in the princeship of the second George, who, besides being lively and attractive, were also accomplished and sensible, and who, as a matter of fact, did develop into excellent helpmates. Such, for example, was that bonny, good-humored Mary Bellenden, "fair and soft as down," who ultimately became Duchess of Argyll; such, again, the "beautiful Molly Lepel," who forms the subject of this paper. Others have written of this lady; and she has been praised by Thackeray. But about her later life not very much has been said, and the few new facts contained in the recently published "Diary" and "Letter Books of the First Earl of Bristol" seem to warrant some fresh attempt to revive the memory of one who has been described upon good authority as "the perfect model of a finely-polished and highly-bred woman of fashion." This of itself would, perhaps, be scarcely a sufficient reason for a new study. But Lady Hervey, like Mrs. Primrose's wedding-gown, was not merely conspicuous for a "glossy surface." She had also other qualities of a more lasting and commendable character.

A certain enjoûment and vivacity of manner, coupled with a habit of speaking playfully of France as her native country, seem to have led to the tradition that Miss Lepel was of French extraction. Following this clue, the indefatigable Mr. Croker, discovering that the Lepelles or Le Pelleys were lords of Sark, made the suggestion that she must have belonged to this family; and what Mr. Croker stated as a plausible conjecture was, of course, immediately converted into an established fact. But, even in the very correspondence he was annotating, Lady Hervey says expressly that the Sark Le Pelleys were no relations of hers, and the Rev. S. H. A. Hervey, who edited the Bristol papers, has satisfied himself that she was right. After much investigation he came to the conclusion that her father, Nicholas Wedig Lepel, page in 1684 to Prince George of Denmark (husband of the

Princess Anne), and afterwards an officer in the English army, was not of French, but of Danish or North German descent. In August, 1698, Mr. Lepel married Miss Mary Brooke, daughter and sole heiress of John Brooke, of Rendlesham, in Suffolk, deceased, who brought him a dowry of 20,000l. His daughter was born in September, 1700, and nine years after he was made a brigadier-general, which is almost all we know of Nicholas Lepel. But, according to the Duchess of Marlborough, he was lucky enough to obtain for his daughter, even from her birth, the rank, or rather the pay, of a cornet of horse, which pay, according to the same not unimpeachable authority, Miss Lepel continued to draw until the absurdity of a maid of honor figuring as a gentleman of the army became too manifest to be maintained. Whether this be true or notand the pen of Sarah Jennings is not precisely that of a recording angel-it is clear that she must have become a maid of honor at the earliest possible age. And it is equally clear that, though the records of her service in this capacity are of the scantiest, she was a popular favorite from the beginning. "Tell dear Molly I love her like anything," writes to Mrs. Howard in 1716 the widow of that Lord Mohun who murdered Duke Hamilton. Another glimpse of her is contained in a letter from Pope to Teresa and Martha Blount in the following year. (Mr. Carruthers is uncharitable enough to suggest that it was inserted with the special intention of making his correspondents jealous.) After telling them that Miss Bellenden and Miss Lepel had, "contrary to the laws against harboring Papists," entertained him at Hampton Court, he goes on, “I can easily believe no lone house in Wales, with a mountain and a rookery, is more contemplative than this court; and as a proof of it I need only tell you Mrs. Lepell walked with me three or four hours by moonlight, and we met no creature of any quality but the King [George I.], who gave audience to the vice-chamberlain, all alone, under

the garden wall." The bard of Twickenham was not the only poet who took pleasure in the society of these girlish beauties. They were subscribers to Prior's great volume of 1718, and Gay must also have been among the intimates, for a year later he, too, sends to Mrs. Howard (who was bedchamber woman) his love to both, in addition to which he joins their names in his "Damon and Cupid." "So well I'm known at court"-says his modish Georgian deity

None ask where Cupid dwells;

But readily resort

To Bellenden's or Lepel's.

to

In that dancing "Welcome Alexander Pope on His Return from Troy," however, he speaks of the latter lady with more poetry and greater felicity. He couples her with "Hervey, fair of face," as "Youth's youngest daughter, sweet Lepel."

This conjunction in Gay's verses seems to imply that Mr. Hervey's name was already linked to Miss Lepel's in the minds of those who knew them, and not without reason. Early in 1720 -the year of that completion of the "Iliad" which prompted Gay's poemthe lady had been ill, for in March Pope tells Broome that he had been constantly engaged in attending her during her convalescence at Twickenham. Of the nature of this indisposition he says nothing; but in the following month she was married privately to Lord Bristol's second son, the John Hervey above referred to. Hitherto,

the date of this occurrence has been

more or less matter of guess-work, but the publication of her father-in-law's diary removes all ground for uncertainty. Under date of April 21, 1720, is the following entry by the earl: "Thursday, my dear and hopeful son, Mr. John Hervey, was marryed to Mrs. Mary Le Pell." The marriage was not

1 It is impossible to quote Pope's letters with perfect confidence. This anecdote has been accepted as historical, and probably is so. But it is only right to state that a year later it re-appears, rookery and all, but without Miss Lepel and the vice-chamberlain, in a letter to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.

at first avowed. "I met Madam Lepell coming into town last night," writes Mrs. Bradshaw to Mrs. Howard on August 21 following. "She is a pretty thing, though she never comes to see me, for which I will use her like a dog." a passage that-besides supplying in its last words unexpected confirmation of the accuracy of Swift's "Polite Conversation"-shows clearly that at this time the facts were still unknown to

many friends. The suggested reason for secrecy is that Mrs. Bellenden had also contracted a clandestine alliance with Colonel Campbell, and that the two couples had "for mutual support agreed to brave the storm together"the storm anticipated being apparently the royal anger. In Miss Lepel's case,

at all events, it cannot have been parental. "My son," writes Lord Bristol, "has shown ye nicest skill in choosing you, since in you alone he could securely promise himself not only every quality essential to his own happiness, but has also made a wise provision to intaile good sense and virtue (its constant concomitant) on our (now) flourishing family." The date of this letter is May 20, but from an editorial note it appears that the marriage was not publicly announced until October 25, or five months later. How it was received by the court does not transpire. But as it involved the resignation of the two brides, it effectually broke up the little coterie at Hampton, and put an end forever to those pastoral delights of frizelization, flirtation, and dangleation, which, in a letter addressed years afterwards to Mrs. Howard, Lady Hervey includes among the unforgettable diversions of Wren's formal palace by the Thames.

with him. His letters to his "dear daughter" are always couched in the most cordial terms, and it is evident that Lady Hervey became genuinely attached to him. But as regards her husband, one has certainly to fortify oneself by the recollection of Horace and his sic visum Veneri. Everything that one hears of the brilliant and cynical John Hervey, with his "coffinface" and his painted cheeks, his valetudinarian, uncanny beauty, and his notorious depravity of life, makes it difficult to understand what particular qualities in him, apart from opportunity and proximity, could have attracted the affection of a young and beautiful woman, who was, besides, far in advance of her contemporaries in parts and in education. Yet it must be remembered that at this date John Hervey was only four-and-twenty; that it was not until four years later that Pope began to attack him as "Lord Fanny," and that the same poet's portrait of "Sporus"-a passage of matchless malignity-is fifteen years later still. His health, too, was not yet broken; and it is probable that at this date he exercised to the full that extraordinary gift of fascination which captivated Queen Caroline and Lady Mary, made of his father his blind and doting admirer, and secured the love and respect of a wife, to whom in point of fidelity he was by no means a pattern husband. Perhaps in later years of marriage the respect was stronger than the love. But of the early days of courtship this could not be said. More than a twelvemonth after marriage-according to Lady Mary the billing and cooing of the pair still continued with such unabated vigor as to oblige that austere onlooker to take flight for Twickenham. But, as Lady Mary candidly says, her own talents did not lie in this direction, and she is scarcely an unprejudiced ob

server.

For nearly twenty years we practically lose sight of Mr. Hervey's wife. As has already been said, her maid-ofhonorship came to an end with her marriage, and for a long time she was

rarely at court, although her husband, in his capacity as lord chamberlain, was almost continually in attendance on the queen. It is probable that she was frequently at Ickworth; and Lord Bristol's diary for several years continues to record methodically the births of sons and daughters, with the names of the illustrious sponsors who, in each instance, "answered for them." In November, 1723, Carr, Lord Hervey, died at Bath, and Mr. Hervey became Lord Hervey. Five years later he went abroad for his health, remaining absent for more than a year, during which time his wife was left behind in her father-in-law's house to mourn his absence, which, from a letter to Mrs. Howard, she seems to have done very genuinely. It is, indeed, chiefly from the Suffolk correspondence that we gain our information about her at this time. Some of her letters are written in a spirit of levity which does not always show her at her best, although she is uniformly amiable and lively. From one of these epistles we get the oft-quoted picture of Swift's "Mordanto"-Lord Peterborough-strolling about Bath in boots, in spite of Nash and the proprieties, cheapening a chicken and cabbage in all the splendors of his blue ribbon and star, and then sauntering away unconcernedly to his lodgings with his marketings under his arm. In another letter from Ickworth we find a reference to Arbuthnot, whom Lady Hervey trusts may not at Tunbridge either lose his money at quadrille or over-indulge in his favorite John Dory-a taste which he shared with Quin and Fielding. Here and there one detects traces of her love for reading, although her correspondents are not bookish. There are also pleasant and affectionate references to her children. But with her mother-in-law, Lady Bristol, if we are to believe certain references in the Suffolk correspondence, she does not seem to have been always on cordial terms. "Pray," she says to Mrs. Howard, "when you are so kind as to write to me, get sometimes one body, sometimes another, to direct your letters;

for curiosity being one of the reigning passions in a certain person" [obviously, from the context, Lady Bristol], "I love prodigiously both to excite and to baffle it."

From this utterance and other passages it is clear that Lady Hervey's relations with Lady Bristol were at times considerably strained, and, indeed, if contemporary gossip is to be trusted, the antagonism of the two ladies occasionally ripened into actual warfare. But there were also apparently peaceful interspaces, and Lady Suffolk is informed, as an item of extraordinary "news out of the country," that for a whole fortnight Lady Bristol has been all civility and kindness. "I am become first favorite," writes Lady Hervey. "It would puzzle a poet to find anything soft, kind, and sweet enough to liken her to it-down, turtle-doves, and honey are faint images of her disposition." But this can only have been a "Martin's summer" of the elder lady's good-will, for a letter two years later contains a most sarcastic picture of her infirmities, both physical and mental. Probably in this quarrel-to quote Sir Roger de Coverley-there was much to be said on both sides. Lady Hervey was too clever a woman not to see and accentuate Lady Bristol's weak points, and she had considerable gifts as an observer when her antipathies were excited. On the other hand, Lady Bristol was by no means deficient in ability. She was both witty and vivacious, and her inordinate letters to her lord during her absences at Bath and at court (she was a lady of the bedchamber to the Princess Caroline), if, as her editor admits, scarcely literary, are at all events easy and natural. They are extravagant in their expressions of affection, and those of Lord Bristol are equally so. But the pair were a curious contrast in many respects. She was a courtier, he was a country gentleman; he delighted in domesticity and fresh air, she in Bath and the racket of the ill-ventilated Pump Room; she gambled freely, he had forsworn cards. To these pecul

iarities on the lady's part may be added a passion for dosing herself with rhubarb on the slightest provocation; a temper as sensitive as a barometer; and a gift of tears which equalled that of Loyola. Yet to the end the letters of this apparently ill-matched husband and wife are those of newly-married persons, and they occupy two quarto volumes.

In May, 1741, Lady Bristol died suddenly "of a fitt which seized her as she was taking the air in her Sedan in St. James's Parke," the Sedan in question being, as her editor suggests, possibly that very specimen which stands in the entrance-hall of No. 6 St. James's Square, a house which Lady Hervey must often have visited during her father-in-law's tenancy of it.1 With this event Lord Bristol's letters to his "ever new Delight" naturally ceased, and he does not seem to have lamented his loss with the same "terrific length and vehemence" of epistolary regret which, in the case of his first wife, had provoked the rebukes of his father. Two years later he suffered a fresh bereavement in the death of Lord Hervey when Lady Hervey became a widow. Both by his wife and his father Lord Hervey was sincerely mourned. But Lady Hervey refrained from verifying the old saying that short widowhoods follow happy matches, since, although still, to quote her husband's couplet to Lady Mary,

-in the noon of life-those golden days When the mind ripens, ere the form decays,

she never again entered the married state. At Lord Hervey's death her eldest son, George, who was twenty, had become a soldier, not entirely with the approval of his grandfather, who hated standing armies. Lepel, her eldest daughter-"a fine black girl," Horace Walpole calls herwas already married to Mr. Constantine Phipps, afterwards Lord Mulgrave, while her second son, Augustus, later one of the two husbands of the

1 It still belongs to the Bristol family, but was rebuilt in 1819-22.