George III, King of Great Britain, 1738-1820; Great Britain -- History -- George III, 1760-1820
That the King never forgot Lady Sarah Lennox is certain. When at the
theatre he saw Mrs. Pope, who much resembled Lady Sarah, he fell into a
reverie, and, forgetful of the Queen and other persons in his box,
mused: "She is like Lady Sarah still"; while Princess Elizabeth told
Lady Louisa Stuart, "Do you know papa says she (Princess Mary) will be
like Lady Sarah Bunbury, who was the prettiest woman he ever saw in his
life." Lady Sarah was well content with her lot, and, as is well known,
made in 1762 "a match of her own choice" with the sporting baronet, Sir
Thomas Charles Bunbury, and, when this union was dissolved in 1781,
married the Hon. George Napier,[130] and became the mother of eight
children, two of whom, William and Charles, attained distinction as,
respectively, the historian of the Peninsular War and the conqueror of
Scinde.[131] But we have no concern here with the later years of Lady
Sarah, save to remark that she never regretted the loss of the brilliant
position to which she so nearly attained. "I declare that I have for
years reverenced the Queen's name, and admired the judgment of
Providence in placing so exalted a character in a station where my
miserable one would have been a disgrace!" she wrote in 1789 to Lady
Susan O'Brien. "And now I still affirm the judgment of Providence is
always right, but I see she was chosen to punish the poor King's faults
by her ambitions and conduct instead of _me_ by my faults, and I _still_
rejoice I was never Queen, and so I shall to my life's end; for, at the
various events in it, I have regularly catechised myself upon that very
point, and I always preferred my own situation, sometimes happy,
sometimes miserable, to what it would have been had that event ever
taken place." One other quotation from a letter from Lady Sarah to the
same correspondent may perhaps be allowed. "I am one who will keep the
King's marriage-day with unfeigned joy and gratitude to Heaven that I am
not in her Majesty's place! It was the happiest day for me, in as much
[as] I like to attend my dear sick husband better than a King. I like my
sons better than I like the royal sons, thinking them better animals,
and more likely to give me comfort in my old age; and I like better to
be a subject, than subject to the terrors of royalty in these days of
trouble. It's pleasant to have lived to be satisfied of the great
advantages of a lot which in those days I might have deemed unlucky.
Ideas of fifteen and sixty one cannot well assimilate; but mine began
at fourteen, for if you remember I was not near fifteen when my poor
head began to be turned by adulation, in consequence of my supposed
favour. In the year 1759, on the late Princess of Wales's birthday,
November 30, I ought to have been in my nursery, and I shall ever think
it was unfair to bring me into the world while a child. _Au reste_, I am
delighted to hear the King is so well, for I am excessively partial to
him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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