LADY SARAH LENNOX.*
Nor for a long time has so interesting a record as this volume of letters and memoirs been published; interesting not only in itself, but as completing a wonderful shelf of biography. The Life of Sir Charles Napier by his brother the historian, the Life of Sir William Napier by his son-in-law Lord Aberdare, and the Autobiography written by Sir George Napier for his children, and published after a generation had gone by, preserve for us in living words the image of a family group which for beauty and courage, for romantic temper and achievement, nobility of mind and body, has never been surpassed. Only in that group one figure was indistinctly portrayed, left vague and august. The mother of the Napiers was not only an imperial beauty, she was a woman with a famous and tragic history ; and now for the first time we can study in its full development that life and character of which before we had only one fascinating glimpse in girlhood as the girl who refused a King, and a fuller yet imperfect vision in her correspondence with her soldier sons. The letters abound in other interest; they give us glimpses into the very heart of the great Whig party, revealed by one who, as sister to the Duke of Richmond, cousin and sworn friend to Charles Fox, when politics were largely a family affair, knew the springs of politics through the stormy times of American war, Irish rebellion, and Napoleonic contest; they show us pictures of the social life of the time, its scan- dals, its diversions, its dress, sketched by one great lady for another. The volume contains other documents, any one of which would give importance to the publication, notably the first Lord Holland's memoir of the events attending George IL's death and George III.'s accession, marriage, and entry upon action, or Mrs. Fox's journal relating her husband's death. And yet there is nothing in the book that can compete for a moment with the interest aroused and sus- tained by the woman herself who is its central figure.
Lady Sarah Lennox, daughter of the second Duke of Richmond, had the misfortune to be orphaned of both her parents in early childhood, and was brought up at Carton by her sister, Lady Kildare, afterwards Duchess of Leinster. In 1759 she—being then a girl of thirteen—was sent over to live at Holland House with another sister, who had made the famous runaway match with Henry Fox, afterwards Lord Holland. Even in those days a girl not yet fourteen, however beautiful, would not have been brought to Court ; but Lady Sarah as a small child walking in Kensington Gardens with her nurse had struck up an odd friendship with the old King, and he desired to see her again. He found her too old to play with him, and, as he said in his pretty way, " grown quite stupid," but his heir was of another mind. A year later the heir was King, and Lady Sarah in the full power of her beauty, with no more discretion to control the use of it than was natural in a healthy, high-spirited girl of fifteen. The King con- tinued his admiration, and finally in March, 1861, made his curious, roundabout proposal to Lady Sarah's cousin and life- long intimate, Lady Susan Fox Strangways, to whom the letters in this book are addressed. On Lady Sarah's next appearance at Court the King came to her and asked her what she thought of the proposal that had been made for her to her friend. But the young beauty had red eyes, was very cross, and answered nothing; and George withdrew in a huff. The exquisite reason for Lady Sarah's bad temper is given by that old intriguer, her brother-in-law, whose detailed account of lovers words and looks and quarrels and reconcilement is very droll reading. The young Lord Newbattle, " a vain, insignificant puppy, lively, and not ugly," was much in love with Lady Caroline Russell, and nothing would please Lady Sarah but to try her powers to get him away, and in the process she convinced herself that she was violently in love with him. But his parents were adverse, and if Lady Sarah had red eyes when she went to Court it was because a letter had come prohibiting the engagement. Lord Newbattle, however, persisted in clandestine meetings and came near to compromise her. All this was strongly impressed on the King by his advisers. Then came a sudden
• The We and Letters of Lady Sarah Lennox, 1745-1828, Daughter of Charles Second Duke of Richmond, and successively the Wife of Sir Thomas Charles Banbury, Bart., and of the lion. George Napier • also a short Polstwal Sketch of the Years IMO to 1753, by Fleury Fox, First 'Lord Holland. Edited by the Countess of llehester and Lord Stavozdale. With numerous Photogravure Portraits. Loudon: John Murray. Lacs. aot.1
change. Lady Sarah fell from a horse and broke her leg; upon receipt of the news her favoured lover made a very heart- less remark, but the King showed the greatest concern.
Lord Holland, who was the chief supporter of the ambitious project for his wife's sister, relates with glee lin a letter how he impressed on the King all that the beloved one had suffered. " He drew up his breath, wreath'd himself, and made the countenance of one feeling pain himself (thinks I, you shall hear of that again)." And when Lady Sarah, more
beautiful than ever, reappeared in May, his attentions redoubled. She had entirely shaken off her fancy for Lord Newbattle, and was willing to play her part. The second of her letters describes how she has been schooled, what she is to say, how she is to look. A postscript added is simply delightfuL P.S.—I went Thursday but nothing was said; I won't go jiggetting for ever if I hear nothing I can tell him." The next is the epistle printed in Sir G. Trevelyan's Life of Fox, and therefore known to everybody. Still, one may recall a sentence :—
" I did not cry, I assure you, which I believe you will, as I know you were more set upon it than I was. The thing I am most angry at, is looking so like a fool, as I shall for having gone so often for nothing, but I don't much care ; if he was to change his mind again (which can't be though), and not give me a very good reason for his conduct, I would not have him, for if he is so weak as to be governed by everybody I shall have but a bad time of it."
She was quite right, and so no doubt were the advisers who married him more according to his degree in point of station
and of intelligence, but he does not seem to have behaved like a gentleman,—though we admit that we only have the story from one side, and that the lady's. The wound however, was forgotten in the death of a pet squirrel, for which Lady Sarah was consoled by the adoption of a young hedgehog. All these details we owe to Lord Holland, who also insisted that she should take her revenge by appearing in all her splendour beside the poor little Queen. as chief bridesmaid. It was, as she philosophically remarked, the best way of seeing the Coronation.
So ended, before she was sixteen and had come to a know- ledge of herself and her character, as exciting an episode as ever befell a young girl. It left no regrets, but she never forgot it. In her letters the King is never mentioned with indifference. Fifteen years later, when much experience had made a very different creature of her, she writes to her friend concerning the American War,—for both friends were pas- sionately Pro-American (to speak the dialect of to-day) :— "You talk of the time when we used to fancy great things; I am sure I can thank God very sincerely I am not Queen, for in the, first place I should have quarrelled with His Majesty long before this, and my head would have been off probably. But if I had loved and liked him, and not had interest enough to prevent this war, I should certainly go mad to think a person I loved was the cause of such a, shameful war." She was feminine enough never to be quite charitable towards the Queen, but towards George himself her feelings are best expressed by this letter written in a day when happiness had come to her, late but in full measure, though bringing poverty with it. In 1804 she was (though she did not know it) by her husband's deathbed with nine children on their hands, when she wrote :— " I am one who will keep the King's marriage day with un- feigned joy and gratitude to Heaven that I am not in Her Majesty's place ! It was the happiest day for me, in as much as I like better to attend my dear sick husband than a King. I like my sons better than I like the Royal Sons" (whom, how- ever, she always spoke of with kindness), " thinking them better annimals and more likely to give me comfort in my old age; and: I like better to be a subject than subject to the terrors of Royalty, in these days of trouble. It's pleasant to have lived to be satisfied of the great advantages of a lot which in those days I might have deemed unlucky. Ideas of fifteen and sixty cannot well assimilate, but mine began at fourteen, for if you remember I was not near fifteen when my poor head began to be turned. . . . . . . I ought to have been in my nursery, and I shall ever think it was unfair to bring me into the world while a child. Au rests, I am delighted to hear the King is so wall, for I am exceedingly partial to him. I always consider him as an old. friend that has been in the wrong."
Sixteen years later, at the King's funeral, there attended. an old blind woman, who yet kept some of her monumental beauty. She was then the mother of sons already distin- guished, who so loved and honoured her that her daughter-
in-law, Mrs. George Napier, induced her to write down what she could of the course of conduct that had produced so perfect a relationship. The document is the last, but not the least, of those given in this book. Yet the woman to whose perfection as wife and mother this is only one of many testimonies, each more eloquent than the other, began life with a terrible mistake. She married before she was sixteen Sir Charles Bunbury, a handsome and popular young man, chiefly known to fame as owner of the first Derby winner. After some five years of cheerful but childless married life in the fashionable world, Lady Sarah was involved in a violent passion with her cousin, Lord William Gordon. After a daughter had been born she left her home to go to her lover; lived with him for three months; then, yielding to her family's representations, left him and came to the home of her brother, the Duke of Richmond, was divorced, and for twelve years lived a very lonely life, devoting herself to her daughter, but following from her retirement all the movement of the world. She was thirty-six when she met Napier, then an officer in her brother's regiment. The marriage was for both an impru- dence, and none was ever more amply justified. Napier's praise has been best spoken by his son : " None of us is his equal," wrote the conqueror of Scinde, and the historian endorsed the judgment.
Space forbids further comment, but we have only faintly indicated the varied interest of this book, which is amongst other things the record of a friendship between two women that lasted close on seventy years, over many absences, across many distances, through many differences on private conduct and political affairs, with the utmost freedom of temperate speech preserved. Lady Susan, she also the heroine of a romance, is in her way a figure only less interesting than her friend; and her comment written in 1820 on the changes she had seen is one of the things that make us feel that we have not changed for the better as the world has advanced.
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