[1] Horace Walpole's letters.
"Shut up the park, I beseech you,
Lay a tax upon staring so hard;
Or, if you're afraid to do that, sir,
I'm sure you will grant me a guard.
"The boon thus requested was granted,
The warriors were drawn up with care.
With my slaves and my guards I'm surrounded,
Come, stare at me now, if you dare!"
The beautiful Coventry enjoyed her title but a short time, killing herself by the excessive use of white paint. She died at the early age of twenty-eight, and it was a tribute to her that she was regretted by all who had known her; even the heartless set who made up her world have a word of sorrow for this beautiful simpleton.
Elizabeth was more prosperous. Her life from end to end was a success. She was double-duchessed, marrying, a second time, after a year's widowhood, Colonel Campbell, who succeeded to the Dukedom of Argyle. The Duke of Bridgewater had also proposed for her. She was created Baroness in her own right, and given the office of Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen Charlotte. She died in 1791, having been mother to four dukes and wife to two, a dignity which few women could claim.
Here come another pair of charming sisters, Catherine and Mary Horneck, daughters to Reynolds' kinsman, Captain Kane Horneck; they are best known to this generation through the medium of Oliver Goldsmith's admiration for them, just as the Miss Berrys' best claim to celebrity is Horace Walpole's quasi-Platonic friendship. The loving nicknames of the "Jessamy Bride" and "Little Comedy," which were given to the sisters by Oliver, show the terms of intimacy upon which he stood. And this friendship seems to have brought out some of the best points in the character of the lovable author of the "Immortal Vicar." Now we see him leading them through the crowded masquerade at the Pantheon, arrayed in his plum-coloured suit and laced hat; or he is conducting them and their mother on a trip to Paris, his simple, harmless vanity highly pleased at being the escort of such a lovely trio (for Mrs. Horneck was as handsome as her daughters). As usual, his innocent pride was misinterpreted. Boswell, whom Horace Walpole calls the "Mountebank to a Zeno," talks of his envious disposition, and adds that when accompanying two beautiful young women with their mother on a tour in France, he was seriously angry that more attention was paid to them than to him. But Boswell seems always to have hated Goldsmith.
Of the two sisters, Mary, the younger, the "Jessamy Bride," seems to have exerted a strange fascination over him. "Heaven knows," as his biographer, Mr. Forster says, "what impossible dreams may have come to the awkward, unattractive man of letters, but he never aspired to other regard than his genius and simplicity might claim at least, for the sisters heartily liked him, and perhaps the happiest years of his life were passed in their society."
MARY AND CATHERINE HORNECK. (From the Picture by Sir Joshua Reynolds.)
One is glad to hear of even a ray of happiness crossing the path of the poor, sensitive poet; but it was nevertheless through his admiration for the "Jessamy Bride" that he met one of those mortifications which press keenly upon one of his highly strung, nervous temperament. This annoyance came when he was in the full tide of the success of "She Stoops to Conquer." We may assume that the sweetest part of this success had been that it raised him in the eyes of his dear Mary. Nine days after, The London Packet, in an abusive article directed against the author of the new comedy, attacked him coarsely. "Goldsmith had patiently suffered worse attacks, and would doubtless here have suffered as patiently, if baser matters had not been introduced, but the libeller had invaded private life and dragged in the 'Jessamy Bride.' 'Was but the lovely H—— k as much enamoured, you would not sigh, my gentle swain, in vain.'"