The Ladies

The Ladies, by E. Barrington

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Ladies, by E. Barrington
Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.
This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project
Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the
header without written permission.
Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the
eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is
important information about your specific rights and restrictions in how
the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a
donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved.
**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since
1971**
*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of
Volunteers!*****
Title: The Ladies A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty
Author: E. Barrington
Release Date: July, 2005 [EBook #8434] [Yes, we are more than one
year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on July 10, 2003]
Edition: 10

Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-Latin-1
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
LADIES ***

Produced by Curtis A. Weyant and The Online Distributed
Proofreading Team

[Illustration: Elizabeth Duchess of Hamilton and Argyle née Gunning]
"The Ladies"
A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty
by
E. Barrington
Illustrated with Portraits

Preface

The aim of these stories is not historical exactitude nor unbending
accuracy in dates or juxtaposition. They are rather an attempt to
re-create the personalities of a succession of charming women, ranging
from Elizabeth Pepys, wife of the Diarist, to Fanny Burney and her
experiences at the Court of Queen Charlotte. As I have imagined them,
so I have set them forth, and if what is written can at all revive their
perished grace and the unfading delight of days that now belong to the
ages, and to men no more, I shall not have failed. Much is imagination,
more is truth, but which is which I scarcely can tell myself. I have

wished to set them in other circumstances than those we know.
What would Elizabeth Pepys have felt if she had read the secrets of the
Diary? If Stella and Vanessa had met--Ah, that is a tenderness and
terror almost beyond all thinking! How would my Lady Mary's
smarting pride have blistered herself and others if the Fleet marriage of
her eccentric son-- whose wife she never saw--had actually come
between the wind and her nobility? Was there no finer, more ethereal
touch in Elizabeth Gunning's stolen marriage with her Duke than is
recorded in Horace Walpole's malicious gossip? Could such beauty
have been utterly sordid? What were the fears and hopes of the lovely
Maria Walpole as, after long concealment of her marriage, she
trembled on the steps of a throne? How did those about her judge of
Fanny Burney in the Digby affair? Did she wholly conceal her heart?
From her Diary we know what she wished to feel--very certainly not
entirely what she felt.
Perhaps of all these women we know best that Elizabeth who never
lived-- Elizabeth Bennet. She is the most real because her inner being is
laid open to us by her great creator. I have not dared to touch her save
as a shadow picture in the background of the quiet English country-life
which now is gone for ever. But her fragrance--stimulating rather than
sweet, like lavender and rosemary--could not be forgotten in any
picture of the late eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries and among
the women whom all the world remembers. They, one and all, can only
move in dreamland now. Their lives are but stories in a printed book,
and a heroine of Jane Austen's is as real as Stella or the fair Walpole.
So I apologise for nothing. I have dreamed. I may hope that others will
dream with me.
E. BARRINGTON

Table of Contents

I. The Diurnal of Mrs Elizabeth Pepys Had she Read her Husband's

Diary
II. The Mystery of Stella Why might not she and Vanessa have met?
III. My Lady Mary To Dispel the Mystery of Lady Mary Wortley
Montagu's quitting England in 1739
IV. The Golden Vanity A Story of the First Irish Beauties--the
Gunnings
V. The Walpole Beauty A Tale in Letters about Maria Walpole,
Countess of Waldegrave, Duchess of Gloucester, Niece of Horace
Walpole
VI. A Blue Stocking at Court Why Fanny Burney, Madame D'Arblay,
retired from Court in 1791
VII. The Darcys of Rosing A Reintroduction to some of the characters
of Miss Austen's Novels

Illustrations

Elizabeth Cunning Portrait by Catherine Reed
Mrs Pepys