Love Romances of the Aristocracy written by Thornton Hall

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"On the top of the gallery," she says, "is a terrace, at
the extreme end of which is a pavilion, with open arcades
and paved with marble. This pavilion commands a most
charming prospect of the bay, the foreground filled up by
gardens and vineyards. The odour of the flowers in the
grounds around the pavilion, and the Spanish jasmine and
tuberoses that cover the walls, render it one of the most
delicious retreats in the world. The walls of all the
rooms are literally covered with pictures; the
architraves of the doors of the principal rooms are
oriental alabaster and the rarest marbles; the tables and
consoles are composed of the same costly materials; and
the furniture bears the traces of its pristine
splendour."

Such was the Arabian palace of all delights of which her gorgeous
ladyship now found herself mistress; and yet nothing would please her
indulgent lord but the spending of a few thousands in adding to its
splendours by new and costly furnishings. Here she spent two-and-a-half
years of ideal happiness, sailing by moonlight on the lovely bay, with
d'Orsay for companion; visiting all the sights, from Pompeii to the
galleries and museums, with a retinue of experts, such as Herschell and
Gell in her train, and entertaining with a queenly magnificence Italian
nobles and all the great ones of Europe who passed through Naples.

From Naples Lady Blessington took her train to Florence, where she cast
her spell over Walter Savage Landor, who spent every possible hour in
her fascinating company; and where she was joined by her husband's
daughter, the Lady Harriet Gardiner, a girl of fifteen, who, within a
few weeks of reaching Italy, became the wife of my lady's handsome
protege, d'Orsay. And it was not until 1828, six years after leaving
London, that the stately procession turned its face homewards, halting
for a few months of farewell magnificence in Paris, where Lady
Blessington was installed in Marshal Ney's mansion, in an environment
even more gorgeous than the Palazzo Belvidere of Naples could boast,
thanks to the prodigality of her infatuated lord.

The description which her Ladyship gives of her Paris palace reads,
indeed, like a passage from the "Arabian Nights."

"The bed," she says, "which is silvered instead of gilt,
rests on the backs of two large silver swans, so
exquisitely sculptured that every feather is in
alto-relievo, and looks nearly as fleecy as those of a
living bird. The recess in which it is placed, is lined
with white fluted silk, bordered with blue embossed lace;
and from the columns that support the frieze of the
recess, pale blue silk curtains, lined with white, are
hung. A silvered sofa has been made to fit the side of
the room opposite the fireplace--pale blue carpets,
silver lamps, ornaments silvered to correspond."

Her bath was of white marble; her _salle de bain_ was draped with white
muslin trimmed with lace, and its ceiling was beautiful with a painted
Flora scattering flowers and holding an elaborate lamp in the form of a
lotus. And all the rest of the equipment of this dream-palace was in
keeping with these splendours, from the carpets and curtains of crimson
to the gilt consoles, marble-topped _chiffonieres_, and _fauteuils_
"richly carved and gilt and covered with satin to correspond with the
curtains."

This, although Lady Blessington little dreamt it, was to be the last
lavish evidence of her lord's devotion to his beautiful wife; for,
before they had been many months back in England the Earl died suddenly
in the prime of his days. Large as his fortune had been, the last few
years of extravagance had made such inroads in it that all that was left
of his L30,000 a year was an annual income of L600, which went to his
illegitimate son. Fortunately the Countess's jointure of L2,000 a year
was secure; and on this income Lady Blessington was able to face the
future with a heart as light as it could be after such a bereavement;
for, eccentric as her husband had been, and in some ways almost
contemptible, she had loved him dearly for the great and touching love
with which he had always surrounded her.

It was during her early years of widowhood that her ladyship turned for
solace, and also for additional revenue to support the extravagance
which had now become second nature, to her pen, in which she quickly
found a small mine of welcome gold. Her "Books of Beauty" and "Gems of
Beauty" were an instantaneous success--they made a strong appeal to the
flowery sentiment of the time, and sold in tens of thousands of copies.
Her "Conversations with Byron," a record of those halcyon days at Genoa,
fed the curiosity which then invested the most romantic of poets with a
glamour which survives to our day; and her novels and gossipy books of
travel were hailed in succession by an eager public of readers.

In these years of prolific literary labour she was able to double her
jointure, and to maintain much of the splendour to which she had become
so accustomed. Even her literary children were cradled in luxury on a
_fauteuil_ of yellow satin, in a library crowded with sumptuous couches
and ottomans, enamel tables and statutary. To her house in Seamore Place
her beauty and fame drew the most eminent men in England, from Lawrence
and Lyndhurst to Lytton and young Disraeli, gorgeous as his hostess, in
gold-flowered waistcoat, gold rings and chains, white stick with black
tassel, and his shower of ringlets.

But the Seamore Place house proved too cabined and too modest for my
lady's exacting social ambition. She demanded a more spacious and
magnificent shrine for her beauty, which was still so remarkable that
she was considered the loveliest woman at the Court of George III. when
well advanced in the forties--and this she found at Gore House, in
Kensington, a stately mansion in which Wilberforce had made his home,
and which, surrounded by beautiful gardens and shut in with a girdle of
spreading trees, might have been in the heart of the country, instead of
within sight of the tide of fashion which flowed in Hyde Park.

Here for thirteen years, with the handsome, gay, accomplished d'Orsay,
who had separated from his wife, as major-domo, she dispensed a princely
hospitality. Her dinners and her entertainments were admittedly the
finest in London; and invitations to them were as eagerly sought as
commands to a Court-ball.

"At Gore House," said Brougham, "one is sure to meet some of the most
interesting people in England, and equally sure not to have a dull
moment." Brougham was himself a constant and a welcome guest, and the
men he met there ranged from Prince Louis Napoleon, then an exile
without a prospect of a crown, and the Duke of Wellington to Albert
Smith and Douglas Jerrold--so wide was the net of Lady Blessington's
hospitality. And all paid the same glowing tribute, not only to their
hostess's loveliness but to the warmth of heart, which was one of her
greatest charms. And of all the great ones who sat at her dinner-table
or thronged her drawing-rooms not one was wittier or more fascinating
than Count d'Orsay, who, in spite of envious and malicious tongues,
never occupied to the Countess any other relation than that of a
dearly-loved and devoted son.

Although Lady Blessington's income rarely fell below L4,000 a year, it
was quite inadequate to her expenditure; and it was clear to her that
this era of splendid hospitality could not last for ever. A day of
reckoning was sure to come; and it came sooner than she had anticipated.
D'Orsay, who seems to have been even more careless of money than his
mother-in-law, plunged deeper and deeper in debt--some of it, at least,
incurred in helping to keep up the Gore House _menage_--until he found
himself at last face to face with liabilities far exceeding L100,000,
and besieged with duns and bailiffs. Once he was arrested at the suit of
a bootmaker, and was rescued from prison by Lady Blessington's
rapidly-emptying purse. The climax came when a sheriff's officer
smuggled himself into Gore House, and brought down on d'Orsay's head an
avalanche of angry creditors, each resolute to have his "pound of
flesh." The Countess was powerless to stem the invasion; her own
resources were at an end, the Count himself was penniless. The only
safety was in flight; and one day Gore House was found empty. The birds
had flown to Paris; and the mansion which had been the scene of so much
magnificence was left to the mercy of a horde of clamorous creditors.

A few weeks later, all "the costly and elegant effects of the Right
Honourable, the Countess of Blessington, retiring to the Continent" were
put up to auction; and twenty thousand curious people were pouring
through the rooms which her gorgeous ladyship had made so famous--among
them Thackeray, who was moved to tears at the spectacle of so much
goodness and greatness reduced to ruin. The sale, although many of the
effects brought absurdly low prices, realised L12,000--a smaller sum
probably than would be paid to-day for half-a-dozen of the Countess's
pictures.

This crushing blow to her fortunes and her pride no doubt broke Lady
Blessington's heart; for within a few months of the last fall of the
auctioneer's hammer, she died suddenly in Paris, to the unspeakable
grief of d'Orsay, who declared to the Countess's physician, Madden, "She
was to me a mother! a dear, dear mother--a true, loving mother to me."
Three years later this "paragon of all the perfections" followed the
Countess behind the veil, and rests in a mausoleum, of his own
designing, at Chamboury, with one of the most lovely women who have ever
graced beauty with rare gifts of mind and with a warm and tender heart.

CHAPTER IX

A QUEEN OF COQUETTES

The 29th of May in the year 1660 was indeed a red-letter day in the
calendar of jovial fox-hunting Squire Jennings, of Sandridge, in
Hertfordshire. It was the day on which his Royal idol, the second
Charles, set out from Canterbury on the last stage of the journey to his
crown. Mounted on his horse, caparisoned in purple and gold, at the head
of a gay cavalcade of retainers, he rode proudly through the Kentish
lanes and villages: through avenues of wildly-cheering crowds, flinging
sweet may-blossoms and flowers under his horse's feet, and waving green
boughs over their heads in a frenzy of welcome.

[Illustration: SARAH, DUCHESS OF MARLBOROUGH]

And it was on this very day, as the "Merrie Monarch" was riding under
the flowery arches and fluttering pennons of London streets, to the
clanging of joy-bells and the thundering of cannon, with a procession
twenty thousand strong behind him, that Squire Jennings' daughter first
opened her eyes on the world in which, though her simple-minded father
little dreamt it, she was destined to play so brilliant a part. No
birthday could have been more auspicious than this which saw the
restoration of a nation's hope; and the sun which flooded it with
splendour was typical of the good fortune that was to gild the life-path
of the Sandridge baby.

If on that day Squire Richard had been told that his baby-girl would
live to wear a Duchess's coronet and to be the bosom-friend and
counsellor of a Queen of England, he would have laughed aloud; and yet
Fate had this and more in waiting for Sarah Jennings in the years to
come. The Squire himself professed to be no more than a plain
country-gentleman, who knew as much as any man about horses and the
management of acres, but knew no more of courts and coronets than of the
man in the moon.

His family, it is true, had been seated for generations on its broad
Hertfordshire lands, and his father had been dubbed a Knight of the Bath
when the Prince of Wales, later Charles I., himself received the
accolade. His mother, too, was a Thornhurst, of Agnes Court, Old Romney,
a family of old lineage and high respectability; but, apart from Sir
John, no Jennings had ever aspired even as high as a mere knighthood,
and certainly they were as far removed from coronets as from the North
Pole.

Squire Jennings had another daughter, Frances, at this time a winsome
little maid of eight summers, already showing promise of a rare
loveliness. And she, too, was destined to a career, almost as brilliant
as, and more adventurous than that of her baby-sister. Her story opened
when one day she was transported, as maid-of-honour to the Duchess of
York, from the modest home in Hertfordshire to the glamour and
splendours of the Royal Court, where her beauty dazzled all eyes.

The Duke of York himself lost his heart at sight of her, and turned on
her the battery of his sighs and smiles, his ogling and flattering
speeches. When she met his advances with coldness, he bombarded her with
notes "containing the tenderest expressions and most magnificent
promises," slipping them into her pocket or muff, as opportunity served;
but the disdainful beauty dropped the _billets-doux_ on the floor for
any one to read who chose to pick them up, until at last the Royal lover
was compelled to abandon the pursuit in despair.

James's brother, the King, made violent love to her; and every Court
gallant, from the Duke of Buckingham to Henry Jermyn, the richest beau
in England, fluttered round her beauty like moths around a candle. How,
after many romantic vicissitudes, Frances Jennings gave her heart and
hand to Dick Talbot, the handsomest man in the British Isles; how she
raised him to a Dukedom, and, as Duchess of Tyrconnel, queened it as
Vicereine of Ireland; and how, in later life, she sank from this dizzy
pinnacle to such depths of poverty that for a time she was thankful to
sell tapes and ribbons in the New Exchange bazaar in the Strand, is one
of the most romantic stories in the annals of our Peerage.

While Frances Jennings was coquetting with coronets and playing the
madcap at the Court of Whitehall, Sarah was growing to girlhood in her
rustic environment in Hertfordshire, more interested in her pony and her
toys than in all the baubles that made up the life of that very fine
lady her sister, and giving no thought to her beauty, to which each day
was adding its touch of grace. But she was not long to remain in such
innocence; for one day when she was still but a child of twelve her
sister came in a splendid Court carriage, and took her off to London,
where a very different life awaited her.

She was not, it is true, to move like Frances in the splendid circle of
the Throne, though she was to be on its fringe and to catch many a
glimpse of it. Her more modest _role_ was to be playfellow and companion
of the Duke of York's younger daughter, Anne--a shy, backward child, a
few years younger than herself, who suffered from an affection of the
eyes, which practically closed books and the ordinary avenues of
education to her.

To such a child cradled in a palace and hedged round by ceremonial,
Sarah Jennings, with the superabundant health and vitality of a
country-bred girl, was an ideal playmate; and before many days had
passed the timid, clinging Princess was the very slave of the vivacious,
romping, strong-willed daughter of the squire. Thus was begun that union
between the strong and the weak, which in later years was to make Sarah,
Duchess of Marlborough, virtual Queen of England, while her childish
playfellow, Anne, wore the crown.

It was under such conditions that Sarah Jennings blossomed rapidly into
young womanhood--little less lovely than her ravishing sister, but
infinitely more dowered with strength of mind and character--an
imperious young lady, with the cleverest brain and tongue, and the most
inflexible will within the circle of the Court.

While Sarah was playing with her Royal charge in the Palace nursery,
John Churchill, son of a West Country knight, whose life was to be so
closely linked with hers, had already climbed several rungs of the
ladder at the summit of which he was to find a Duke's coronet. He had
made his first appearance at Court while she was still in the cradle at
Sandridge; and although, no doubt, she had caught many a glimpse of the
handsome young courtier and favourite of the King, in her eyes he moved
in a world apart, as far removed by his splendid environment as by his
ten years' superiority in age.

John Churchill was, at least, no better born than herself. He was son of
one Winston Churchill, of a stock of West Country gentry, who had flung
aside his cap and gown at Oxford to wield a sword for King Charles; and
who, when Cromwell took the fallen reins of government into his own
hands, was made to pay a heavy price for his loyalty by the forfeiture
of his lands and a fine of L4,000. When Charles I.'s son came to his
own, Winston's star shone again; his acres were restored, he was dubbed
a knight, and was rewarded with well-paid offices under the Crown.
Moreover, a place at Court, as page-boy, was found for his young son
John; and another, as maid-of-honour to the Duchess of York, for his
daughter Arabella.

From the day young Churchill entered the service of James, Duke of York,
Fortune smiled her sweetest on him. The Duke was captivated by the boy's
handsome face, his intelligence and charming manners, and took him at
once into favour. By the time he was sixteen he was a full-blown officer
of the Guards, and the idol of the Court. His good looks, his graces of
person, and powers of fascinating wrought sad havoc in the breast of
many a Court-lady; and, boy though he was, there were few favours which
might not have been his without the asking.

Even Barbara Villiers, my Lady Castlemaine, who had for many years been
the King's "light o' love," and had borne him three sons, all
Dukes-to-be, cast amorous eyes on the handsome young Guardsman; and,
what is more, succeeded where beauty failed, in drawing him within the
net of her coarse, middle-aged charms. Strange stories are told of the
love-making of this oddly-assorted pair, which had a ludicrous
conclusion. One day King Charles was informed that if he would take the
trouble to go to Lady Castlemaine's rooms he would be rewarded by a
singular spectacle--that of young Churchill dallying with his mistress
and the mother of his children. And so it proved; for when the King made
an unexpected appearance he was just in time to see the
lieutenant-Lothario disappearing through an open window and his
inamorata on the verge of hysterics on a sofa.

One cannot blame the "Merrie Monarch" for deciding that such activities
were better fitted for another field of exercise. The young Lothario was
packed off to Tangier to cool his ardour by a little bloodshed; but
before he went Lady Castlemaine handed him a farewell present of L5,000
with which, according to Lord Chesterfield, "he immediately bought an
annuity of L500 a year of my grandfather Halifax, which was the
foundation of his subsequent fortune."

A young man so enterprising and so gifted by nature could scarcely fail
to go far, when his energies were directed into a suitable channel. He
proved that he could serve under the banner of Mars as gallantly as
under the pennon of Cupid. He did such doughty deeds against the Dutch,
under Monmouth, that he was made a Captain of Grenadiers. At the siege
of Nimeguen his reckless bravery won the unstinted praise of Turenne,
who, when one of his own officers cowardly abandoned an important
outpost, exclaimed, "I will bet a supper and a dozen of claret that my
handsome Englishman will recover the post with half the number of men
that the officer commanded who has lost it." And the "handsome
Englishman" promptly won the supper for the Marshal. Moreover, by an act
of splendid daring, during the siege of Maestricht he saved the Duke of
Monmouth's life; and returned to England a hero and a colonel, having
thoroughly purged his indiscretion in Lady Castlemaine's boudoir. If he
had toyed dangerously with the King's mistress, he had at least saved
the life of his Sovereign's best-loved son.

It was at this time that Churchill seems to have first set eyes on Sarah
Jennings, now standing on the verge of womanhood, and as sweet a flower
as the Court garden of fair girls could show. He saw her moving with
queenly grace and dainty freshness among a crowd of the loveliest women
at a Royal ball, her proud well-poised head rising above them as a lily
towers over meaner flowers. And--such are the strange ways of love--from
that first glance he was fascinated by her as no other woman ever had
power to fascinate him. When he sought an introduction to her, the
bright spirit that shone in her eyes, her clever tongue, and her
graciousness quickly forged the chains which he was proud to wear to his
life's end. Seldom has a woman's spell worked such quick magic--never
has the love it gave birth to proved more loyal and enduring.

But Sarah Jennings was no maid to be easily won by any man--even by a
lover so dowered with physical graces and so invested with the halo of
romance as John Churchill. She knew all about his heroism on
battlefields; she knew also of that little incident in a palace boudoir,
and of many another youthful peccadillo of the gallant young colonel.
She was no flower to be worn and flung aside; and she meant that Colonel
Churchill should know it. She could be gracious to him, as to any other
man; but she quickly made the limits of her indulgence clear. To all his
amorous advances she presented a smiling and inscrutable front; his
ardour was as unwelcome as it was premature.

Had she designed to make a conquest of her martial lover she could not
have set to work more diplomatically. Colonel Churchill had basked for
years in woman's smiles, often unsought and undesired; to coldness and
indifference he was a stranger; but they only served, as becomes a
soldier, to make him more resolute on victory. As a subtle tongue and a
handsome person made no impression on this frigid beauty, he had
recourse to his pen (since his sword was useless for such a conquest)
and inundated her with letters, breathing undying devotion, and craving
for at least a smile or a look of kindness.

"Show me," he writes, "that, at least, you are not quite
indifferent to me, and I swear that I will never love
anything but your dear self, which has made so sure a
conquest of me that, had I the will, I had not the power
ever to break my chains. Pray let me hear from you and
know if I shall be so happy as to see you to-night."

But to all his protestations and appeals she returns no response. If she
is deaf to the pleadings of love she must, he determined, at least give
him her pity. He writes to tell her that he is "extreme ill with the
headache," and craves a word of sympathy, as a beggar craves a crust. He
vows, in his pain,

"by all that is good I love you so well that I wish from
my soul that if you cannot love me, I may die, for life
could be to me one perpetual torment. If the Duchess,"
he adds, "sees company I hope you will be there; but if
she does not, I beg you will then let me see you in your
chamber, if it be but for one hour. If you are not in the
drawing-room you must then send me word at what hour I
shall come."

At last the iceberg thaws a little--though it is only to charge him with
unkindness! She assumes the _role_ of virtue; and, with a woman's
capriciousness, charges her lover with the coldness and neglect which
she herself has visited on him.

"Your not writing to me," she says, "made me very uneasy,
for I was afraid it was want of kindness in you, which I
am sure I will never deserve by any action of mine."

Was ever wayward woman so unjust? For weeks Churchill had been deluging
her with ardent letters, to which she had not deigned to answer one
word. Now she assumes an air of injured innocence, and accuses _him_ of
unkindness! She even promises to see him, but cannot resist the
temptation to qualify the concession with a gibe.

"That would hinder you," she says, with delicious, if
cruel satire, "from seeing the play, which I fear would
be a great affliction to you, and increase the pain in
your head, which would be out of anybody's power to ease
until the next new play. Therefore, pray consider; and,
without any compliment to me, send me word if you can
come to me without any prejudice to your health."

At any rate, the Sphinx had spoken and shown that she had some feeling,
if only that of pique and unreason; and the despairing lover was able to
take a little heart. After all, coquetry, even if carried to the verge
of cruelty, holds more promise than Arctic coldness.

But the course of love, which could scarcely be said to have even begun,
was not to run at all smoothly. Sir Winston Churchill had set his heart
on his son marrying a gilded bride, and he had discovered the very woman
for his ambitious purpose--one Catherine Sedley, daughter of his old
friend Sir Charles Sedley, a lady, no longer quite young, angular and
unattractive, but heiress to much gold and many broad acres. And he lost
no time in impressing on his handsome boy the necessity of such an
alliance. Pretty maids-of-honour were all very well to practise
love-making on; but land and money-bags far outlast and outshine
penniless beauty.

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