Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 1).djvu/604

 woman in the flesh was quite as beautiful. Her beauty got her a royal husband, hers legally with all sanction of Church, but not of State. Ah! there was the sore place. It was, in fact, her beguiling of the Duke from the right path of royalty that induced the famous Marriage Act of 1772. The Duke of Cumberland, third brother to George III., was little more than an over-grown schoolboy; his manners, Wraxall says, made his faculties, which were limited enough, appear even meaner. He was immensely attracted by Lady Anne Horton, recently a widow, and daughter to Colonel Simon Luttrell, of famous, or rather infamous memory; an Irishman of wild, roistering habit, who had been put forward to fight Wilkes, and made so made Lord Carhampton.

Anne Horton is described as having bewitching, languishing eyes, which she could animate to enchantment if she pleased. Her coquetry was so active, so varied, and yet so habitual, that it was difficult not to see through it, and yet as difficult to resist. She danced divinely, sang charmingly, and was by no means deficient in talent. Like all the members of her family, who were cunning and specious, she laid her snares for the weak prince so adroitly that he fell in with all her plans; and, her marriage being duly witnessed, she had none of the heart-burnings and uncertainty which poisoned the life of Lady Waldegrave, who had married the Duke of Gloucester, but had left matters very much to his honour. Both ladies, to say the truth, had a troublous time. It was hardly worth the fuss and the turmoil, the ups and the downs, the humiliations and the slights inflicted upon them by the Royal pair, and their subservient Court.

Here we have another group of sisters—Irish too—the Miss Montgomerys, daughters to Sir William Montgomery. They are painted by Sir Joshua as twining wreaths round a statue of Hymen, a pretty allegory, for the three girls were standing hand in hand on the threshold of Hymen, one of them being engaged to Mr. Gardiner, afterwards Lord Blessington; the other to the Honourable J. Beresford; the third and handsomest to the Marquis of Townshend, then Viceroy of Ireland. The Marquis, who was son to the odd Lady Audrey, who figures in Walpole and Selwyn, was a frank and fearless soldier, having fought at Dettingen and Fontenoy. His fancy had been taken by Miss Montgomery, whom he had seen some two years before performing in a Masque of Comus at Marlay, the residence of Mr. Latouche. He had then prophesied she would be a lovely woman, and felt bound to set the seal of his approval upon the fair creation. Mrs. Delaney says that the women did not admire Lady Townshend, which, no doubt, is a proof that she attracted the admiration of the worthier sex. In Sir Joshua's picture she fills the canvas—her attitude is commanding, her smile bewitching. Her sisters are of a less majestic type.

What a lovely creature have we here—Elizabeth Linley, whose talents and mental endowments were something surprising, joined as they were to a beauty which seems to have captivated every soul who came near her; indeed, we have only to look at her portraits by Sir Joshua and Gainsborough, both evidently stimulated by love of their subject, to gather an idea of the spell she worked. The expression of the faultless face is so divinely sweet, there is such a mixture of archness and intelligence