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Page 13
The beauty of the Duchess Mary Isabella was statuesque, classical; her
features were noble. She received admiration as her right, but gave
not largesse of smiles and wit in return. She was not as the Devonian
divinity, "The woman in whose golden smile all life seems enchanted."
Wraxall writes of a lady telling of witnessing a prenuptial display of
her person, and being entranced by lithe limb, by the fine and
faultless form. Reynolds has hinted at the beauteous body, and the
hint ensnares us. Verily, "the visible fair form of a woman is
hereditary queen of us." Wraxall also likens the Duchess to an
older-time beauty, Diane de Poitiers,--that famous lady of France, the
favorite of Fran�ois I. and Henri II. Of that lady's beauty, it was
written, that it was of the form and feature rather than the radiance
of the mind and manner transforming them; and like her, too, our
Duchess retained her beauty to an advanced age. She died in 1821. To
the last, she impressed one with her dignity, her nobility, her
loveliness.
"And they who saw her snow-white hair.
And dark, sad eyes, so deep with feeling,
Breathed all at once the chancel air,
And seemed to hear the organ pealing."
[Illustration: LAVINIA COUNTESS SPENCER by REYNOLDS]
LAVINIA
In March, 1781, Walpole writes to a friend: "As your lordship has
honored all the productions of my press with your acceptance, I
venture to inclose the last, which I printed to oblige the Lucans.
There are many beautiful and poetic expressions in it. A wedding, to
be sure, is neither a new nor a promising subject, nor will outlast
the favors; still, I think Mr. Jones's ode is uncommonly good for the
occasion." The ode was "The Muse Recalled," and the occasion the
nuptials of Lord Viscount Althorp and Miss Lavinia Bingham, eldest
daughter of Sir Charles Bingham, created, in 1776, Baron Lucan of
Castlebar. Sir Charles was a man of culture, who was intimate with
Johnson, Goldsmith, Gibbon, Reynolds, and Burke. He is frequently
pleasantly mentioned by Boswell. He had married, in 1760, Margaret,
daughter of James Smith, M.P., a lady of great good sense and rare
accomplishments, and three lovely daughters were the issue from this
union. Reynolds found in them most pleasing subjects for his pencil.
Their pictures appeared at the Academy, in 1786. Lavinia was portrayed
as shown in the picture here given, and again in quite as lovely a
fashion,--standing out doors and wearing a wide-brimmed hat which
casts a broad shade across the face; the wavy curls of hair fall upon
the shoulder; in the background is a landscape. The na�vete of the
face is exquisitely delightful. The old-time flavor of the whole
causes one to recall Locker's lines on the picture of his
grandmother:--
"Beneath a summer tree.
Her maiden reverie
Has a charm;
Her ringlets are in taste;
What an arm! ... what a waist
For an arm!"
In the picture of her youngest sister, Anne, is a broad hat, too; she
sits full-face, but in her features there is lacking just a little of
the quiet dignity of the eldest. All of these portraits have been made
familiar to us by the most meritorious mezzotints of them by Cousins.
In Lavinia's face there lingers all the enchanting grace of
girlhood,--a face yet full of that early beauty--
"Which, like the morning's glow
Hints a full day below."
A later president of the Academy, Sir Martin Shee, has shown us that
face in the noonday of its matronly beauty, and the gentle character
and sweet sensibility yet outshine through the mask of the flesh as in
the earlier pictures.
Lady Bingham was careful of the education and company of her
daughters. The girls were musical, and Lavinia excelled in painting as
well. Walpole writes of her being in Italy, in 1785, with Mrs. Damer,
his sculptor friend, and of her drawing with very great expression. He
was not so complimentary of her music some years before, when he tells
of being invited to Lady Lucan's to hear her daughters sing Jomelli's
"Miserere," set for two voices: "It lasted for two hours, and instead
of being pathetic was eminently dull, until at last I rejoiced when
'_the two women had left the sepulchre_.'"
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