Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 15.djvu/380

 removed from the office of lord of the bedchamber. The ‘ratting’ of the duke exposed him to much obloquy, and for a time he deemed it prudent to take refuge on the continent. In his later years Queensberry sold his house at Newmarket. He was a munificent patron of Italian opera, partly owing to his admiration of the prima donnas and dancers. He is also said to have himself displayed great taste in a song. For some time he lived in a villa at Richmond, which he had fitted up with great taste and adorned with costly pictures and statues, and where he had collected one of the finest assortments of shells in the kingdom. The loss of a lawsuit in reference to a lawn adjoining the villa, and another reason of a less creditable kind, gave him a distaste for this residence, and he latterly lived almost exclusively in his house in Piccadilly, now No. 138, next Park Lane to the west, the peculiar porch of which, still standing, was constructed to suit his growing infirmities. Latterly he spent the greater part of the day at the corner of the bow window, or when the weather was fine above the porch. In the street below a groom named Jack Radford always remained on horseback to carry his message to any of his acquaintance (, Journal, iv. 50). When he became very infirm, he had always within call his French medical attendant, the Père Elisée, formerly physician to Louis XV, to whom he allowed a large sum for every day that he lived, and nothing more after his death. He died in London 23 Dec. 1810, and was buried 31 Dec. in a vault in the chancel of St. James's Church, Piccadilly, under the communion-table. ‘He was,’ says Raikes, ‘a little sharp-looking man, very irritable, and swore like ten thousand troopers’ (ib.) Wraxall, who knew him intimately in his last seven years, says that his intellectual faculties survived his bodily decay. Wraxall mentions that he ‘nourished an ardent and permanent passion’ for a daughter of Mr. Pelham, who was refused him by her father on account of Queensberry's irregular habits, and who became herself an inveterate gamester. About 1798 the duke stripped his grounds near Drumlanrig and round Neidpath Castle, near Peebles, of the greater part of their fine plantations. His reason for doing so is said to have been to furnish a dowry for Maria Fagniani, whom he supposed to be his daughter, on her marriage to the Earl of Yarmouth. On the same lady George Selwyn, also in recognition of paternal claims, bestowed a large fortune; and it was generally supposed that Queensberry and Selwyn were both equally mistaken. In a sonnet beginning with ‘Degenerate Douglas’ Wordsworth denounces his depredations, and they are also the theme of a poem by Robert Burns. The duke was one of Burns's special aversions, and is satirised by him in ‘The Laddies by the Banks o' Nith’ and ‘Epistle to Mr. Graham of Fintrie.’

The duke having died unmarried, his titles and estates were dispersed among several heirs, chiefly Henry, third duke of Buccleuch, who became fifth duke of Queensberry, Sir Charles Douglas,who became marquis of Queensberry, and Francis, sixth earl of Wemyss, who became earl of March. The duke's personal property, amounting to over a million sterling, was devised by a will formally executed, and twenty-five codicils more irregularly drawn, to a large number of persons, including, besides several of the aristocracy, a group of very miscellaneous individuals (see list in Scots Mag. lxxiii. 113–14, and Gent. Mag. lxxx. pt. ii. p. 659, lxxxi. pt. i. p. 184). To the Earl and Countess of Yarmouth and their issue male he left 100,000l., the two houses in Piccadilly, and the villa at Richmond. The Earl of Yarmouth was also residuary legatee, by which it is supposed he obtained 200,000l. The legacies were disputed, but were ultimately paid over by order of the court of chancery. Mr. Fuller, an apothecary in Piccadilly, made a claim against the executors for 10,000l. for professional attendance during the last seven and a half years of the duke's life, during which he asserted he had made 9,340 visits, in addition to attending on him for 1,215 nights. Verdict was given for 7,500l. (Gent. Mag. lxxxi. pt. ii. p. 81).

[Douglas's Scotch Peerage (Wood); Scots Mag. lxxiii. 108–14; Gent. Mag. lxxx. pt. ii. pp. 597–598, 659, lxxxi. pt. i. p. 184, pt. ii. p. 81, lxxxvi. pt. ii. p. 460; The Piccadilly Ambulator, or Old Q, containing Memoirs of the private life of that evergreen votary of Venus, by J. P. Hurstone, 1808 (with sketch of the duke seated above the porch in Piccadilly); Wraxall's Memoirs; Raikes's Journal; Jesse's George Selwyn and his Contemporaries, containing many of the duke's letters when Earl of March; Horace Walpole's Letters; Memoirs of Sir Thomas Picton; Works of Robert Burns; Fox's Correspondence; Trevelyan's Early Life of Fox; Jesse's Reign of George III; Fitzgerald's Dukes and Princesses of the Family of George III; Wheatley's Round about Piccadilly. The duke as Earl of March figures in Thackeray's Virginians.]  DOUGLAS, WILLIAM (1780–1832), miniature-painter, a descendant of the family of Douglas of Glenbervie, was born in Fifeshire 14 April 1780. He received a liberal education, and very early showed a taste for the fine arts and the beauties of nature. This led to his being placed as an apprentice to Robert Scott the engraver [q. v.] at Edin-