The Ladies' Magazine.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 2104, 1 February 1908, Page 1 (Supplement)

The Ladies' Magazine.

ROMANTIC STORIES OF FAMOUS FAMILIES. A BEAUTIFUL DUCHESS WHO SOU) NEEDLEWORK IN THE STRAND. (••Tit-Bits.”) It tinyono luul bon able to open nml road the soiv’.od book ot Destiny whim Francos Jennings first opened her eves to the world at Saiidbrdgo, near ' St. Albans. lie would have gasped with amazement at the slor\ it unfolded, and would have closed it with a sensation akin to horror; for within the compass of the lde that was just opening were crowded rom:*»i: ie vicissitudes which a weaver of (U i ; nn would seareely have dared TWO RBKTTY GIRLS OF SANDULDGE. • U>'6k<- main of the heroines olroImUHo who have scaled the dizzy ladder f sorial success from the lowest rungs. Frances Jennings was the daughter of a house which for many gcre-ntions had ranked among the gentry of England. Her grandfather. Sir John, had been high siicrifV of liis county ,<uul a incinJu'r or Uar'ianicnt ; her lather was a man of substance and position in Hertlordsldrc end nil the distal!' side she so.'ai g from a line <>l lair and gentlyhnrn women whose heauty had Img been a tradition and a toast. But if was in Frances and her elder sister, Sarah, who was later to wear the coronet of a duchess as the wile of • tlir> great Marlborough, that all these inherited chirms and gifts were to roach their highest perfection. Even as a child her loveliness was the wonder and gossip ot the district in which she was cradled ; and as tlic hud opened into the flower of girlhood, every year added some new touch of beauty and fragrance to it, until Frances was hailed as tin* lairest ainl most winsome ma i: in all England. When some of tile cleverest authors and artists of her time threw down pen and palette in despair ot bring able to justice to her charms, we to whom her beauty is but a tradition may be excused from making such a hopeless attempt. AT THE COURT OF THE MERRY MONARCH. Even Count Hamilton. Imr l'i tore brother-in-law, and a writer of great f.'kill. ventured no detailed description of her fascinations. “Nature,” lie wrote, “had embellished her with inexpressible charms, to which the Graces put the finishing touches: her figure gave me an idea of Aurora or of the Goddess of Spring. ’ Such was the radiant li.s'ou of girlhood that burst on tho world to dazzle it’ in tho early years of Charfes ll.’s reign. For the fame of her beauty had reached London, and, when she was barely sixteen, France.'. Jennings had been summoned from her country home to take her place, a:. Maid of Honor, in the bevy of fair women who graced the Court of tho Merry Monarch, where, by common consent, she was crowned “Queen of Beauty.” As happened nearly a century later, when the lovely Gunning sisters became the rage of the town, London lost its head over the new star which had blazed so suddenly in its firmament: she became -the toast oi every coffee-house, the inspiration of every poet, tho evnovire of every curled and perfumed beau : and whenever she walked abroad it was with an escort to protect her from the pressing attention of mobs of admirers. THE KING A VICTIM TO HER CHARMS.

Never was an innocent maiden transported to eucli an environment of danger as when this young rustic beauty found herself in the dissolute Court of Charles. The King himself, who was one of the first victims of her charms, laid constant siege to her with his gallantries, to all of which she turned a decf ear; while the Duke of York’s infatuation was still more embarrassing. “Every day,” Count Hamilton records, “billlets containing the tenderest words, the most magnificent promises, were slipped into the . girl’s pockets or muff. And, watched as his Royal Highness Was by a score of envious eyes, this could not be accomplished unperceived. But the gay little gipsy took care that those who had seen the notes slipped in should see them fall out, unopened and impenised. She shook her mufF by accident or twitched out her ’’kerchief, and as soon as the Duke’s back was turned his billets fell about her like autumn I'eaves. Whoever pleased might pick them up; they were .small concern of hers!” PRANKS OF THE MAIDS OF HONOR, Never, too, was there a greater madcap than this country girl, who knew so well how to keep a King in check, and who could snap her lingers, metaphorically, in the face of a too amorous Royal Duke. Pepyu tells us of one of her pranks. 1 “What mad freaks,” lie writes, “the Maids of Honor at Court have : that Mrs Jennings, one of the Duchess’s maids. the, ——either day dressed herself like an orange wench, and went up and down and cried ‘Oranges!’ till, falling down, or by some accident, her fine shoes were discovered, and she was put to a great deal of shame.” LORD ROCHESTER'S LITTLE JOKE. On another occasion Frances, in the company of another romantic Maid of Honor, sallied 1 forth after dark to pay a-■ visit to < famous fortune-teller to see what surprises, pleasant or otherwise, fate hail in store for them. Once more Mistress Jennings’s little escapade ended in confusion, for, after till* seer had unfolded a dazzling future to the blushing and giggling girts, he revealed himself to them as the dissolute Lord Rochester, the last man in the world to whom they would have wished- to confide their secrets and their hopes! REFUSED THE HANDSOMEST MAN IN ENGLAND.

(So the happy, frolicsome months passed with the fair Frances, whose charms played havoc with the he irts of her countless admirers, many of ■whom would - have laid down their lives for a smile from her n re tty lips. Among them was Dick Talbot, the handsomest man in England of his day, who was driven to desperation by her coldness. With the pereeverseness of her sex, she would flirt outrageously with men to whom she wjs absolutely indifferent, wjiile remaining an iceberg to Talbot, whom, as she confessed afterwards, she loved all the time. Twice he pleaded for her hand in marriage—-this man who might have won a dozen of her fairest rivals for tiny asking—and both times she repelled his advances almost with scorn. And then, when he wooed her no longer, she gave the hand which was his, had he known H, By right of conquest, to George .Hamilton, a younger son of the first Earl of Abe-rcorn. WIDOWED AND WEDDED AGAIN Thus, at seventeen, we find Frances ltd to the altar, a radiantly lovely if not radiantly happy bride, by a mail who had never touched her heart. For eleven years she was a model wife to her husband, until in 1076, lie fell, fighting valiantly, in an engigernent near Zebe.rnstieg, leaving his widow (now the Countess Hamilton) with six young children, and but a small pension from Eranee to support them on. Three years of obscure and struggling widowhood followed, when once more Kate, in league with Cnp'l, brought the long-severed lovers together. It was in Kinds that the Countess, now in the r : pe maturity of her beauty, and one of the fairest women in all ICuroor, met Ce~ lonel Richard Talbot, then :u exile; and when, for the third fine, he besought her to become Its uRe, she accepted him with tears o! lienit-m.-e and joy. and confessed to him Cat during oil the long years of seven:oco her heart had always been ill his keening. IIER DAZZLING CAREER AT DUBLIN CASTLE. Ami now our heroine enters oil the

must brilliant and the happiest epoch of her romantic career. When the second James caino to the throne, one of his first acts was to reward the lovaitv of his devoted subject, Colonel Till hot, whom he placed at the head of his army ill Ireland and created an Earl. In the following year lalbol. now my Lord Tyreonnel, was promo.ed to the I ice royally ol lieland: and for three years “la belle leanings" reigned as Vice-Queen m Dublin Castle. UN HARRY EXI LES IN FRANCE. But, though happily Frances Jennings, who, a little later, was entitled to wear the coronet of a duchess, little knew it, the suu .ot her fortunes, which had mounted so high, was destined to an early and tragic ivfiuse. Within '*.! year of flaying aside her splendour -as Vice-Queen she and her gallant Duke were exiles ,n .France. And two yens later her husband died suddenly while ilelemling Limerick for his Royal master. 'DEATH OF a “MODEL FOR “STATUARIES." ••On August 11 169.1,” Macaulay save, “Tvreoimel dined with d Lscen. Hie party was gay. The Lord-Lieu-tenant- seemed to have thrown oil the load which had bowed down his body and mind: lie drank; he jested; he Vis again the Dick Talbot who had dined and levelled with Gnimliiont.. Soon aL r lie had risen -from die table an apoplectic stroke deprived him id" speech and sensation. On the fourteenth he breathed his last; ami the wasted remains of that ioriu which had been i model for statuaries were laid under the pavement of Limerick Cathedral. SAD PLIGHT OF THE DUCHESS. Deprived of her husband, an exile dependent- on the charity of the Jacobites and on a pittance, part or die pension allowed to James 11. by the Pope, the Duchess of Tyroeomiel now found horsell in a piteous plight-. In poverty and obscurity she ilnggecl through several sordid years in France before coming to England to ;ee if she could better her fortunes. Here she fell on still worse clays, nml for a time this woman who iv is a Duchess, who had been for many a year the unchallenged Queen of Beauty, and who had been Vicereine of Ireland, struggled to keep body ami soul together by her own needier work, which she sold at a stall in die New Exchange in the Strand. rou PROUD TO ASK FOR HELP. Even in this last extremity the Duchess’s pride citing xo her: for. in order that none • f her customers ■should look on and recognise the face that had once been so peerlessly lovely, she concerted it bribed a white mask. “Aoovo stairs,'’ says Pennant, “sat, m the eharitfer of a- milliner, the reduced Duchess of Tyreonnel, wife of the Irish Lord Deputy under James JJ. She had delicacy enough not to wish 1 o be detected, and sat n a while mask and a white wrapper, and was known as the ‘white milliner. AFTER THE GLORY COYLES THE GLOOM. From thiselegradationshewas rescued by influential friends, and spent the closing years of her long life in Ireland free'at least from want. Her beauty had long taken wings. “Very small' and frail,” "Walpole describes her at this time, “but still sharp of tongue -and keen of eye; without .he least trace of her once brilliant beauty.” One cold winter night r.he fell out of bed, and, too feeble to summon assistance, died as she lay. Thus in the darkness, untended and alone, a pitiful wreck of her former hearty, died Frances Jennings,. who, during her eligjhty-two years.' had tasted some of the most intoxicating delights and drained some of the bitterest dregs that the cup of life -has ever .presented to human lips.

was a succession of failures and successes, the former always brought about by professional jealousy or physical weakness, the latter always predominating. She It*ll tho Fravcairo for the Odeon where, on January 20, 1872, on the production o. Victor Hugo's- “Ruv Bias, “flic student's little fairy” first became “the Elect of the Public,” but returned to the Francaise at the Ministry’s invitation. But- the theatrical world of Paris was never with her. Yl. Perrin, director* of the Francaise, complained of tier ill-temper, caprices and eccentricities. Her managers dil not understand her sculpture and her painting, -and there seems to have been a conviction abroad during these early years that-she did not take lvcr art seriously. Once when she "burst out with everything in an avalanche of stinging words” to Alexandre Dumas the younger, about a real injustice to her which he and M. Perrin were contemplating, lie 'replied: “My ‘dear child, if I had examined my own conscience, 1 should have said to myself all that- you have just said to mo so eloquently.” Surah Bernhardt herself says that on her return to Paris alter her first visit to London : “All the low-down little viper world was crawling about under my flowers and my laurels. I luul known what was going on lor a long time, and sometimes 1 had heard rattling behind the scenes. I wanted to have the enjoyment of hearing them mil rattle -together, -and so 1 threw my laurels and my flowers to tlie four winds of Heaven.” She again sent- in her resignation to the Comcdic, and three days later Jarrett got her to sign a contract for the American lour referred to. The laurels and (lowers rclwrned from the lour winds of Heaven, and to-day the grin l actress writes: “Life has taught me that if one is to be famous it can only ready -become manifest alter death. To-day I am going down the hill oi life, and I .regard daily all the. pedestals on which i have -been lifted up. ami there have been so many, so many of them that their fragment; . broken by the same hands that had raised them, have made me a solid pillar.” That is m. very true definition of an artist’s fame, nml a fitting passage with which to close these brief extracts from an intensely self-reveal-ing autobiography.