WOMAN'S BEAUTY BOOK This section will be a complete guide to the art of preserving and acquiring beauty. How wide will be its scope can be seen from the following summary of its contents. Beautiful Women in History Treatment of the Hair The Beauty of Motherhood and Old Age The Effect of Diet on Beauty Freckles, Sunburn The Beautiful Baby The Beautiful Child Health and Beauty Physical Culture How the Houseivife may Preserve Her Good Looks Beauty Secrets Mothers ought to Tecuh their Daughters The Complexion The Teeth The Eyes The Ideal of Beauty Beauty Baths Manicure Beauty Foods The Ideal Figure, etc., etc. .EAUJTIFUL WOMEM IN HISTORY No. V. GEORQIANA DUCHESS OF DEVONSHIRE By PEARL ADAM
- Fox's Duchess —A Child-wife
I I "Canny Burney said of " Fox's Duchess " ■*• that " the epithet ' charming ' might have been coined for her." Walpole called her " a phenomenon." Even Dr. Johnson praised her. To be sure, earnest clergymen wrote pamphlets in the form of letters to her, criticising her conduct, and warning her that she would hear of them again, and that it depended on her gonduct whether they would praise or blame her. She was, in fact, the most famous woman in English society at one time, and, as such, was bound to be the object of both censure and praise. A Devoted Daughter She was the elder daughter of the first Earl Spencer and his beautiful wife, and was born in June, 1757. Her childhood was uneventful, and at seventeen she married " the first match in England," in the person of William, fifth Duke of Devonshire. This gentleman, so far as one can judge by com- paring reports of his character, was a serious, rather stiff-necked, cold, worthy, dull person — the kind of man who is considered by slight acquaintances " very estimable," and by his wife's admirers " a lump of clay." At any rate, what warmth there was in his nature seems to have been spent upon Lady Elizabeth Foster, his wife's close friend, who became his second duchess. He married a child, high-spirited, with a sense of fun, lovely, fond of admiration, and at an age when she needed love and care. She was still studying, and the months , after her marriage were spent at Chatsvvorth and Hardwick with music and drawing and language masters, and a great scheme for studying the history of Greece and France under Louis XIV. at one and the same time, " as these, being so far apart, will not confuse me." Our best picture of the duchess herself comes from her letters to her mother, to whom she was passionately devoted. Indeed. Sir Nathaniel Wraxall, in his dry and rather pompous way, tells us that " to her mother she was attached by more than common filial affection, of which she ex- hibited pecuniary proofs rarely given by a daughter to her parent." Countess Spencer wrote to her in answer to her almost daily letters, and from her motherly admonitions we can learn what a child the young duchess was. After a series of country balls, we find Lady Spencer writing : " Your dresses were very pretty. Why did you not rather dance with some of the gentlemen of the county than with Mr. Wyndham the second night ? " One can quite imagine the lovely duchess preferring brilliant Mr. Wyndham to the fox-hunting " gentlemen of the county." Life in a Free Age The Devonshires came to town in the following year, and she conquered all by her beauty and charm. She became a leader of fashion, and abolished the ridiculous hoop. She became a desperate gamester, and her debts were prodigious. She was also a political power, and a patron of the arts. Among her friends were Fox. Sheridan, and Dr. Johnson — of whom, by the way, she
