Grey gown. Blue bows.
BORN 1716, DIED 1780.
SHE was the younger daughter of John Lord Carteret, afterwards Earl Granville. Her sponsors were King George II. and his Queen, hence her baptismal names. In 1733-4 a contemporary paper announces her marriage:—‘The bride, a beautiful young lady, with a portion of £30,000, to the Hon. John Spencer, brother to the Duke of Marlborough, and grandson to Sarah, Duchess Dowager of Marlborough.’ John, or ‘Jack,’ as he was familiarly called, was one of those reckless spirits, who, in the days of which we are speaking, went by the name of ‘Rattlebrains,’ being very wilful, merry, extravagant, and the best company in the world! Better to laugh, talk, or drink, than to transact any business with. By this description it will be seen that between him and his aged grandmother there were many points of resemblance, and in consequence the Duchess was very partial to her scapegrace grandson. They fell out, it must be confessed, over and over again, but Jack always contrived to coax, cajole, or joke himself back into favour. On one festive occasion, when Sarah was presiding at the head of her own table at Althorp, supported by a crowd of daughters, sons-in-law, grandchildren, and what not, in the pride of wealth, relationship, and splendid surroundings, she said aloud, ‘Here am I, the root, encircled by my branches.’
‘True,’ says mischievous Jack, at the bottom of the table, in a whisper to his neighbour; ‘pity that the root should not be in its proper place, under ground.’ The young man to whom the sally was addressed was thrown into such convulsions of laughter that the Duchess’s curiosity was aroused, and she insisted on knowing the cause of so much mirth. Few people dared to gainsay the aged virago, and certainly not this timid youth; thus questioned, he had neither the courage nor the imagination for a false or evasive answer, and he blurted out the bare truth. The Duchess rose in a fury. ‘Leave the room, Jack,’ said she; ‘leave the house, and never darken my doors again.’ The culprit obeyed with an air of mock submission, and on reaching the door he turned, and with a profound salutation, quitted the apartment. But in another moment his head appeared above the sill of the window, which was open. He cleared it at a bound, vaulted into the room, and knelt at his grandmother’s feet. It was the window, not the door! A perfect reconciliation ensued; and so completely was Jack forgiven, that the Duchess settled a considerable annuity on him, pending the large fortune and estates he would inherit by her will, in addition to those left in trust for him by his grandfather the Duke.
Mrs. Delany, in her amusing diaries and letters, published of late years by Lady Llanover, to whom many thanks are due for the same, speaks constantly of her cousin Georgiana Granville, with an obvious pride in the relationship. She says, in writing to her sister, ‘You will expect to hear some account of our cousin Spencer. The marriage took place between eight and nine o’clock at night. The guests were very distinguished,—the Dukes and Duchesses of Marlborough and Bedford, Sir Robert and Lady Worsley, the bride’s grandparents, and numerous members of their family, Lord Morpeth, Colonel Montagu, etc. etc. After they were married, they played a pool of commerce, then retired between twelve and one, and went next day to Windsor Lodge. They are to return on Monday, to what was Mr. Percival’s lodging in Conduit Street. Georgiana was dressed in white satin, embroidered in silver, her laces very fine, and the jewels the Duchess of Marlborough gave her, magnificent. Frequent allusions are made by the writers of the day to these famous jewels in which Mrs. Spencer ‘sparkled.’ Then follows a catalogue of the bride’s wedding bravery, of laces and linen very fine, and flowered silks, such as would rouse the envy of many a lover of old brocade in modern times; a pink and silver poudesoy, a blue damask night-gown, and rich brocades, all stiff with embroidery.
John Spencer dying, his widow contracted a second marriage with Lord Cowper, and Mrs. Delany speaks of the union as being a very happy one, for ‘Georgiana is much attached to her new Lord and his children, and it is warmly reciprocated.’ Horace Walpole, in describing the gorgeous sight which the coronation of George III. and his Queen presented, gives an amusing account of the preparations for the same among the ladies: how several were dressed overnight, and reposed in armchairs, with watchers beside them to wake up the sleepers when in danger of ruffling their garments or tumbling their headdresses. Walpole conveyed Ladies Townshend, Hervey, Hertford, and Anne Conolly, with Mrs. Clive, to see the show in his deputy’s house at the gate of Westminster Hall. Says Lady Townshend, ‘I should like to go to a coronation, for I have never seen one.’ ‘Why,’ remarked Horace, ‘you walked at the last.’ ‘Yes, child,’ was the candid reply, ‘but I saw nothing; I only looked to see who was looking at me.’ There seemed to have been a great stir among the Countesses, who all objected to associate with Lady Macclesfield. Horace again: ‘My heraldry was much more offended with the ladies who did walk, than with those who walked out of place, but I was not so furiously angry as my Lady Cowper. She flatly refused at first to set a foot with my Lady Macclesfield, and when at last compelled to do so she set out at a round trot’ (to distance her companion?), ‘as if she designed to prove the antiquity of her family by walking as lustily as a maid of honour of Queen Guinevere.’ Mrs. Delany writes later on, ‘Lady Cowper is very much pleased at her son being made an Earl, and all the more as the honour was entirely unsolicited.’ Lord Spencer was a generous and dutiful son, and when his mother once more became a widow, he gave her a charming house at Richmond, fully furnished, where she was very hospitable to Mrs. Delany and that branch of her family, as well as to the relations and connections of both her husbands. Here her ‘cousin’ frequently mentions meeting Lady Spencer and her mother, Mrs. Poyntz, Anne Maria Mordaunt, who had been maid of honour to Queen Caroline, and governess to the Duke of Cumberland. Lady Cowper’s letters are lively and genial. In one, dated New Year’s Day, she says, ‘Last evening came Lord Montagu (only son of the Earl of Cardigan, created Baron Montagu). He spent most of the evening alone with me, and I played on the guitar, and sang to him. I hope we may not be talked about, for he is quite alive, I assure you, although he is fourscore struck, as the Duchess of Marlborough used to say.’ Georgiana retained her good looks to a very advanced age, for Mrs. Delany says, not long before her death, ‘I saw Lady Cowper yesterday. She is still the Glastonbury Rose.’ During her last illness, which was of some duration, her daughter-in-law, Lady Spencer, was unremitting in her attentions, driving over daily from her home at Wimbledon to Richmond, sometimes twice in the twenty-four hours, and often passing the night by the sufferer’s bedside.
No. 9.
LADY SARAH COWPER.