Dearest Mamma! for once, let me
Unchain'd my fortune try:
I'll have my Earl as well as she,
Or know the reason why.
Fondness prevail'd, Mamma gave way:
Kitty, at heart's desire,
Obtain'd the chariot for a day,
And set the world on fire!
Kitty not only set the world on fire, but more than accomplished her magnanimous resolution to have an Earl as well as her sister, Lady Jenny.[103] She married the Duke of Queensbury; and as that Duchess of Queensbury, who was the friend and patroness of Gay, is still farther connected with the history of our poetical literature. Pope paid a compliment to her beauty, in a well-known couplet, which is more refined in the application than in the expression:—
If Queensbury to strip there's no compelling,
'Tis from a handmaid we must take a Helen.
She was an amiable, exemplary woman, and possessed that best and only preservative of youth and beauty,—a kind, cheerful disposition and buoyant spirits. When she walked at the coronation of George the Third, she was still so strikingly attractive, that Horace Walpole handed to her the following impromptu, written on a leaf of his pocket-book,
To many a Kitty, Love, his car,
Would for a day engage;
But Prior's Kitty, ever fair,
Obtained it for an age!
She is also alluded to in Thomson's Seasons.
And stooping thence to Ham's embowering walks,
Beneath whose shades, in spotless peace retir'd,
With her the pleasing partner of his heart,
The worthy Queensb'ry yet laments his Gay.—Summer.
The Duchess of Queensbury died in 1777.[104]