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Page 17
One day the housekeeper of Hampton Court was showing the palace to
visitors when the sisters were there. She threw open the door where
they were sitting, saying, "This is our beauty-room." The pictures and
galleries were forgotten by the crowd, which gazed on the beauties
instead.
For a decade their beauty was regnant in London. They were not
politicians as were their Graces of Gordon and Devonshire, nor had
they the ability to become such. Neither were they the associates of
brilliant, intellectual men, but participants in the gay, vacuous,
showy society of the rapid set of the aristocracy. The elder sister
gained the coronet of Coventry, but her vanity caused her own undoing;
the younger was a part of the exhibition of "Beauty and the Beast." A
high price was paid for her position by the endurance of a period of
tyranny and terror.
Some praise must be accorded the beauties, for at a time of much
licentiousness of a profligate society and tolerated coarsenesses, the
sisters determinedly kept their names free from ignoble soil and
scandal.
[Illustration: MARIA COUNTESS OF COVENTRY by HAMILTON]
MARIA GUNNING
"Two Irish girls of no fortune, who make more noise than any of their
predecessors since the days of Helen, and who are declared the
handsomest women alive." So wrote Walpole, in June, 1751. If we were
to judge of their beauty by the pictured presentments of it, we would
certainly agree with "our Horace" when he says he has seen much
handsomer women than either. We have no adequate image of their
surpassing loveliness, the beholding of which would cause us to feel
how merited was their meed of praise, how fair the contemporary
comment on their comeliness, and how just the wide fame of a beauty
which tradition has epitomized for us in the phrase, "The Fair
Gunnings." Though the print publishers of the time actively issued
portraits, we feel that none of them picture such a person as would
set society and the whole city of London astir by her blazing beauty.
The best-known likenesses are the various pictures by Francis Cotes,
one of the founders of the Royal Academy, a painter of considerable
merit, who was born about 1725, and died in 1770. It is said that
Hogarth preferred him as a portrait painter to Reynolds. His studio
was in Cavendish Square, and at his death was taken by Romney; and it
was while he worked there that Sir Joshua referred to his rival as
"the man in Cavendish Square." The studio was later occupied by Sir
Martin Shee.
Cotes's picture of Maria is a half length of a modestly dignified
lady, having no tendency at all to that silliness that Walpole
insinuates was characteristic of her. The face is oval, the eyebrows
well apart and distinctly arched, and the hair brushed back from the
forehead and falling on the very graceful neck. The dress is cut low,
showing a delicately-moulded bosom. This picture was mezzo-tinted by
McArdell; and there is another, somewhat similar, reproduced superbly
by Spooner. His principal picture of Elizabeth is not so attractive
as the picture of her sister; the body is too constrained and
symmetrically formal; the dress is very low and edged with lace, some
flowers resting on her bosom. The neck and breast have not the suave
grace of the sister's. This has been engraved in mezzo-tint by
Houston. Another portrait by Cotes shows her with fur on the dress. He
also painted a portrait of Kitty in a low dress sprigged with flowers,
with a sash, and ribbons at the back of the head. This has a wooded
landscape background. Below the print of this picture is engraved
these lines:--
"This youngest of the Graces here we view
So like in Beauty to the other two
Whoe'er compares their Features and their Frame
Will know at once that Gunning is her name."
There is an engraved picture of the two sisters together--based on
Cotes's portrayals--called "The Hibernian Sisters." Maria is sitting
on the left, looking toward the right, with a dog on her lap; the
younger is on the right, looking to the front, and holds a fan in her
hand. In the background is a garden wall. Cupids surmount the
picture. The inscription is in this fashion:--
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