Aristocrats: Caroline, Emily, Louisa and Sarah Lennox 1740 - 1832

by Stella Tillyard

  Ardglass Castle had come from Lord Charles Fitzgerald, Ogilvie’s first pupil at Black Rock. Lord Charles had been estranged from the family since he voted for the Act of Union and accepted a government post. When he died in 1810, Ogilvie had paid off his creditors and taken over the estate. The humble teacher who had turned stepfather now became inheritor.

  Ogilvie was no longer interested in estate management. He wanted to be a master of the water not the earth. After he took on the estate he turned his attention to the harbour at Ardglass, designing and building a long retaining wall out into the sea. This pier, as he called it, was a massive structure over half a mile long and fifty feet in height. It made Ardglass harbour into a safe haven where wandering ships and navy patrols could find shelter from the murderous waters of the Irish Sea. The sea roared against the pier’s walls in storms, black and frothing grey at the surface. Within the pier’s protective arm was the harbour, where battered vessels rested.

  Ardglass pier was a structure of the mind as well as a massive physical presence. The maniacal fervour that Ogilvie put into its building belonged to the new, Victorian, age. Curling 3,000 feet out into the sea, and rising many feet above it, the pier was eloquent of the desire for domination and control. Ogilvie, and many who came after him, no longer saw the sea as something sublime and terrible, beyond man’s mastery. It had become an unconquered place, an element that impeded trade, separated man from man and offered resistance to those who sought to control it. So it must be surveyed, mapped, civilised and brought into harbour. As stone after stone was lowered to the seabed beyond Ardglass, it was not just a retaining wall that was being constructed, it was a way of seeing the world. Yet the sea was resistant, chafing at the restraint, fighting back and remaining, for all man’s best efforts, dangerous and estranging.

  Ardglass was Ogilvie’s monument to himself, a confident and even aggressive testimony to his will to succeed in a hostile environment, against all the odds, and on his own terms. ‘I am sorry that I undertook it at so late a period in my life,’ he grumbled. But he went on, and after the harbour was finished he built a life-boat station as well, with a life-boat to save those who could not make it to the harbour’s safety.

  Like his pier, Ogilvie endured, living almost until the dawn of the new age. He died at the age of ninety-two, five years before Victoria came to the throne, and crossed over to another shore from which no human ingenuity could find return.

  The Lennox girls’ father, Charles, second Duke of Richmond, painted by Charles Philips in the late 1740s as a courtier and collector.

  Louise de Kéroualle, Charles II’s ‘young wanton’ and subsequently Lennox family matriarch.

  The second Duke of Richmond with Sarah his wife by Godfrey Kneller, early 1720s. The Duchess wrote to her husband, ‘I love you exceedingly’ and he called her ‘the person in the whole world I love the best’.

  The Privy Garden in 1741, much as it would have looked to Caroline as she ran away from home in 1744. Richmond House is to the right of the trees in the middle distance.

  The Thames from Richmond House Terrace by Canaletto, 1747.

  Looking the other way from Richmond House, Canaletto’s view of the Privy Garden, with a servant bowing to the Duke of Richmond by the gate of the stable yard.

  The shell house at Goodwood, designed by the Duchess and her daughters in the 1740s.

  Caroline, voluptuous in Turkish masquerade costume shortly before her elopement. ‘Her eyebrows and forehead are charming,’ Emily wrote.

  The north front of Holland House, sketched in 1898, but much as it was when Caroline and Henry lived there.

  Henry Fox as a self-promoting gigolo, painted in Rome by Antonio David in 1732, when he was on tour with his mistress, Mrs Strangways-Horner.

  The south front of Holland House showing the portico outside Caroline’s dressing room where she had a greenhouse and an aviary.

  Emily in masquerade costume before her marriage; the undisputed beauty of the family.

  Grandeur without style: Carton House, County Kildare. Now the back, this was the front when Emily lived there.

  James Fitzgerald, Earl of Kildare and than Duke of Lenister, painted by Ramsay in 1762. Kildare liked Ramsay because he ‘had not a picture of anyone I ever saw, but I knew’.

  Leinster House, Dublin. Another gloomy mansion, it was built between 1745 and 1747 and originally known as Kildare House. Emily’s children were mostly born here.

  The Duke of Richmond’s fireworks in 1749 celebrated peace in Europe and in his own family. Richmond House is on the left, the family were on the terrace and the King in the Royal Barge with a crown on its roof.

  Meissen snuff box with a portrait of Caroline inside, presented by Henry Fox to the Duchess of Richmond as a reconciliation present in 1748. Relations between them continued to be frosty.

  The third Duke of Richmond, already a lover of dogs and women on the grand tour in Rome, painted by Batoni.

  Thomas Conolly, painted by Reynolds in 1759, when he was 21. ‘Sure he is a tiresome boy,’ Caroline exclaimed.

  Tom Conolly in his natural habitat, painted by Robert Healy in 1768, leanly muscular in racing gear and jockey’s cap.

  Castletown House, loved and decorated by Louisa for 60 years, at the turn of the century.

  Louisa Conolly in magnificent court dress, painted by Ramsay in 1759: Caroline praised her height, bearing and ‘pretty’ figure.

  Four faces of Louisa: 23, sweet and plump, painted by Reynolds in 1764.

  Practically dressed and on a ‘trudge’ through the Castletown grounds with a gamekeeper in 1768.

  A mature woman in the 1770s.

  With a saddled horse. Louisa worried about her husband’s dare-devil hunting exploits and seldom rode herself, so this picture is a tribute to the spirit of the place, Healy’s specialist skills and Tom’s equine obsessions.

  Sarah in her teens, dressed as ‘the mourning bride’ for a session of amateur dramatics. Although Emily said she was ‘merely a pretty, lively looking girl and that is all’, Henry Fox thought she was ‘different from and prettier than any other girl I ever saw’.

  Ramsay’s official portrait of George III in Coronation robes of 1762: a far cry from the ‘boiling youth’ who had fallen in love with Sarah a year before.

  Palemon and Lavinia: a print that did the rounds of court, purportedly showing the King wooing an uncharacteristically demure Sarah in the grounds of Holland House.

  Sir Charles Bunbury, painted by Reynolds for the Holland House gallery shortly after his marriage to Sarah in 1762. When his nephew was offered this picture, he refused it, saying that he did not want to be reminded of his uncle.

  Emily and her ‘dear Jemmy’, painted by Arthur Devis in 1755 with an imaginary Carton behind them.

  Emily, aged 22 by Joshua Reynolds, 1753.

  Kildare in the companion portrait of the same year.

  Sarah, voluptuously painted by Francis Cotes when she came to London at the age of 15.

  The south front of Carton House.

  Sublime and ridiculous: Lady Sarah Bunbury Sacrificing to the Graces, by Reynolds, 1764–5.

  Louisa’s print room at Castletown.

  The Long Gallery at Castletown with Tom Conolly’s portrait by Mengs over the fireplace.

  Castletown from the air, with the ‘Conolly Folly’ on the horizon.

  Emily’s ‘India paper room’ at Carton.

  The shell cottage at Carton: morbid excrescences a world away from the curlicues of the Goodwood shell house.

  Emily in ermine by Reynolds, early 1770s.

  Louisa: ample in middle age.

  Sarah’s house in Celbridge, now part of a church school for the handicapped.

  ‘Dear Edward’: Emily’s favourite son with a democratic cravat and hairstyle in the early 1790s, by Hugh Douglas Hamilton.

  Emily at 77, by Sir Martin Archer Shee. ‘The most beautiful woman your age in the kingdom’, her adoring husband declared.

 
Henry Fox, painted by Reynolds in 1764, at the height of his political career.

  Caroline, painted by Reynolds in 1758, when she was 35, and called herself a ‘woman of fashion’.

  Caroline as she liked to think of herself in 1763 with her furs, letters and ‘visage de quarante ans’, painted by Ramsay for the Holland House gallery.

  Ste Fox in the early 1760s by Reynolds: fat and adored.

  Reynold’s famous triple portrait of Fox with Susan Fox-Strangways and Sarah leaning from a Holland House window, 1762–64.

  Charles James Fox, aged 3, by Hoare, resplendent in silk dress and bandana.

  Fox in the 1780s, the ‘champion of the people’, dubbed by Gibbon ‘the black collier’.

  Fox in private, by Lawrence, called by Burke before they quarrelled ‘a man made to be loved’.

  The ceiling of the Carton saloon; plaster excess by the Lafranchini brothers, 1739.

  Emily taking the sort of ‘jumbling ride’ she prescribed for pregnant women in the Carton grounds.

  Susan O’Brien after her marriage to William O’Brien and return from exile in New York, pastel by Cotes about 1770.

  William O’Brien, matinée idol and protégé of Garrick.

  Cecilia Lennox, painted by Ramsay in 1768, a year before she died of consumption.

  The Duke of Leinster (centre) perhaps with William, his heir, seated on a rock, by Healy, for Castletown, 1768.

  La Belle Cuisinière after Boucher, typical of the moralising domestic scenes in Louisa’s print room.

  William Kent’s card for Fourdrinier, who produced paper for the Foxes’ circle, and a print of Holland House in 1751.

  Horner’s trade card. Emily sent Louisa to his shop in 1759 to look for India Paper for Carton.

  Charles Bunbury with a wild and haunted look in the year his marriage collapsed: a print after Reynolds.

  The châteaux at Aubigny to which Emily and Ogilvie retreated from the fray in 1776.

  William Ogilvie in his mid fifties, stern and unbending, sketched by his son-in-law, Charles Lock about 1795.

  Emily, painted by Reynolds about the time of her second marriage.

  ‘Til I was past 36 I never knew what real happiness was’: Sarah in the 1780s.

  Sarah’s plans of houses; Celbridge which she and Napier bought in 1787 and Moldcomb on the Goodwood estate.

  George Napier, short sighted but ‘the most perfect made man’.

  The third Duke of Richmond by Romney in 1777: political differences (and with Sarah, money) were beginning to strain family relations.

  An entry from Caroline’s journal of 1768: her sons teased her about her illegible handwriting.

  Emily’s hand remained exquisite all her life. This note was written to her great niece, Ste’s daughter Caroline Fox.

  Louisa’s open unpretentious hand from a letter written when she was 74, also to Caroline Fox.

  Sarah’s ‘blind’ hand, written on ‘carbonic’ paper using a spcial machine that kept the lines straight.

  Fox, a Jacobin Macbeth is refusing to take responsibility for corrupting the Irish rebels.

  The page references in this index correspond to the printed edition from which this ebook was created. To find a specific word or phrase from the index, please use the search feature of your ebook reader.

  NOTE The Lennox sisters are indexed under their maiden names, with appropriate cross-references. Public figures are indexed under the name by which they were generally known; for instance, Fox, Henry, rather than Holland, First Lord.

  A

  Act of Union 373

  actors, attitudes to 155–6

  Adair, Robert 98, 187

  Ailesbury, Lady 313

  Ailesbury, Thomas Bruce, 2nd Earl 98

  Aix-la-Chapelle Treaty (1748) 75

  Albemarle, Countess 2, 98, 136–7, 157, 161, 233, 292, 332, 338, 346

  Albemarle, George Keppel, 3rd Earl 2, 84–5, 161

  Ally (mistress of Fox) 72

  American War of Independence 334–7, 340, 361

  Ardglass castle 424–5

  Aubigny château 7, 275, 325–31, 343

  Austrian Succession War 44–5, 75

  B

  Barrymore, Lady 309, 312–13

  Barton, Bunburys’ country home 141–5, 261–4, 270

  Bateman, Lady 159, 160–1

  Bateman, Mr 160

  Bath, Caroline in 35–9, 49, 72, 291–2

  Battoni, Pompeo 149, 256

  Beauclerk, Charles 409

  Beauclerk, Lady Di (née Bolingbroke) 157, 158–9, 283, 409

  Beauclerk, Topham 158, 159, 409

  Bedford, John Russell, 4th Duke of 2

  Bellamont, Earl of 302, 308–9, 313, 314

  Bennett, Caroline 409

  Bere (Carton steward) 212–13

  Bissell, Martha 283–4

  Black Rock

  educational establishment 244–51, 301–2, 328

  and Emily and Ogilvie 308, 311, 343

  Bolingbroke, Lady Diana (see Lady Beauclerk)

  Bolle, Mr (tutor to William Fitzgerald) 254, 257–8

  Bond, Oliver 381

  breast–feeding ix-x, 232–3

  Brown, Charles 283

  Bruce, Lady Mary see Richmond, Mary, 3rd Duchess

  Brudenell, Caroline 98, 161

  Bunbury, Henry (brother of Charles) 160, 274

  Bunbury, Sir Henry (nephew of Charles) 409, 422

  Bunbury, Louisa (Sarah’s daughter)

  birth 266–7

  and Charles Bunbury 284

  and Gordon 269–70, 284

  illness and death 349, 355–6

  and Lennox family 286, 288, 290–1, 316, 334

  Bunbury, Sarah see Lennox, Sarah

  Bunbury, Sir William 136–8

  Bunbury, Thomas Charles 136–7

  and Henry Fox 253, 324

  income 137–8

  and Lennox family 191

  marriage 138–40, 141–3

  married life 141–3, 145–6, 152, 229

  and Sarah’s affairs 260–5, 267–8, 269, 270

  and Sarah’s flight 273–5, 285

  separation and divorce 281–4, 289, 291, 333, 340

  political career 146, 168, 348

  Burney, Fanny 160

  Bury St Edmunds, Sarah in 144–5

  Bush, Roger (Bunbury’s valet) 283

  Bute, John Stuart, 3rd Earl 123–4, 125–7, 128–9, 163

  butler, role 211, 214, 217

  C

  Cadogan, Sarah see Richmond, Sarah, 2nd Duchess

  Cadogan, William, 1st Earl 10

  Calcraft, John 162

  Cambise, Mme de 259

  Camden, John Jeffreys Pratt, 2nd Earl 377, 388, 390, 393

  Carlisle, Frederick Howard, 5th Earl 157–8, 181

  and Sarah 259, 260, 263

  Caroline, Queen 11

  Carteret, John (Earl Granville) 44–5

  Carton House 62, 65–6, 70, 84, 211

  alterations 60, 195, 198–200

  Emily leaves 308

  print-room 204

  shell cottage 196–8

  staff 212–20

  Castletown

  alterations 201–3, 205–6

  Conolly home 104, 106–8, 210–11

  costs 206, 224–8

  daily life 117–18

  and Irish Rebellion 377–80, 383, 387

  long gallery 115, 206–9, 257, 332, 410

  and Louisa 108, 116–19, 221–5, 351–2, 399–400, 402–3, 407, 410–12

  park 209–10

  print-room 202–5

  and Sarah 208–9, 349, 354, 355

  Celbridge, Napiers’ house 355, 359, 367, 399, 407

  and Irish Rebellion 377, 384–5

  Charles II, and Richmond family 6, 7, 8, 149

  Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Queen 130, 132, 134

  children

  breast-feeding ix-x, 232–3

  early deaths 17, 235–6

  education 238–40, 243–5
1, 367–8

  growing interest in 87

  illnesses 236–8

  Choiseul, Duc de 259

  Churchill, Charles 163

  churching of women 234

  Clanbrassil, Lady 204, 312

  Clare, John Fitzgibbon, Earl 382, 387, 389, 390

  class, social 221–2, 365–6

  clerk of the kitchen 211, 215, 217

  coal trade, and Richmond fortune 6–8

  Coke, Lady Mary 323

  Collinson, Peter 147

  Conduit Street, Caroline’s London house 32, 46–7

  confinement 233–4

  Conolly, Louisa see Lennox, Louisa

  Conolly, Thomas

  and Castletown 206, 224–5, 280

  character 105, 190

  childlessness 206

  debts 400, 402

  and Emily and Ogilvie 326

  and Henry Fox 109

  horses and gambling 105–6, 110, 146, 202, 208–9, 224

  hypochondria 105, 110

  illness and death 398–9

  and Irish Rebellion 372–4, 379, 385, 396

  marriage to Louisa 104, 105–8, 110, 116–19, 269, 305–6

  mistress 400–2

  and Napier 354

  and politics 114, 116, 168, 344, 348–9, 357

  and Sarah 289, 332, 359

  and staff 223

  wealth 104, 106

  Conolly, William ‘Speaker’ 106, 202

  Conti, Prince de 259

  Conway, Gen. Henry Seymour 341, 347

  Coram, Eunice 3

  Coram, Thomas 3

  Court life 12–13, 120–1

  courtesans, attitudes to 155

  Cumberland, Duke of 44, 75

  D

  Defenders, Ireland 370–4

  Deffand, Mme du 259–60, 325

  Delany, Mrs 317–18

  Devis, Arthur 198

  Devonshire, William Cavendish, 4th Duke 92

  Diderot, Denis 166, 247

  divorce 282–4

  domesticity, stress on 72, 87, 101–2, 159

  Dorset, Duke of 270, 273, 275