Visits and Sketches at Home and Abroad, Vol. 2 (of 3) / With Tales and Miscellanies Now First Collected

by Mrs. Jameson

Of destiny, and spin her own free hours!"

Farther on is another more celebrated woman, Christian Bruce, the second Countess of Devonshire, so distinguished in the reigns of Charles I. and Charles II. She had all the good qualities of Bess of Hardwicke: her sense, her firmness, her talents for business, her magnificent and independent spirit, and none of her faults. She was as feminine as she was generous and high-minded; fond of literature, and a patroness of poets and learned men:—altogether a noble creature. She was the mother of that lovely Lady Rich, "the wise, the fair, the virtuous, and the young,"[ 63] whose picture by Vandyke is at Devonshire-house, and there are two pictures at Hardwicke of her handsome, gallant, and accomplished son, Charles Cavendish, who was killed at the battle of Gainsborough. Many fair eyes almost wept themselves blind for his loss, and his mother never recovered the "sore heart-break of his death."

There are several pictures of her grandson, the first Duke of Devonshire—the patriot, the statesman, the munificent patron of letters, the poet, the man of gallantry, and, to crown all, the handsomest man of his day. He was one of the leaders in the revolution of 1688—for be it remembered that the Cavendishes, from generation to generation, have ennobled their nobility by their love of liberty, as well as their love of literature and the arts. One picture of this duke on horseback, en grand costume à la Louis Quatorze, is so embroidered and bewigged, so plumed, and booted, and spurred, that he is scarcely to be discerned through his accoutrements. A cavalier of those days in full dress must have been a ponderous concern; but then the ladies were as formidably vast and aspiring. The petticoats at this time were so discursive, and the head-dresses so ambitious, that I think it must have been to save in canvass what they expended in satin or brocade, that so many of the pretty women of that day were painted en bergère.

Apropos to the first Duke of Devonshire: I cannot help remarking the resemblance of the present duke to his illustrious ancestor, as well as to several other portraits, and particularly to a very distant relative—the first Countess of Burlington, who was, I believe, the great-grandmother of his grace's grandmother;—in both these instances the likeness is so striking as to be recognized at once, and not without a smiling exclamation of surprise.

Another interesting picture is that of Rachael Russell, the second Duchess of Devonshire, daughter of that heroine and saint, Lady Russell: the face is very beautiful, and the air elegant and high-bred—with rather a pouting expression in the full red lips.

Here is also the third duchess, Miss Hoskins, a great city heiress. The painter, I suspect, has flattered her, for she had not in her day the reputation of beauty. When I looked at this picture, so full of delicate, and youthful, and smiling loveliness, I could not help recurring to a passage in Horace Walpole's letters, in which he alludes to this sylph-like being, as the "ancient grace," and congratulates himself on finding her in good-humour.

But of all the female portraits, the one which struck me most was that of Lady Charlotte Boyle, the young Marchioness of Hartington, in a masquerade habit of purple satin, embroidered with silver; a fanciful little cap and feathers, thrown on one side, and the dark hair escaping in luxuriant tresses; she holds a mask in her hand, which she has just taken off, and looks round upon us in all the consciousness of happy and high-born loveliness. She was the daughter and heiress of Richard Boyle, the last Earl of Burlington and Cork, and Baroness Clifford in her own right. The merits of the Cavendishes were their own, but their riches and power, in several instances, were brought into the family by a softer influence. Through her, I believe, the vast estates of the Boyles and Cliffords in Ireland and the north of England, including Chiswick and Bolton Abbey, have descended to her grandson, the present duke.[ 64] There are several pictures of her here—one playing on the harpsichord, and another, small and very elegant, in which she is mounted on a spirited horse. There are two heads of her in crayons, by her mother, Lady Burlington,[ 65] ill-executed, but said to be like her. And another picture, representing her and her beautiful but ill-fated sister, Lady Dorothy, who was married very young to Lord Euston, and died six months afterwards, in consequence of the brutal treatment of her husband.[ 66] All the pictures of Lady Hartington have the same marked character of pride, intellect, vivacity, and loveliness. But short was her gay and splendid career! She died of a decline in the sixth year of her marriage, at the age of four-and-twenty.

Here is also her father, Lord Burlington, celebrated by Pope, (who has dedicated to him the second of his epistles "on the use of riches,") and styled by Walpole, "the Apollo of the Arts," which he not only patronised, but studied and cultivated; his enthusiasm for architecture was such, that he not only designed and executed buildings for himself, (the villa at Chiswick, for example,) but contributed great sums to public works; and at his own expense published an edition of the designs of Palladio and of Inigo Jones. In one picture of Lord Burlington there is a head of his idol, Inigo Jones, in the background. There is also a good picture of Robert Boyle, the philosopher, a spare, acute, contemplative, interesting face, in which there is as much sensibility as thought. He is said to have died of grief for the loss of his favourite sister, Lady Ranelagh; and when we recollect who and what she was—the sole friend of his solitary heart—the partner of his studies, and with qualities which rendered her the object of Milton's enthusiastic admiration, and almost tender regard, we scarce think less of her brother's philosophy, that it afforded him no consolation for the loss of such a sister.

On the other side hangs another philosopher, Thomas Hobbes, of Malmsbury, whose bold speculations in politics and metaphysics, and the odium they drew on him, rendered his whole life one continued warfare with established prejudices and opinions. He was tutor in the family of the first Earl of Devonshire, in 1607—remained constantly attached to the house of Cavendish—and never lost their countenance and patronage in the midst of all the calumnies heaped upon him. He died at Hardwicke under the protection of the first Duke of Devonshire, in 1678. This curious portrait represents him at the age of ninety-two. The picture is not good as a picture, but striking from the evident truth of the expression—uniting the last lingering gleam of thought with the withered, wrinkled, and almost ghastly decrepitude of extreme age. It has, I believe, been engraved by Hollar.

I looked round for Henry Cavendish, the great chemist and natural philosopher—another bright ornament of a family every way ennobled—but there is no portrait of him at Hardwicke. I was also disappointed not to find the "limned effigy," as she would call it, of my dear Margaret of Newcastle.