And then Walpole went on to say that the wedding of Lord Coventry and the elder sister took place at the same time. It so happened, however, that a fortnight elapsed between the two ceremonies, and in the case of the second, the ceremony took place in the full light of day.
The subsequent history of the two ladies is not without a note of melancholy. The elder, pursued to the end by the malevolent slanders of the man with the leer of the satyr perpetually on his face, died of consumption after eight years of wedded life. The younger became a widow two years earlier, and after being wooed by the Duke of Bridgewater, whom she refused, sending him to his canal for consolation, married Colonel Campbell, who in 1770 became the Fifth Duke of Argyll. Six years later she was created a peeress in her own right, her title being Baroness Hamilton of Hameldon in Leicestershire. In 1778 she was appointed Mistress of the Robes. She attained to the additional distinction of making the good Queen jealous, so that Her Majesty upon one occasion overlooked her in favour of Lady Egremont. The Duchess at once resigned, and only with difficulty was persuaded to withdraw her resignation. She died in 1790.
THE FÊTE-CHAMPÊTRE
NO one knows to-day with whom the idea of having an English fête-champêtre at The Oaks upon the occasion of the marriage of the young Lord Stanley to Lady Betty Hamilton originated. The secret was well kept; and it can be easily understood that in case of this innovation proving a fiasco, no one would show any particular desire to accept the responsibility of having started the idea. But turning out as it did, a great success, it might have been expected that many notable persons would lay claim to be regarded as its parents. A considerable number of distinguished people had something to do with it, and any one of them had certainly sufficient imagination, backed up by an acquaintance with some of the exquisite pieces of MM. Watteau and Fragonard, to suggest the possibility of perfecting such an enterprise even in an English June. It was the most diligent letter-writer of that age of letter-writing who had referred to the “summer setting in with its customary severity,” so that the trifling of the month of June with the assumption of the poets who have rhymed of its sunshine with rapture, was not an experience that was reserved for the century that followed. But in spite of this, the idea of a fête-champêtre, after the most approved French traditions, in an English demesne found favour in the eyes of Lord Stanley and his advisers, and the latter were determined that, whatever price might have to be paid for it, they would not run the chance of being blamed for carrying it out in a niggardly spirit.
The young Lord Stanley had as many advisers as any young nobleman with a large immediate allowance and prospects of a splendid inheritance may hope to secure. There was his fiancée's mother, now the Duchess of Argyll, who was never disposed to frown down an undertaking that would place a member of one of her families in the forefront of the battle of the beauties for the most desirable parti of the year.
