IN

ELIZABETH CHUDLEIGH.

N those many scandalous chronicles for which the eighteenth century is so remarkable, there are probably few names of less honourable mention than that of Miss Elizabeth Chudleigh, known to her contemporaries as "Her Grace of Kingston." A bigamous Duchess is, indeed, a sufficiently rare spectacle in any age not to bring down the caustic comment of the literary gossip. That the fraternity was almost universally hostile to the lady speaks hardly on behalf of English chivalry. It must be acknowledged, however, in strict justice to their attitude, that Miss Chudleigh's career, even apart from her distinctive achievement, did in fact deserve their censure. Though the motives which prompted them were questionable, their satire cannot have been wasted. Elizabeth Chudleigh, Duchess of Kingston, had the temper of a fiend and the manners of a fishwife. She had neither wit nor sense, nor was she ever guilty of an unselfish action. She did no murder, it is true, but she committed every other sin in the Decalogue, and more besides. Though her last misfortune may move us to sympathy, it should not affect our judgment. In "vociferating anger," we are told, she could fairly "boast an alliance with Juno." Above all, if so impartial an observer as Miss Hannah More may be believed, "she was large and illshaped; there was nothing white but her face, and, had it not been for that, she would have looked like a bale of bombazeen." Such was the lady who, from the obscurity of a small country village, rose, on the merits of a pretty face, to be a dazzling and eccentric ornament in what was pleased to consider itself the most brilliant Court of Europe. Appointed in 1743 to be a Maid of Honour to the Princess of Wales, she forced her way into Society through the good offices of the celebrated Mr. Pulteney, afterwards, on recanting his political principles, raised to the Peerage as the Earl of Bath. Born twenty-three years previously, in 1720, she came of a good Devonshire family, the Chudleighs of Ashton. Her father, early in entered the Army; and, though it does not appear that he was engaged in any service that could give him an opportunity of

distinguishing himself for either courage or conduct, he died, in 1726, a colonel and lieutenant-governor of Chelsea Hospital. Her childhood was passed in the country, and, with the exception of a rather serious love-affair in which she became involved about the age of fifteen, presents no element of interest. It was not until 1740 that an accidental meeting when out walking gained for her the advantage of Mr. Pulteney's friendship. Miss Chudleigh, flattered by his notice, made the best of the occasion. A correspondence followed, in which the young girl professed herself the willing disciple of the eminent politician. The story goes that he was "mightily taken" by her eagerness to be instructed, and, in his letters, gave her much valuable advice as to her future deportment at the Court. Be that as it may, her advent in London beneath his auspices just three years later found her already an accomplished mistress of the art of captivation.

In the society of Leicester House, the new beauty, with her tinge of originality, had little difficulty in pushing to the front. To contrive to please the humours of the Princess of Wales implies, indeed, no great expenditure of wit. She ran the round of pleasure; led fashions; played whist with Lord Chesterfield; rioted with Lady Harrington and Miss Ash; figured at a masquerade as Iphigenia in such guise that Horace Walpole mistook her for Andromeda; and laughed at the lover whom she chose not to favour with her smiles with all the confounding grace of a woman of quality. That her widowed mother was at this time driven to eke out a livelihood by the reception of "paying guests" was no impediment to her ambition. In accordance no doubt with the directions of her master, her maxim on every occasion was to be "short, clear, and surprising." So skilled was she that when, during a State performance at the Opera, one of the royal guards fell down in an apoplexy, "Miss Chudleigh went into the most theatrical fit of kicking and shrieking that ever was seen. Several other women who were preparing their fits were so distanced that she had the whole house to herself." Needless to add, the youth of St. James's gave her a wonderful welcome. Ere twelve months were gone, she had refused the offers of two such noble suitors as Lord Hillsborough and the Duke of Ancaster. Her reasons became apparent, when it was announced by the gazetteers that the "beautiful Miss Chudleigh" was betrothed to the wealthy Duke of Hamilton. Unfortunately, the lady's first attempt at matrimony was destined to turn out a failure. His Grace, then nineteen years of age, was hurriedly despatched on the grand tour, in the hope that change of air and scene might effect an alteration in his youthful

passion. During her lover's enforced absence on the Continent Miss Chudleigh retired to the residence in Hampshire of her aunt, a Mrs. Hanmer. Constant to his vows, the Duke of Hamilton plied her with letters, reiterating the unchangeableness of his affections. One of these amatory epistles happening to fall into the possession of Mrs. Hanmer, that excellent dame, who had apparently been kept in ignorance of the intended wedding, resolved, for motives of her own, to interrupt the courtship. She accordingly took it upon herself to intercept his letters. The scheme was immediately successful. Left, as it seemed, without a word from her wandering lover, Miss Chudleigh was "quick to confess herself deeply mortified." On his side, the Duke, receiving no replies to his communications, abandoned himself to similar sentiments of pique. When he at length returned to England, "hot, debauched, extravagant, and equally damaged in his fortune and his person," it was to fall in love with and marry one of the Miss Gunnings. Long before this, however, Miss Chudleigh had passed out of his reach. Mrs. Hanmer had a protégé, the Honourable Augustus Hervey, a grandson of the first Earl of Bristol, whom she was anxious to see settled. She played her cards with dexterity. As soon as the first symptoms of "mortification" began to display themselves in Elizabeth, the disconsolate Maid of Honour received an invitation to visit her cousin, Mr. John Merrill, of Lainston, a village in the neighbourhood of Winchester. Among the guests was, as it happened, Mr. Hervey, then a lieutenant in the Navy. The young officer was twenty, Elizabeth four years his senior. With the private assistance of Mrs. Hanmer, he contrived to "make himself agreeable" to the fashionable beauty. The acquaintance ripened rapidly. Within a few weeks the Duke of Hamilton had been forgotten, and Miss Chudleigh had fallen into the trap which had been laid for her. From this moment dates the beginning of her troubles.

On August 4, 1744, the pair were secretly married late at night in the church at the bottom of Mr. Merrill's garden, by the Rector, Mr. Amis, a divine who is variously alluded to in the memoirs of the time as Amos, Arnis, Ames, and even Auress. The marriage may have been necessary, but it was certainly unfortunate. The bridegroom early betrayed that eccentricity for which his family was remarkable and which had given rise to the saying that God created men, women, and Herveys. Three days after the wedding he rejoined his ship, then bound for the West Indies, and the bride went back to live with her mother in Conduit Street.

Here, her position was of some delicacy, for no sooner had the

ceremony been performed than she repented of it. Having nothing in the world except her place in the household of the Princess of Wales, she naturally hesitated to resign this in exchange for the poor establishment Hervey could offer her as his wife. Maid or matron, indeed, she was but ill-disposed to spend her days in the exercise of the conjugal virtues, and the return of her husband in 1746 placed her in an embarrassing predicament. To prevail on him not to claim her as his wife required all the art of which she was mistress. “At a rout, ridotto, or ball," writes one of her admirers, "there was this fell destroyer of peace, embittering every pleasure, and blighting the fruit of happiness by the pestilential malignancy of his presence." In fact, if the scandal-mongers may be credited, Elizabeth had by this time wormed her way into the affections of the old King himself; so much so that, not content with kissing her in public and appointing her mother to be housekeeper at Windsor, he gave her a fairing for her watch, which cost him five-and-thirty guineas-actually disbursed out of his privy purse and not charged to the Civil List. It need not surprise us that she discovered the enforced attentions of her unacknowledged husband to be irksome and unwelcome.

Secret though it was, the facts of the marriage were probably already suspected by the Court gossips. Throughout the fifties there are unmistakable references in Walpole's letters to "the virgin Chudleigh," while "The Connoisseur," published in 1755, is still more indiscreet. Fortunately for the lady, Hervey from this time let her go her own way, preferring to occupy himself with battering, or being battered by, the French and Spaniards.

Thus conditioned was the pseudo Miss Chudleigh when the Duke of Kingston became her admirer. His Grace was some nine years her senior when, in 1759, she constituted herself, without any attempt at disguise, his mistress. "He has hitherto had so ill an education," writes his kinswoman, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, "'tis hard to make any judgment of him; he has his spirit, but I fear will never have his father's sense." No great nobleman, probably, ever lavished his money more freely upon the pleasures of his mistress. A great house in town was placed at her disposal, crowded with valuable objects; her entertainments were the talk of London. To them came the choicest spirits of the Court, regardless of her equivocal position. Always reckless where other people's money was concerned, Elizabeth Chudleigh squandered the Duke's wealth in a manner which could only provoke the wonder of her guests. She had a villa at Finchley and a country seat near Colnbrook. In 1766 she started to build a new town mansion in Paradise Row,

Knightsbridge, which she was afterwards pleased to describe as Kingston House. Lady Harrington and Miss Ash were her most constant companions. With them she plunged more deeply than ever into dissipation, until the chronicles rang with the stories of her revels, her drinking bouts, her eccentricities. Happily, her worship of magnificence had not yet broadened out into vulgarity. When occasion rendered it advisable, she could still sufficiently control her propensities as to behave with due decorum. That she was, in a way, attached to the Duke seems to have been undoubted ; no question can possibly arise as to his devotion for her. Walpole describes the ball given by her in honour of the birthday of the Prince of Wales in 1760. "You had heard before you left London of Miss Chudleigh's intended loyalty on the Prince's birthday. Poor thing! I fear she has thrown away above a quarter's salary. It was magnificent and well understood-no crowd-and, though a sultry night, one was not a moment incommoded. The court was illuminated on the whole summit of the wall with a battlement of lamps; smaller ones on every step, and a figure of lanterns on the outside of the house. The virgin mistress began the ball with the Duke of York, but nobody did dance much. Miss Chudleigh desired the gamblers would go up into the garrets: Nay, they are not garrets: it is only the roof of the house hollowed, for upper servants, but I have no upper servants.' Everybody ran up; there is a low gallery with book-cases, and four chambers practised under the pent of the roof, each hung with the finest Indian pictures of different colours and with Chinese chairs of the same colours. Vases of flowers in each for nosegays, and in one retired nook a most critical couch. The Lord of the Festival was there, and seemed neither ashamed nor vain of the expense of his pleasures. At supper, she offered him Tokay, and told him she believed he would find it good. The supper was in two rooms and very fine, and on all the sideboards and even on the chairs were pyramids and triangles of strawberries and cherries."

It is amusing to reflect that Elizabeth still remained a Maid of Honour. Indeed, it cannot but come as a shock to believers in the respectability of the Court of George III. to read that, after that monarch's accession a grand ball was given by the Duke of Kingston's mistress, in 1763, at which the whole Court appears to have been present.

Meanwhile, Hervey, by time and attachments, had grown so weary of the connubial state as to be cordially desirous of a change. On her side there were excellent reasons why Elizabeth should desire