"
One day the housekeeper of Hampton Court was showing the palace to
visitors when the sisters were there. She threw open the door where
they were sitting, saying, "This is our beauty-room." The pictures and
galleries were forgotten by the crowd, which gazed on the beauties
instead.
For a decade their beauty was regnant in London. They were not
politicians as were their Graces of Gordon and Devonshire, nor had
they the ability to become such. Neither were they the associates of
brilliant, intellectual men, but participants in the gay, vacuous,
showy society of the rapid set of the aristocracy. The elder sister
gained the coronet of Coventry, but her vanity caused her own undoing;
the younger was a part of the exhibition of "Beauty and the Beast." A
high price was paid for her position by the endurance of a period of
tyranny and terror.
Some praise must be accorded the beauties, for at a time of much
licentiousness of a profligate society and tolerated coarsenesses, the
sisters determinedly kept their names free from ignoble soil and
scandal.
[Illustration: MARIA COUNTESS OF COVENTRY by HAMILTON]
MARIA GUNNING
"Two Irish girls of no fortune, who make more noise than any of their
predecessors since the days of Helen, and who are declared the
handsomest women alive." So wrote Walpole, in June, 1751. If we were
to judge of their beauty by the pictured presentments of it, we would
certainly agree with "our Horace" when he says he has seen much
handsomer women than either.
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