" And here was another widow who captivated
royalty, Mrs. Fitzherbert, who was a daughter of Walter Smythe of
Bambridge, Hampshire, and married, first, Edward Weld, secondly,
Thomas Fitzherbert of Synnerton, Staffordshire (who died in 1781), and
was said to have been married to the Prince of Wales (George IV.) in
1785. And there also was a more notorious beauty, Miss Grace
Dalrymple, afterwards Mrs. Elliott,--though divorced later, and
becoming the mistress of various aristocrats, notably the Duke of
Orleans.
The Duchess of Montagu, granddaughter of the great Duke of Marlborough
(one of the Churchills,--a family prolific of beauties), was there
seen. Several pictures of the painter's wife (who was a Miss Margaret
Burr), of his youngest daughter, Mary, afterwards Mrs. Fischer, and
one of his friend, Miss Linley, went to augment this superb
congregation of beauties shown. Portraits of Garrick,--that intensely
interesting Stratford portrait,--Earl Spencer, Pitt, Earl Stanhope,
Colonel St. Leger, George IV., Duke of Cumberland, George III., Earl
Cathcart, Canning, Dr. Johnson, Fox, and several showings of himself,
made up a body of work unsurpassed in importance by that of the
president of the Academy himself.
Gainsborough was born in 1727; he moved to Bath, in its most brilliant
period, in 1760. He died in 1788, but had ceased contributing to the
Academy four years before, because of a disagreement with the hanging
committee.
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