In March, 1781, Walpole writes to a friend: "As your lordship has honored all the productions of my press with your acceptance, I venture to inclose the last, which I printed to oblige the Lucans. There are many beautiful and poetic expressions in it. A wedding, to be sure, is neither a new nor a promising subject, nor will outlast the favors; still, I think Mr. Jones's ode is uncommonly good for the occasion." The ode was "The Muse Recalled," and the occasion the nuptials of Lord Viscount Althorp and Miss Lavinia Bingham, eldest daughter of Sir Charles Bingham, created, in 1776, Baron Lucan of Castlebar. Sir Charles was a man of culture, who was intimate with Johnson, Goldsmith, Gibbon, Reynolds, and Burke. He is frequently pleasantly mentioned by Boswell. He had married, in 1760, Margaret, daughter of James Smith, M.P., a lady of great good sense and rare accomplishments, and three lovely daughters were the issue from this union. Reynolds found in them most pleasing subjects for his pencil. Their pictures appeared at the Academy, in 1786. Lavinia was portrayed as shown in the picture here given, and again in quite as lovely a fashion,—standing out doors and wearing a wide-brimmed hat which casts a broad shade across the face; the wavy curls of hair fall upon the shoulder; in the background is a landscape. The naïvete of the face is exquisitely delightful. The old-time flavor of the whole causes one to recall Locker's lines on the picture of his grandmother:—
"Beneath a summer tree. Her maiden reverie Has a charm; Her ringlets are in taste; What an arm! ... what a waist For an arm!"
In the picture of her youngest sister, Anne, is a broad hat, too; she sits full-face, but in her features there is lacking just a little of the quiet dignity of the eldest. All of these portraits have been made familiar to us by the most meritorious mezzotints of them by Cousins. In Lavinia's face there lingers all the enchanting grace of girlhood,—a face yet full of that early beauty—
"Which, like the morning's glow
Hints a full day below."
A later president of the Academy, Sir Martin Shee, has shown us that face in the noonday of its matronly beauty, and the gentle character and sweet sensibility yet outshine through the mask of the flesh as in the earlier pictures.
Lady Bingham was careful of the education and company of her daughters. The girls were musical, and Lavinia excelled in painting as well. Walpole writes of her being in Italy, in 1785, with Mrs. Damer, his sculptor friend, and of her drawing with very great expression. He was not so complimentary of her music some years before, when he tells of being invited to Lady Lucan's to hear her daughters sing Jomelli's "Miserere," set for two voices: "It lasted for two hours, and instead of being pathetic was eminently dull, until at last I rejoiced when 'the two women had left the sepulchre.'"
Shortly after this he tells of rumors of the attachment of George John, Lord Althorp, brother of Georgiana of Devonshire, to "that sweet creature" Lavinia. At dinner at Lord Lucan's, Lord Althorp sat at a side table with the girls and a Miss Shipley. "Pray, Lady Spencer," said Walpole, "is it owned that Lord Althorp is to marry—Miss Shipley?" His next reference to the Lucans is in regard to the wedding ode printed on the Strawberry Hill press. The poet therein invokes blessings in this wise:—