no means
common on the stage, and her social graces won for her a welcome in high
circles. Many a lover of title or eminence sought the hand of the
sparkling and lovely Irishwoman, and none of them all was more ardent in
his wooing than Charles James Fox, then at the zenith of his career as
statesman; but she would have naught to say to any one of them all. Her
fate, however, was not long in coming; and it came in the form of Edward
Stanley, twelfth Earl of Derby, who, before his first wife, a daughter
of the Duke of Hamilton, had been many months in the family-vault, was
at the knees of the beautiful actress. He had little difficulty in
persuading her to become his Countess; and one May day, in 1797, he
placed the wedding-ring on her finger in the drawing-room of his
Grosvenor Square house.

For more than thirty years Lady Derby moved in her new circle, a
splendid and gracious figure, received at Court with special favour by
George III and his Queen, before she died in 1829, transmitting her
blood, through her daughter, Lady Mary Stanley, to the Earl of Wilton of
to-day.

While my Lady Derby was still new to her dignities, Eliza O'Neill was
beginning to prattle in the most charming brogue ever heard across the
Irish Channel, and to grow through beautiful childhood to witching
girlhood. The daughter of a strolling actor who led his company of
buskers through every county in Ireland from Cork to Donegal, the love
of things theatrical was in her veins; and while she was still playing
with her dolls she was impersonating the Duke of York to her father's
Richard III. Everywhere the little witch, with the merry dancing eyes,
won hearts and applause by her sprightly acting, until even so excellent
a judge of histrionic art as John Kemble sought to carry her away to
London and to a wider sphere of activity.

From Dublin, he wrote to Harris, manager of Covent Garden Theatre:

"There is a very pretty Irish girl here, with a touch of
the brogue on her tongue; she has much talent and some
genius. With a little expense and some trouble we might
make her an object for John Bull's admiration in the
juvenile tragedy. I have sounded the fair lady on the
subject of a London engagement. She proposes to append a
very long family, to which I have given a decided
negative. If she accepts the offered terms I shall sign,
seal and ship herself and clan off from Cork direct. She
is very pretty, and so, in fact, is her brogue, which, by
the way, she only uses in conversation. She totally
forgets it when with Shakespeare and other illustrious
companions."

And thus it was that John O'Neill's daughter carried her charms and
gifts to London town in the autumn of 1812, when she justified Kemble's
discernment by one of the most brilliant series of impersonations,
ranging from Juliet to Belvidera, that had been seen up to that time on
the English stage. For seven years she shone a very bright star in the
firmament of the drama, winning as much popularity off as on the stage,
before she consented to yield her hand to one of the many suitors who
sought it--Mr William Wrixon Becher, a Member of Parliament of some
distinction. Eliza O'Neill lived to be addressed as "my Lady," and to
see her eldest son a Baronet, and her second boy wedded to a daughter of
the second Earl of Listowel.

Five years before Miss O'Neill's Juliet came to captivate London,
another idol of the stage was led to the altar by William, first Earl of
Craven. Louisa Brunton, for that was the name of Craven's Countess, was
cradled, like her successor, on the stage; for her father was well known
at every town on the Norwich Circuit as manager of a popular company of
actors, as devoted to his family of eight children as to his art. When
Louisa made her entry into the world she was the sixth of the clamorous
flock who roamed the country in the wake of their strolling father; and
it would have been odd indeed if she had not acquired a love of the
theatre to stimulate the acting strain in her blood.

Such were the charms and talent that the child developed that, by the
time she came to her eighteenth birthday she was carried off to London
to appear at Covent Garden Theatre as Lady Townley in _The Provoked
Husband_; and the general verdict was that no such clever acting had
been seen since Miss Farren was lured from the stage by a coronet. And
not only did she create an immediate sensation by her acting; her
beauty, which a contemporary writer tells us, "combined the stateliness
of Juno with the gentler and beauty of a Venus," made her a Queen of
Hearts as of actresses. So seductive a prize was not likely to be long
left to adorn the stage; and although Miss Brunton consistently turned a
blind eye to many a seductive offer, she had to succumb when his
Lordship of Craven joined the queue of her courtiers. Four years of
stage sovereignty and then the coronet of a Countess; such was the
record of this daughter of a strolling player, whose greatest ambition
had been to provide food enough for his hungry family. Lady Craven lived
nearly sixty years to enjoy her dignities and splendours, surviving long
enough to see her grandson take his place as third Earl of his line.

[Illustration: HARRIET, DUCHESS OF ST ALBANS]

For twenty years the English stage had no star to compare in brilliancy
with Harriet Mellon, whose life-story is one of the most romantic in
theatrical annals. From the January day in 1795 when she made her bow on
the Drury Lane stage as Lydia in _The Rivals_, to her farewell
appearance in February 1815, a month after she had become a wife, her
career was one unbroken sequence of triumphs. To quote the words of a
chronicler,

She shone supreme, splendid, unapproachable, not only by
her brilliant genius, but by her beauty and social
fascinations.

That she revelled in her conquests is certain; for to not one of her
army of wooers, many of them men of high rank, would she deign more than
a smile, until old Thomas Coutts came, with all the impetus of his
money-bags behind him, and literally swept her off her feet The lady who
had spurned coronets could not resist a million of money, qualified
though it was by the admiration of a senile lover.

Nor did she ever have cause to regret her choice; for no husband could
have been more devoted or more lavish than this shabby old banker who
used to chuckle when he was taken for a beggar, and alms were thrust
into his receptive hand. Wonderful stories are told of Mr Coutts'
generosity to his beautiful wife, for whom nothing that money could buy
was too good.

One day--it is Captain Gronow who tells the tale--Mr Hamlet, a jeweller,
came to his house, bringing for the banker's inspection a magnificent
diamond-cross which had been worn on the previous day (of George IV's
Coronation) by no less a personage than the Duke of York. At sight of
its rainbow fires Mrs Coutts exclaimed: "How happy I should be with such
a splendid piece of jewellery!" "What is it worth?" enquired her
husband. "I could not possibly part with it for less than L15,000," the
jeweller replied. "Bring me a pen and ink," was the only remark of the
doting banker who promptly wrote a cheque for the money, and beamed with
delight as he placed the jewel on his wife's bosom.

Upon her breast a sparkling cross she wore
Which Jews might kiss and infidels adore.

And this devotion--idolatry almost--lasted as long as life itself,
reaching its climax in his will, in which he left his actress-wife
every penny of his enormous fortune, amounting to L900,000, "for her
sole use and benefit, and at her absolute disposal, without the
deduction of a single legacy to any other person."

That a widow so richly dowered with beauty and gold should have a world
of lovers in her train is not to be wondered at. For five years she
retained her new freedom, and then yielded to the wooing of William
Aubrey de Vere, ninth Duke of St Albans (whose remote ancestor was Nell
Gwynn, the Drury Lane orange-girl and actress), who made a Duchess of
her one June day in 1827.

For ten short years Harriet Mellon queened it as a Duchess, retaining
her vast fortune in her own hands and dispensing it with a large-hearted
charity and regal hospitality, moving among Royalties and cottagers
alike with equal dignity and graciousness. At her beautiful Highgate
home she played the hostess many a time to two English Kings and their
Queens.

"The inhabitants of Highgate still bear in memory," Mr
Howitt records, "her splendid fetes to Royalty, in some
of which, they say, she hired all the birds of the
bird-dealers in London, and fixing their cages in the
trees, made her grounds one great orchestra of Nature's
music."

When her Grace died, universally beloved and regretted, in 1837, she
proved her gratitude and loyalty to her banker-husband by leaving all
she possessed, a fortune now swollen to L1,800,000, to Miss Angela
Coutts (grand-daughter of Thomas Coutts and his first wife, Eliza Stark,
a domestic servant) who, as the Baroness Burdett-Coutts of later years,
proved by her large munificence a worthy trustee and dispenser of such
vast wealth.

Such are but a few of the romantic alliances between the peerage and the
stage, of which, during the last score of years, since Miss Connie
Gilchrist blossomed into the Countess of Orkney and Miss Belle Bilton
into my Lady Clancarty, there has been such an epidemic.

CHAPTER XX

A PEASANT COUNTESS

In the dusk of a July evening in the year 1791 a dust-covered footsore
traveller entered the pretty little Shropshire village of Bolas Magna,
which nestles, in its setting of green fields and orchards, almost in
the shadow of the Wrekin. The traveller had tramped many a long league
under a burning sun, and was too weary to fare farther. Moreover, night
was closing in fast, and a few hissing raindrops and the distant rumble
of thunder warned him that a storm was about to break.

He must find some sort of shelter for the night; and among the few
thatch-covered cottages in whose windows lights were beginning to
twinkle, his steps led him to a modest farmhouse behind the small
village church. In answer to his knock, the door was opened by a burly,
pleasant-faced farmer, of whom the stranger craved a refuge from the
storm until the morning, and a little food for which he offered to pay
handsomely. "I shall be grateful for even a chair to sit on," added the
weary traveller, when the farmer protested that he had no accommodation
to offer him.

"Very well," said the farmer, relenting. "Come in, and we'll do the
best we can for you. It's going to be a bad night, not fit to turn a dog
out in, much less a gentleman; and I can see you're that." And a few
minutes later the grateful stranger was seated in Farmer Hoggins's cosy
kitchen before a steaming plate of stew, while the thunder crashed
overhead and the rain dashed in a deluge against the window-panes.

Thus dramatically opened one of the most romantic chapters in the story
of the British Peerage. As Farmer Hoggins shrewdly concluded, his
travel-stained guest was at least a gentleman. His voice and bearing
proclaimed that fact. But the farmer little suspected the true rank of
the man he was thus "entertaining unawares," or all that was to come
from his good-hearted hospitality to a stranger who was so affable and
so entertaining.

Although he was known in his own world as plain Mr Henry Cecil, he was a
man of ancient lineage, and closely allied to some of the greatest in
the land. Long centuries earlier, when William Rufus was King, one of
his ancestors had done doughty deeds in the conquest of Glamorganshire;
and from that distant day all his forefathers had been men who had held
their heads among the highest. One of them was none other than the
famous Lord Burleigh, one of England's greatest statesmen, favourite
Minister and friend of Henry VIII. and his two Queen-daughters. So great
was my Lord Burleigh's wealth that, as Sir Bernard Burke tells us,

"he had four places of residence--his lodgings at Court,
his house in the Strand, his family seat at Burleigh, and
his own favourite seat of Theobalds, near Waltham Cross,
to which he loved to retire from harness. At his house in
London he supported a family of fourscore persons,
without counting those who attended him in public.

"He kept a standing table for gentlemen, and two other
tables for those of a meaner condition; and these were
always served alike, whether he was in or out of town.
Twelve times he entertained Elizabeth at his house, on
more than one occasion for some weeks together; and, as
royal visits are rather expensive luxuries, and
Elizabeth's formed no exception to the rule (for they
cost between L1,000 and L2,000), the only wonder is that
his purse was not exhausted, and that he was able to
leave his son L25,000 in money and valuable effects,
besides L4,000 a year in landed estates."

Such was the splendour of this early Cecil, whose two sons were both
raised to Earldoms--of Exeter and Salisbury--on the same day.

Henry himself was heir to one of these family Earldoms--that of
Exeter--and some day would wear a coronet and be lord of vast estates,
although the knowledge gave him little pleasure. His parents had died in
his boyhood; and as his uncle, the Earl, took no interest in his heir,
the lad was left to his own devices. In good time he had wooed and
married the pretty daughter of a West of England squire, a Miss Vernon,
who proved as wayward as she was winsome. His wedded life was indeed so
far from being a bed of roses that he was thankful to recover his
liberty by divorcing his wife; and at the age of thirty-seven, but a few
months before this story opens, he was a free man once more.

Courts and coronets had no attractions for him. His marriage had proved
a bitter draught. He was a disappointed and disillusioned man, and he
determined that if ever he took another wife she should be "a plain,
homely, and truly virtuous maiden, in whatever sphere of life I find
her. Then I swear with King Cophetua, 'This beggar-maid shall be my
Queen.'"

Full of this romantic, if quixotic, resolve, Henry Cecil strapped a
knapsack on his back, and, staff in hand, tramped off in search of the
"beggar-maid" who was to bring him happiness at last; or, if he could
not discover her, at least to find some place of retirement where he
could lead a simple life, remote from the empty splendours and vanities
of the world to which he was born, and in which he had sought happiness
in vain.

And thus it was that in his wanderings his steps led him to the little
village in Shropshire, and to the hospitable roof of Farmer Hoggins and
his good wife, whose hearts he had won before the humble supper-table
was cleared on that stormy July night. No doubt the stranger's enjoyment
of the farmer's hospitality was enhanced by the glimpses he had caught
of his host's daughter, Sarah, a rustic beauty of seventeen summers,
with a complexion of "cream and roses," with a wealth of brown hair, and
lovely blue eyes which from time to time glanced shyly at the
good-looking stranger.

No doubt, too, it was the wish to see more of pretty Miss Sarah that was
responsible for the stranger's reluctance to resume his journey on the
following morning, which dawned bright and beautiful. So far from
showing any anxiety to continue his tramping, Cecil begged his host's
and hostess's permission to spend a few days with them. He was, he said,
a painter by profession; it would give him the greatest pleasure to
spend a few days sketching in such a beautiful district; and he would
pay well for the hospitality.

The farmer and his wife, who had already grown attached to their
pleasant guest, were by no means unwilling to accept the offer; nor did
they raise any protest when the days grew into weeks and months. These
were halcyon days for the world-weary man--delightful days of sketching
in the open air in an environment of natural beauty; peaceful evenings
spent with his simple-minded hosts and friends; and, happiest of all,
the hours in which he basked in the smiles and blushes of pretty Sarah
Hoggins, carrying home her pails of milk, helping her to churn the
butter, or telling to her wondering ears stories of the great world
outside her ken, while the sunset steeped the orchard trees above their
heads in glory.

To Sarah he was known as "Mr Jones"; and to her innocent mind it never
occurred that he could be other than the painter he professed to be.
The villagers, however, were sceptical. True, the stranger was a
pleasant man who always gave them a cheery "good-day," and gossiped with
them in the friendliest manner. But that there was some mystery
connected with him, all agreed. "Painter chaps" were notoriously poor,
and this man always seemed to have plenty of money to fling about. Then,
he would disappear periodically, and always returned with more money.
Where did he go, and how did he get his gold? There could be little
doubt about it. This handsome, mysterious, pleasant-tongued stranger
must be a highwayman; for it was a fact that every time he was absent, a
coach or a chaise was held up in the neighbourhood and its occupants
relieved of their valuables.

Suspicion became certainty when Mr Jones bought a piece of land in their
village and began to build the finest house in the whole district, a
house which must cost, in their bucolic view, a "mint o' money." But Mr
Jones simply smiled at their suspicions, and made himself more agreeable
than ever. He loved the farmer's daughter, and she made no concealment
of her love for him, and nothing else mattered. He had won his
"beggar-maid," and happiness was at last within his grasp.

When he asked his hosts for the hand of their daughter in marriage, the
good lady was indignant. "Marry Sarah!" she exclaimed. "What, to a fine
gentleman? No, indeed; no happiness can come from such a marriage!"

But the farmer for once put his foot down. "Yes," he said, "he shall
marry her. The lass loves him dearly; and has he not house and land,
too, and plenty of money to keep her?" And thus it came to pass that one
October day the church-bells of Bolas rang a merry peal; the villagers
put on their gala clothes; and, amid general rejoicing, qualified by not
a few dark hints and forebodings, Sarah Hoggins was led to the rustic
altar by her "highwayman" bridegroom.

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