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CHAPTER XIII.

HOLLAND HOUSE.

Sir Joshua's Picture-Lady Sarah Lennox and George the Third-Elopement of Lady Susan Strangeways -Charles Fames Fox, Orator and Statesman.

IN the Joshua Room at Holland House, a room hung with the works of the great portrait painter, is a picture of the first Lord Holland. In this portrait the features are coarse but not unpleasing, and the face is full of power. In this room also hangs one of Sir Joshua Reynolds' most famous pictures, containing the portraits of Lady Sarah Lennox (the sister of Lady Holland), who is leaning out of a window at Holland House, and those of her nephew Charles James Fox, and his cousin Lady Susan Strangeways. Each of these persons contributes a link to the chain of Holland House history. To commence with Lady Sarah, who as one of Sir Joshua's favourite sitters,

and also as the most graceful of the three figures, demands primary consideration, even if chronology did not, as it does, furnish another powerful argument in her favour. The great event in Lady Sarah's life is George the Third's attachment for her. In hér childhood she attracted the notice of that monarch's grandfather, George the Second. It is said that the little girl was walking with her aunt and governess in Kensington Gardens on one of the days when the Royal Family promenaded on the broad walk. The little Lady Sarah, with childish näivete, suddenly broke from her conductress and bounding up to the King, asked him in French, how he did, and remarked what a large and beautiful palace he had. George the Second, amused and interested, frequently had the little Lady Sarah brought to the palace for his amusement. On one occasion, so her son tells us, the King in the midst of a romp, caught hold of the little girl and depositing her in a large china jar shut down the cover, while she beguiled her momentary confinement by breaking out into the popular French song of "Malbruc." In consequence of her mother's death she was placed under the charge of her elder sister who re

sided in Ireland, and did not return to Holland House until the age of thirteen. The King soon afterwards expressed a wish to see his little playmate, but was much disappointed to find that the five year old romp had become a demure, timid, though very pretty girl. "Pooh!" said George the Second," she's grown quite stupid." But his grandson and heir, the Prince of Wales, thought otherwise, and fell headlong in love with her, a love which lasted until he became King, when he seems seriously to have thought of making her Queen. Lady Sarah, for whatever reason, does not appear to have encouraged his advances, and his advisers almost unanimously dissuaded him from such an unusual step. Henry Fox, indeed, not yet Lord Holland, hoped that his sister-in-law might become Queen of England. According to Horace Walpole, when he went to the seaside "he left her at Holland House, where she appeared every morning in a field. close to the great road (where the King passed on horseback) in a fancied habit, making hay." But this royal love idyll was soon at an end. King George bebecame the husband of Charlotte of Mecklenburgh Strelitz, and Lady Sarah the wife of the black-leg, Sir

Charles Bunbury, M.P. Lady Sarah was probably the heroine of the song, "On Richmond Hill there lives a lass," and is described by her brother-in-law as being prettier than any other girl he ever saw.

The remaining female figure in Sir Joshua's picture is equally the subject of a Love Romance, and it is again disparity of rank that gives interest to the story, only this time the advantage of position is on the side of the lady. Lady Susan was niece to the first Lord Holland, and spent much of her time at Holland House. Between her and Lady Sarah a great intimacy existed, and on the marriage of George the Third, the latter wrote to her friend to tell her she had luckily never loved but only liked the King, and that the title had never weighed anything with her. When they were both quite young, Walpole gives us an account of some private theatricals at Holland House, in which the two girls and Charles James Fox acted together.

Lady Susan seems to have preserved a penchant for the drama, for not long after the end of the loveepisode between the King and her friend, the world of fashion was startled by the news that Lord Holland's

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niece had eloped with a well-known actor named O'Brien. About a week before this finale, her father, Lord Ilchester, had discovered the attachment. few days later Lady Susan became of age, and on the day following her birthday, walked down stairs accompanied by her footman, and said she was going to breakfast with Lady Sarah. Once in the street she sent back the footman to fetch something she professed to have left behind, saying she would wait until his return. "O'Brien was waiting in a hackney coach, which she got into, and they went to Covent Garden Church and were married." Actors were not much thought of socially in those days, and Horace Walpole declares it would have been better if the man had been what the young lady's grandfather, Stephen Fox, is said to have been, a footman, because actor is too well known to be smuggled in among gentlefolks."

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The married life of the couple, passed in America, was more happy and respectable than that of Lady Sarah and her black-leg baronet. But there was of course an outcry among the fashionables of that age, and a recent authoress, a connection of the Fox's