|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 40
Arrant sentimentalist, born and trained flirt, as this confession
shows her to have been, it also shows that she lived to rue it. She
rued more than that, for she was the mother of Lady Caroline Lamb; and
if anything more need be said of her misfortunes, let it be added
that she was sister to Georgiana of Devonshire. Nevertheless, it is
impossible to read her letters with her wooden young lord without
seeing that she had a good heart, if a very weak head. She loved much;
and for those whom she loved--her sister, her children, Granville
Gower--she was ready to dare all things, and fail in most. Of her
husband there is nothing to tell, for she hardly names him, except to
say that he has the gout. Not much is known of him, and nothing but
good. Horace Walpole wrote of his marriage in 1780: "I know nothing to
the prejudice of the young lady; but I should not have selected for so
gentle and very amiable a man a sister of the empress of fashion, nor
a daughter of the Goddess of Wisdom." The goddess of wisdom was her
formidable and trenchant mother, Lady Spencer.
But I don't intend to follow the vain stages of her sentimental
pilgrimage in pursuit of Lord Granville Gower's heart, vain because
apparently the young man had not such an organ at her disposal. It was
not, perhaps, for nothing that they exchanged reflections upon _Les
Liaisons Dangereuses_. A new Choderlos de Laclos would get a new
sentimental novel out of the Granville Gower correspondence; or it
may be taken as it stands for a recovered Richardson, quite as long
as _Sir Charles Grandison_ and much more amusing--for the poor lady is
often witty. The affair dragged on, with much scandal, much whispering
about it and about, until 1809, when the hero of it married Lady
Harriet Cavendish, his mistress's niece. J.W. Ward, one of her lovers,
according to her, sharply sums it up in a letter to Mrs. Dugald
Stewart: "Lord Granville Leveson is going to marry Lady Harriet
Cavendish. Lady Bessborough resigns, I presume, in favour of her
niece. I have not heard what are supposed to be the secret articles of
the treaty, but it must be a curious document." It was in 1812, as I
have said, that she wrote out the pathetic confession of what we must
suppose to have been the truth.
But I intended to write about Sheridan. This correspondence reveals
him as the evil genius of Lady Bessborough's life; and perhaps, if all
the truth were known, she may have been the evil genius of his, or one
of them, anyhow. She had adventures with him behind her in 1794, when
she began adventures anew; for they became intimate at Devonshire
House, where, as the crony of Charles Fox, he was always at hand. The
Duchess herself was one of his familiars. His initials for her, in
letter-writing, were T.L., which a biographer pleasantly interprets as
"True Love." The sisters, Countess and Duchess, shared in all good and
evil things, and they seem to have shared Sheridan. His chosen initial
for Lady Bessborough's address was "F," her second name being Frances.
Mr. Sichel prints a letter from him to her, and guesses it to be
of 1788. Extracts will suffice for the judicious: "I must bid 'oo
good-night, for by the light passing to and fro near your room I
hope you are going to bed and to sleep happily with a hundred little
cherubs fanning their white wings over you in approbation of your
goodness. Yours is the sweet, untroubled sleep of purity." It is to be
feared that she could swallow this over-succulent stuff. A very little
more will do for us: "And yet, and yet--Beware! Milton will tell
you that even in Paradise serpents found their way to the ear of
slumbering innocence. Then, to be sure, poor Eve had no watchful
guardian to pace up and down beneath her windows.... And Adam, I
suppose--was at Brooks's ... I shall be gone before your hazel eyes
are open to-morrow...."
Lady Duncannon, as she was then, lived in Cavendish Square. Sheridan's
leaguer of the house is thus betrayed. He never again left either her
or it alone for long, but beset them until his death. Bitterly enough
she was to rue that dalliance with the vainest sentimentalist ever
begotten in Ireland or fostered in England. His wife, as lovely as
a Muse and with the voice of a seraph, was to die; he was to adore,
pursue, and capture another; but he never let Lady Bessborough go, and
the antics of his mortified vanity were to lead her as far into the
mire as any woman could go without suffocation. Such experiences may
be common enough; it is rare to have them so nakedly portrayed as they
are in this lady's letters, and not easy to avoid the conclusion
that she made use of them to pique her wooden Antinous into some more
active kind of pose than that of allowing himself to be adored.
Sheridan was forty-three and married to his second wife when Lady
Bessborough fell in with Antinous at Naples; but it was not until the
attachment of those two had become a notoriety that he began to make
scenes about it. In 1798, when Granville Gower was in Berlin,
Lady Bessborough writes to him that she had been at a concert at
Sheridan's. "It was as pleasant as anything of the sort can be to me,
as I sat by Fitzpatrick and Grey, who always amuse me. Sheridan
says, when he found I did not come to town, he imagined that you
had interdicted my coming till your return, and is always asking me
whether what I am doing is allowed." That was March 12th; between that
and the 17th she seems to have met Sheridan every day and nearly every
night. "I must tell you, by the by ... that I am in great request this
year.... I have had three _violent_ declarations of love--one from
an old man, another from a very young one, and the third between the
other two.... Pray come back. If you stay long in Prussia, Heaven
knows what may happen."
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|