Art. XIII.-LADY SARAH LENNOX.

The Life and Letters of Lady Sarah Lennox, 1745-1826. Edited by the Countess of Ilchester and Lord Stavordale. Two vols. London: John Murray, 1901.

THERE is a glamour about Holland House which it is difficult to define. It seems at first sight to be the outcome of a long tradition; but in reality it is due to the genius and charm of a single man, and to the talkative brilliance of a motley group who, without showing more than a family likeness to Agamemnon, succeeded to his merits. It is true that the ghost of Addison was brought into the family by a marriage that was little to his credit; but the greatest spirit of all that rise at the sound of the name is Charles James Fox, though even in his day the main stream of Whig policy did not flow through Holland House. The mention of Lord Rockingham calls up the figure of Burke. The Duke of Portland resided at Burlington House, the property of his kinsman, the Duke who came after the king of the Whigs'; while Sheridan was at home, if anywhere in London, with Fox's Duchess. The truth is that the great day of Holland House was a day of high talk, but, so far as the Whigs were concerned, of small things. Whiggery seems to have passed abruptly from the state of a grandiose ideal into that of a venerable tradition. There was no summer. The illusions of promise gave way without a break to the legends of memory. There is no gap and no link between Charles Fox, generous and full of faith, with the broad light of a great epoch upon him, retaining to the last the virtues of youth when its failings had deserted him, and Lord Holland, whom we figure as essentially and permanently elderly, monumental between the fuss of Lord John Russell and the flow of Macaulay, and ever ready to temper or to instruct the present with an example or a maxim of 'my uncle.'

In the standard compilations of Lord Holland himself and Lord John Russell we probably already possess the bulk of what Holland House has to contribute to history; but it seems that there are still flowers to be gathered in the by-paths, and we are grateful for the care with which Lady Ilchester and Lord Stavordale have put

together this 'friendship's garland,' still fragrant after the lapse of a hundred years. Lady Sarah Lennox, under whose guidance we can follow the events of almost the whole reign of George III, was the eleventh child of the second Duke of Richmond. Her father had been married, when still a boy, to Sarah, the eldest daughter of the first Earl of Cadogan. In the good old times marriage was often an affair more of prudence than of passion. If the demands of wisdom were satisfied, love, it was held, would come-as in point of fact it not infrequently did-climbing up some other way. In the present case, which is almost unique of its kind, the children were tied together to cancel a bond in the shape of a gambling debt between the parents. When the formalities had been gone through, the young Lord March-who had naturally taken an instinctive dislike to his wife, as per agreement'-betook himself to his tutor and his travels. On his return to England, some years afterwards, he happened one evening to go to the play, where his attention was arrested by the beauty of a young lady in the audience. He asked who she was, and was told 'the reigning toast, the beautiful Lady March.' So he enjoyed the uncommon, if not unique, experience of falling in love with his own wife inadvertently and at second sight. Lady Sarah's brother, the third Duke of Richmond, made less of a mark in politics than might have been expected from his vigour and violence. The King disliked him; and, in opposition to the great Earl of Chatham, he dared what few were equal to, calling the Thunderer an insolent minister' in the House of Lords. But he will always be remembered for the part he played in the most dramatic scene in all our parliamentary history. For it was in the course of the debate on the Duke of Richmond's motion for withdrawing the troops from America that Chatham, on rising to reply to the Duke's second speech, was struck down with the sonorous protest on his lips against the dismemberment of this ancient and most noble monarchy.'

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Lady Sarah's own romance will always ensure her a footnote, if not a paragraph, in serious history; but for literary purposes the hour of illusion passed all too soon. It is as with the opening rhesis of an Euripidean drama, when a tiresome messenger or a god, seeing things whole with Olympian detachment, lets us at once into the secret

of the best and the worst. There is this difference, that Euripides is sure to give us finished pieces of choral writing and sentences of humane wisdom that justify themselves, however little they may promote the action; whereas, after the opening chord, Lady Sarah's letters ring flat. They are full of sense; but her charm-and we know that it led to real results, lawful and unlawful-must have appeared in some other way. It seems that Lady Sarah had already taken the fancy of the young Prince of Wales, when in 1760 he succeeded to the throne. That he was no less susceptible to the charms of the female sex than the other princes of his house, appears from the legend of the fair Quakeress; but his behaviour in this case, if we may trust the report of one side, shows him to have been capable of a depth and fidelity of attachment to which his grandfather and his son were alike strangers.

'He is in love with her,' writes Lord Holland; ' and it is no less certain she loves him . . . It were impossible to write down so much discourse as the King held with her; nor was that so remarkable as the language des yeux. Among other things he desir'd his sister to dance "Betty Blue"; "A dance, Madam," says he to Lady Sarah, "that you are acquainted with. I am very fond of it because it was taught me by a lady"-looking very significantly. She really did not know who he meant. "A very pretty lady," says he, "that came from Ireland, November was a twelvemonth." She then knew, but did not then pretend to know. "I am talking to her now," says he; "she taught it me at the ball on Twelve night." "Indeed, Sir," says she, "I did not remember it." "That may be," says he; "but I have a very good memory for whatever relates to that lady. I had got a pretty new country dance of my own for the late King's Birth-day, if he had liv'd to it, & I named it, 'The 25th of February' (which is Lady Sarah's birthday)." She colour'd, & in this pretty way did these two lovers entertain one another & the eyes of the whole ball-room for an hour.'

The real obstacles in the course of what seemed true love to Lord Holland and Lady Sarah will probably never be known. The King was in the hands of a Scotch clique, whose power for mischief did not end with their fall. To such close observers of the main chance it would have seemed fatal to allow the King to set out by pleasing

himself in so important a matter as the choice of his Queen. An English lady of the highest rank would be far more difficult to manage than a stranger from Germanylonely, ill-favoured, probably, and unpopular, and on that account all the more apt and willing to yield herself a prey to the interested flattery of parasites. Lady Sarah, it is true, was little more than a child; but then she had powerful friends, who would not be backward to push their advantages. In fact, in Bute's dread of the influence that would inevitably accrue to Lord Holland there is probably reason enough for the miscarriage, if a political reason must be found. But from the standpoint of a lovematch pure and simple, Lady Sarah herself cannot be acquitted of blame. In the first place, her deportment may have thrown too much upon the other side, for it seems to have been correct to the point of coldness. As a gobetween, her friend, Lady Susan Strangways, behaved with a tact and loyalty that are by no means invariable in that situation; but we feel that the result might possibly have been, different if more had been left to the unspoken reciprocity of lovers-φωνάντα συνετοῖσιν.

But if the omissions were serious, what was committed was far worse. 'Il y en a toujours un autre'; and the other was Lord Newbattle, 'a vain, insignificant puppy, lively and not ugly, who made love to all the girls, but was much in love with Lady Caroline Russell, the Duke of Bedford's daughter.' Lady Sarah must needs endeavour, out of frolic and vanity more than for love, to detach him from Lady Caroline. Thanks to the intrigues of others, she succeeded to more purpose than she had meant. A meeting was arranged, of which it is said that, by Bute's contrivance, the King was a hidden spectator; and words were spoken. Lord Newbattle's parents refused their consent, and forced him to write a letter to that effect; but he plucked up sufficient courage to follow the lady and recant by word of mouth. Begun for a vain reason, the affair ended in nothing; but enough had happened in the process to unsettle the King, and, so far as she was concerned, the Crown. Oscillating giddily between the shadow of the one and the substantial comfort of the other, she missed both. The King' (writes Lord Holland) has undoubtedly heard of Lord Newbattle, and more than is true'; so, at this distance of time, we

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are less surprised than was Lord Holland to learn that on the 8th July, 1761, the King announced his intended marriage with Miss Charlotte of Mecklenburgh.' It appeared then that Lady Sarah had never really loved him; and though she resented his duplicity,' of which she was a better judge than we have the means to be now, she sought and found distraction in the loss of a favourite squirrel which had providentially sickened to death about the same time. The outraged family showed their displeasure according to their means and station. It is written that the King quailed under the glance of Lord Holland's resentment; while, as for Lady Sarah, chance soon furnished her with an opportunity of 'confounding' the King 'with dignity and gravity and a cross look.'

One word more, and we shall have done with Lord Newbattle. He and Lady Sarah agreed, with mutual compliments, to part good friends; his lordship, who it seems was a philosopher, observing, 'After all, it is much better as it is, for I should have made a damned bad husband.' And now that the comedy has ended in a marriage, as Erasmus said of Luther's career outside the convent walls, even if it be only the marriage of some one else, the main interest of the piece ends. It is as if Hamlet had laid the ghost, killed the King, and buried Ophelia in the first act, with the remaining four to spare for meditation on the riddle of existence. Henceforth the historical interest of Lady Sarah and her letters is confined to the occasional flashes of light that they throw upon the main stream of events.

She did not remain long in the forlorn condition in which the King's duplicity and the peer's philosophy had left her, for the year after the coronation she was married to Thomas Charles Bunbury, Esq., who succeeded his father in the baronetcy in 1764. Considering the sequel of the marriage, it is a pity that we know so little of the preliminary stage of love, if there was any, and courtship. At the outset Lady Sarah threw herself with ardour into her husband's pursuits, which were those of a sportsman and country gentleman.

'I have been a-hunting with Mr Varny, and I hunted twelve miles one day, which tired me to such a degree that I