CHAPTER XV.
Of the Duchess of Newcastle’s writings we have already seen a good deal, and the time has now arrived for introducing her in person. Perhaps it may be best to begin by quoting Cibber’s statement[124] that the future “Duchess herself in a book entitled ‘Nature’s Pictures, Drawn by Fancy’s Pencil to the Life,’ has celebrated both the exquisite beauty of her person and the rare endowments of her mind”. False modesty is a vice from which the Duchess was perfectly free.
[124] Lives of the Poets, II, 162.
MARGARET DUCHESS OF NEWCASTLE
From an engraving by Alais, after a painting by Diepenbeck
Margaret Lucas was a daughter of Sir Thomas Lucas, of whom she says: “though my father was not a peer of the realm, yet there were few peers who had much greater estates, or lived more noble therewith”. She does not mention the fact that her great-grandfather had been town-clerk of Colchester.[125] Her two brothers, Sir John, who was created Lord Lucas by Charles I in 1644, and Sir Charles, were both distinguished cavaliers; and she mentions another brother, Sir Thomas, of whom Burke—not the Duchess—says he “was illegitimate, having been born prior to the marriage of his parents”. For this trifling confusion of dates, the excellent Lady Lucas endeavoured to atone by the prudishness upon which she insisted in her children. The Duchess tells us that—
“She was of a grave Behaviour, and had such a Majestic Grandeur, as it were continually hung about her, that it would strike a kind of an awe to the beholders, and command respect from the rudest.... She had a well favoured loveliness in her face, a pleasing sweetness in her countenance, and a well-temper’d complexion, as neither too red nor too pale.... Also she was an affectionate Mother, breeding her children with a most industrious care, and tender love, and having eight children, three sons and five daughters, there was not any one crooked, or any ways deformed, neither were they dwarfish, or of a Giant-like stature, but every ways proportionable; likewise well featured, cleer complexions, brown haires, but some lighter than others, sound teeth, sweet breaths, plain speeches, tunable voices, I mean not so much to sing as in speaking, as not stuttering, nor wharling in the throat, or speaking through the nose, or hoarsely, unless they had a cold, or squeakingly, which impediments many have; neither were their voices of too low a strain, or too high.” Negatively, a truly remarkable family!
[125] Burke’s Dormant and Extinct Peerages, 335.