It was quite true that Lady Kildare (who, in common with the rest of the family, had been forbidden all intercourse with Lady Caroline since the latter had married Mr. Fox in opposition to their parents’ wishes) made immediate use of the liberty conferred by her new position to visit her sister. Lord Kildare and she urged a reconciliation, with more zeal perhaps than discretion. In the letter of the Duke to Lady Caroline to which I have already referred, he complains very bitterly of the tone adopted by the Kildares, “who instead of makeing entreatys, were pleas’d to tell your mother that wee ought to forgive you, and were blamed by the world, and by themselves for not doing it, which is a language I would hear from nobody, and indeed when they saw how it was received, they did not think fit to repeat it. And I assure you my reconcilement to you has been defer’d upon this account, for I will have both them and yourselves know that it proceeds from the tenderness arising in our own breasts for you, and not from their misjudg’d aplication.”
The first few months after the marriage were spent by Lord and Lady Kildare in England and the young wife’s letters to her girl friend are full of bridal happiness. But her “dearest Nanny” is not to think that when she says she is happy, “it is from being her own mistress, doing just what she please, and all the fuss and racket.” “No, believe me, that my happiness, thank God, is upon a better foundation. It is from being marry’d to the person I love best in the world, and who is the best and kindest of husbands.”
James, twentieth Earl of Kildare, was just twenty-five at the time of his marriage, and had succeeded his father, Robert, nineteenth Earl, three years previously. His young Countess might well find him “the best and kindest of husbands,” for he was one of the best and kindest of men, much concerned for the welfare of his people and his country, and taking a serious view of the duties and responsibilities of his great position. He was the leader of the popular party in the Irish House of Lords, and when the corrupt administration under the Duke of Dorset and Primate Stone had become intolerable to the people he took the bold step of presenting a memorial against them to King George II. His brave fight with tyranny and corruption made him the idol of the populace, and on one occasion “he was an entire hour passing through the crowd from Parliament House to Kildare House, and a medal was struck to commemorate the memorial, representing the Earl, sword in hand, guarding a heap of money on a table from a hand which attempted to take it, with the motto, ‘Touch not, says Kildare.’”
By July, 1747, the young Earl and Countess were back in Ireland settled for the moment at Dollardstown. The Dowager Countess and Lady Margot, the Earl’s sister, came on a visit to them, and these with Miss Brudenell, the young Countess’s companion, and a couple of men friends of the Earl’s, make up a party very much to the bride’s taste. “We read, work, write and walk,” she informs her confidante Miss “Nanny.” They are presently to take up residence in Carton, which the Dowager Lady Kildare has given over to her son and his bride, having completed it after her husband’s death and furnished it for the young people from top to bottom—even to “the table linen.” It would be ungrateful of the new Countess—after this generosity on the part of her mother-in-law—to seem indifferent about Carton, but in truth she leaves the simplicity of Dollardstown for the grandeur of Carton with much regret.
A few weeks later we find our young people in residence at Carton, with the elder Lady Kildare and her daughter, Lady Margot, as their guests. The young wife, one gathers, stands a little in awe of her grave, reserved mother-in-law, whose manner “until ye are well acquainted with it, is not very taking.” But she is quite in love with Lady Margot, “whom she [i.e. the Dowager] is very strict with.” She is “really charming, and I find I shall grow vastly fond of her. She is vastly lively, very sensible and a very open heart, for she always speaks her mind, and has a very open heart.” In a later letter she makes merry over the compassion she received from those friends who thought it “a very dismal thing for her” to have to leave London—the new London house the Earl had bought for her in Whitehall—“to come with the person in the world I love best, who studies how to please me and make me happy more and more every day, to a very pretty country where I meet with nothing but civilities from everybody, to a whole family who are agreeable and cheerful and vastly fond of me, and to a country where I have a charming house building [Leinster House], a sweet place [Leinster Lodge] which you know I always delight in, and another pretty place [Carton]. Certainly I deserve great compassion for all this.”
While “her charming great house” was a-building, the Earl took a town house for his bride’s first winter in Dublin in Stephen’s Green, and she did the honours of her great position by giving some large parties in it. She enters with great zest into her Lord’s building and improvement schemes. Beautiful Leinster House, perhaps the most perfect creation of Richard Castle’s architectural genius, was nearing its completion, and although her health does not permit her to share her Lord’s weekly visit to Carton, she keeps au courant with all that is being done there. “Lord Kildare has cut down the avenue, which I am sure makes it charming, and has made a very fine lawn before the House, which I think is the greatest beauty a place can have.”
A few weeks after the date of this letter, her first child George, Lord Offaly, was born (January 15th, 1748) and the young mother’s cup of happiness seemed full to overflowing. She was one of those women who have the genius and the passion of maternity, and much of her sweetness was due to this characteristic. During the following years her letters to her friend are full of the pretty children who have followed George into her nursery at quick intervals. William, her second son, afterwards Duke of Leinster, was born in March, 1749, and the Countess’s first little girl arrived in August of the following year. Her friend receives an entertaining account of the small bundle of femininity: “in the first place her name is Caroline Elizabeth Mabel. Caroline after my sister, Elizabeth after the old Lady Kildare in London, and Mabel to please Mr. Fox, who had entertained himself while he was here in reading over old manuscripts and letters belonging to the Kildare family, in which he found there had been a great many Mabels, and therefore begged we would tack it on to the other two, which was done accordingly. And now ye have the history of her name. I will tell you she is in the first place fat and plump, has very fine dark long eyes which I think a great beauty, don’t you? and her nose and mouth like my mother’s, with a peaked chin like me. As for her complexion she is so full of red gum that there is no judging of it, but what is best of all is that she is in perfect health and has been so ever since she was born. But it’s not fair to her brothers to entertain you only about her without mentioning them.” And so we get a charming picture of the two little boys, and incidentally a glimpse of their pretty young nineteen year-old mother in the midst of them: “To begin with George. He is in the first place much improved as to his beauty, but the most entertaining, comical arch little rogue that ever was, chatters incessantly, is immensely fond of me, and coaxes me not a little, for he is cunning enough, very sweet tempered and easily governed by gentle means, in short if I was to sit down and wish for a child it would be just such a sort of boy as he is now. William is a sweet child, too, in a different way, he is not so lively or active as George is by a good deal, but is forward enough both as to his walking and talking, for he says several words and walks quite alone. As for his little person it is fat, round and white as he was when you saw him, and does not improve as to that; he is the best-natured creature that can be, and excessively passionate already, but puts up his mouth to kiss and be friends the very next moment. He is vastly fond of his nurse and does not care twopence for me, so you may imagine I cannot for my life be as fond of him (though in reality I love him as well) as of George, who is always coaxing and kissing me, and does not care for anybody else.”
The poor young mother was to have the great grief of seeing two of these pretty children die young. Lord Offaly died in 1765 at the age of seventeen, and was succeeded as heir, by William. Little Caroline died in 1754 at the age of four. The fatality which, as has been already observed, pursued the large eighteenth-century families, did not spare our beautiful Countess’s. Of the nineteen children (nine sons and ten daughters) she bore her lord during the twenty-six years of their married life there only survived the years of childhood six sons: William, Charles, Henry, Edward, Robert, Gerald; and four daughters: Emily (afterwards Countess of Bellamont), Charlotte (afterwards Baroness Rayleigh), Sophia, and Lucy.
In the meantime, knowing nothing of what the future has in store for her, the Countess is a very happy woman. The improvements at Carton, in which she is so interested, have been a great success, and no wonder she longs to go there and see how “her spotted cows” look on the new lawn from which the Earl has cleared some hedges since she was there last. Did she ever tell her friend of her passion for spotted cows? She believes not: “You have no notion what a delightful beautiful collection of them I have got in a very short time, which indeed is owing to my dear Lord Kildare, who ever since I took this fancy into my head has bought me every pretty cow he saw. It’s really charming to see them grazing on the lawn.”
So, with her children, the part she took in her husband’s plans for the improvement of his estate, and his tenantry, her social duties, her frequent visits to England, the years of the Countess’s married life passed swiftly and happily. Mrs. Delany meets her occasionally in Dublin society, but one gets the impression that Lady Kildare keeps the Dean of Down’s lady at some little distance, and that may account for the rather bitter tone in which the latter speaks of the Countess. The Dowager Countess was a great friend of Mrs. Delany’s, by whom she was frequently visited in London, and whom she visited at Delville. But it is significant enough that the mistress of Delville, having invited to breakfast Mrs. Vesey and Lady Kildare, “Lord Kildare would not let his lady venture so far.” On another occasion Mrs. Delany went with Mrs. Vesey and their friend Letitia Basle to visit Carton, and call on Lady Kildare and Lady Caroline Fox. But they found nobody but the Dowager “at home,” and were not even invited to dinner. These experiences are probably at the bottom of Mrs. Delany’s evident acrimony against the Countess. Writing to her sister, Mrs. Dewes about Rousseau, who, during a sojourn of his in England, was the guest of their brother, Bernard Grenville, Mrs. Delany warns her of the danger he may be “to young and unstable minds ... as under the guise of pomp and virtue he does advance very erroneous and unorthodox sentiments. It is not the bon ton who say this, but I am too near the day of trial to disturb my mind with fashionable whims. Lady Kildare said she would ‘offer Rousseau an elegant retreat, if he would educate her children.’ I own I differ widely with her ladyship, and would rather commit that charge to a downright honest person. I mean as far as religious principles; but perhaps that was a part that did not enter into her schemes at all.” When the Duchess, as she then was, startled her friends by her second marriage to Mr. Ogilvie, Mrs. Delany’s observations on the event were in the worst possible taste. After a little tilt at her as “one of the proudest and most expensive women in the world,” this typical Mrs. John Bull, with all the unctuous priggishness and fondness for innuendo of her class, quotes a horrid jest of Lady Brown’s, and proceeds to bestow her quite uncalled-for pity on the Duchess’s “poor children.” It is easy to suppose that our charming and clever Lady Kildare found herself bored to death with Mrs. Delany, and her hideous shell-work, and the other atrocities on which she lavished her time (with the profound conviction that she was setting an example for all womanhood), and that she committed the unforgivable offence of avoiding her as much as she could.