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MARY BELLENDEN.

Daughter of the second Lord Bellenden.-At an early age appointed Maid of Honour to the Princess of Wales.-Her great vivacity and wit.-Horace Walpole's description of her. -Extract from Gay's "Welcome to Pope."- George the Second's admiration of her.-Anecdotes.-Her private marriage in 1720 to Colonel Campbell, afterwards Duke of Argyle. Specimen of her epistolary style from the Suffolk Correspondence.-Period of her death.-Enumeration of her

family.

THIS lively and beautiful woman was a daughter of John, second Lord Bellenden, by Mary, daughter of Henry Moore, first Earl of Drogheda, and widow of William Ramsay, third Earl of Dalhousie. At an early age she was appointed a Maid of Honour to Queen Caroline, then Princess of Wales, at whose Court, with the single exception of her beautiful friend, Mary Lepel, there was no one who rivalled her in wit, and few who approached her in loveliness. The names of the two friends are frequently associated together. Gay says, in his ballad of "Damon and Cupid:"

"So well I'm known at Court,

None ask where Cupid dwells;

But readily resort,

To Bellenden's or Lepel's."

Horace Walpole speaks of Miss Bellenden, as having been "exquisitely beautiful"; and, in noticing various persons connected with the Court of George the First, he observes,-" Above all, for universal admiration, was Miss Bellenden. Her face and person were charming; lively she was almost to étourderie, and so agreeable was she, that I never heard her mentioned afterwards by one of her contemporaries, who did not prefer her as the most perfect creature they ever knew." Gay in his "Welcome to Pope from Greece," commemorates her with her sister Margaret :

"Madge Bellenden, the tallest of the land,

And smiling Mary, soft and fair as down."

And as regards her character for liveliness, we find in a ballad of the period:

"But Bellenden we needs must praise,

Who, as down stairs she jumps,
Sings 'over the hills and far away',
Despising doleful dumps."

George the Second, when Prince of Wales, is said to have entertained a stronger passion for Miss Bellenden, than he had been known to feel for any other woman other woman except his own wife. "Miss Bellenden," says Walpole, " by no means felt a reciprocal passion. The Prince's gallantry was by no means delicate; and his avarice disgusted her. One evening, sitting by her, he took out his purse, and counted his money. He repeated the numeration: the giddy Bellenden lost her patience, and cried out,

-Sir, I cannot bear it if you count your money any more, I will go out of the room :' the chink of the gold did not tempt her more than the person of his Royal Highness."

On another occasion, when the Prince was counting his money in her presence, her feelings of disgust are said so entirely to have mastered her respect for royalty, that, by a sudden motion, either of her foot, or hand, she scattered his guineas about the floor, and contrived to escape from the apartment while he was eagerly employed in picking them up. Nor are these the only evidences of the slighting manner in which she treated her royal lover. In one of her letters to Mrs. Howard, speaking of the recent introduction of a new maid of honour at Court, she says: "I hope you will put her a little in the way of behaving before the Princess, such as not turning her back and one thing runs mightily in my head, which is, crossing her arms, as I did to the Prince, and told him I was not cold, but I liked to stand so."*

At the period when Miss Bellenden was subjected to the addresses of the Prince, her heart was engaged to another. This circumstance was subsequently discovered by the Prince, who, however, with much generosity of feeling, assured her that if she would promise not to marry without his knowledge he would not only consent to the match, but would extend his regard

* Suffolk Correspondence, vol. i. p. 62.

to her husband. Miss Bellenden gave the required promise, but without discovering the name of her lover. It seems, however, that she subsequently repented of the pledge, and fearing lest the Prince should throw some insurmountable obstacle in the way of her marriage, privately gave her hand to Colonel John Campbell, afterwards fourth Duke of Argyle, to whom she was married in 1720.

The Prince was naturally provoked and annoyed at this implied suspicion of his good faith; so much so, that whenever Mrs. Campbell entered the drawing-room at Leicester House, it was his custom to step up to her and whisper some unpleasant reproach in her ear. His anger, however, was certainly not extended towards her husband. He not only retained him in his post of groom of the bed-chamber, but continued him in the appointment on his own accession to the throne.

A few of Mrs. Campbell's letters have recently been published among the Suffolk Correspondence; but, in regard to the wit which might have been expected from the character of the writer, they are even more disappointing than those of her beautiful friend, Mary Lepel. these letters, the following one, though somewhat tainted by the indelicacy of the age, affords the liveliest, and, unquestionably, the most characteristic specimen :

Of

To MRS. HOWARD.

"O Gad, I am so sick of bills,

“Bath, 1720.

for my part I believe I shall never be able to hear them mentioned without casting up my accounts:bills are accounts, you know. I do not know how your bills go in London, but I am sure mine are not dropped, for I have paid one this morning as long as my arm, and as broad as my

I intend to send you a letter of attorney, to enable you to dispose of my goods before I can leave this place-such is my condition. I was in hopes to have found the good effects of your present; but I have found nothing to brag of but your goodness, which is always more than my desert. I am just a-going to the King's gardenI wish to God it belonged to my Lord Mayor, as the saying is. Pray give my duty to my grandmother, and tell her I love her, and wish her the desert of the good, and prosperity of the wicked. My dear Howard, God bless you, and send health and liberty. Don't show this, I charge you, at your peril."

Of Mrs. Campbell, from the period of her marriage, we know little but that she maintained her character for good sense and unspotted virtue. Of the date of her decease also we have no record, but it would seem that her existence was scarcely prolonged beyond middle age. By Colonel Campbell, she was the mother of five children:-John, fifth Duke of Argyle;

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