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Page 16
The dowager was less than a year in widow's weeds when she exchanged
them for more strawberry leaves. She had two ducal offers, from their
graces of Bridgewater and of Argyll; she accepted the latter. In
March, 1759, she married John, the fifth Duke of that name. Walpole's
comment on this was: "Who could have believed a Gunning would unite
the two great houses of Campbell and Hamilton? For my part I expect to
see Lady Coventry Queen of Prussia. I would not venture to marry
either of them these thirty years, for fear of being shuffled out of
the world prematurely, to make room for the rest of their adventurers.
The first time Jack Campbell carries the Duchess into the Highlands, I
am persuaded that some of his second-sighted subjects will see him in
a winding-sheet with a train of kings behind him as long as those in
Macbeth." And again: "A match that would not disgrace Arcadia ... as
she is not quite so charming as her sister, I do not know whether it
is not better than to retain a title which puts one in mind of her
beauty."
The Dukes of Argyll--Lords of the Isles--have always shown a
partiality for beauties as brides. This Duke's father married the
beautiful Mary Bellenden, daughter of John, Lord Bellenden,--
"Smiling Mary, soft and fair as down."
* * * * *
She is mentioned otherwise as by Gay:--
"Bellenden we needs must praise,
Who, as down the stairs she jumps,
Sings 'Over the hills and far away,'
Despising doleful dumps."
Walpole says she was never mentioned by her contemporaries but as the
_most perfect creature_ they had ever known. The present Duke wedded
that charming child, Lady Elizabeth Leveson Gower, who sits on her
mother's knee in that surpassingly fine picture by Lawrence, called
"Lady Gower and Child." And his son is allied to the Princess Louise,
the most comely of Victoria's daughters.
After her sister's death, in 1760, her Grace of Argyll suffered a
decline in health. She was ordered abroad for change. She was
appointed to accompany the Princess Sophia Charlotte on her journey to
England to be married to the King. As they neared the ceremony in
London, the Princess became nervous. Her Grace essayed to quiet her
fears. "Ah, my dear Duchess, _you_ may laugh at me, but _you_ have
been married twice," said the Princess. The Duchess became one of the
ladies of the bedchamber, and was in much favor with the Queen.
In 1767, her father died at Somerset House, and her mother, the Hon.
Mrs. Gunning, in 1770. There were three sisters in the family besides
our heroines: Sophia Gunning died, an infant, in 1737; Lissy, who died
in 1752, aged eight years; and Catherine, who was married, in 1769, to
Robert Travis an Irish squire in her own rank of life. She died, too,
at Somerset House, in 1773, where she was an upper housekeeper. A
brother entered the army, fought at Bunker Hill, and became a
major-general in 1787. He was much of a ladies' man. He married a Miss
Minfie, author of some novels, and they had a daughter who aspired to
repeat the successes of her famous aunts. She managed to marry the
Hon. Stephen Digby, who had lost his first wife, a daughter of Lord
Ilchester, in 1787. The Duchess of Argyll was created, in 1776, a
peeress of England as Baroness Hamilton of Hambledon County,
Leicester, and died in December, 1790. By her second marriage she had
two sons, successively Dukes of Argyll, and two daughters, one of
whom, Lady Charlotte Campbell, attained some fame as a novelist as
Lady Charlotte Bury, she having married Colonel John Campbell and
secondly Rev. Edward Bury.
We have no evidence of the possession of bright Irish wit by the
double-duchessed beauty. Ingenuous enthusiasm, perfect simplicity, and
unfailing good humor ever marked her manner, and were a captivating
adjunct to her great facial charm. Walpole writes of a pretty sight
when their Graces of Hamilton and of Richmond with Lady Ailesbury
sitting in a boat together, and proceeds to tell of the suspected
jealousy by she of Hamilton of the beauty of his niece, daughter of
Sir Edward Walpole, who became the bride of Earl Waldegrave, and later
married the Duke of Gloucester, the King's youngest brother. At
another time, when a lady wrote telling him of the advent of a beauty
who was expected to outvie the Gunnings, he replies: "There was to
have been a handsomer every summer these seven years, but when the
seasons come they all seem to have been addled by the winter."
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