This much at least is certain, that no man ever had a nobler or more devoted wife. She survived him to witness the glories and almost the death of her second son, dying in April 1808. At Orwell there is a picture of her by Gainsborough, painted in 1747, dressed in white with jewels, with a pleasant rather than a beautiful face. There is another portrait at Chevening painted in 1750, which represents her with auburn hair, a long upper lip, and a nose slightly turned up; comely and intelligent, but no more. Mrs. Montagu rather confirms this impression: 'I believe Lady Hester Grenville is very good-humoured, which is the principal article in the happiness of the Marriage State. Beauty soon grows familiar to the lover,'[267] and so forth; from which we may infer that Lady Hester was not at any rate a reigning toast. Her appearances are rare but full of tenderness; she watched over her husband with exquisite devotion; furthering and anticipating his wishes, which were often fanciful and extravagant; shielding his moments of nervous prostration with the wings of an angel. On her rested often, if not always, the care of his affairs, often, if not always, disordered, and all the burdens of household management. For many months she was his sole channel of communication with the outer world. The wives of statesmen are not invariably successful, though they are generally devoted; but none was ever more absorbed in her high but harassing duty. In all the bitterness of that bitter time, when her husband seemed surrounded by implacable enmities, no one found a word to say against her. Pitt's choice seems to have been as wise as it was deliberate. Camelford, from whom the worst interpretation can always be obtained, says: 'His marriage was unexpected. He was no longer young, and his infirmities made him older than his years, when, upon a visit to Mr. Grenville at Wotton, Lady Hester made an impression upon him that was the more extraordinary as she was by no means new to him. The first hints he gave of his intentions were eagerly seized by her, saying she should be unworthy the honour he proposed to her if she could hesitate a moment in accepting it. With a very common understanding and totally devoid of tenderness, or of any feeling but pride and ambition, she contrived to make herself a good wife to him by a devotion and attachment that knew no bounds. She lived only in his glory, and that vanity absorbed every other idea of her mind. She was his nurse, his flatterer, his housekeeper and steward, and, though her talent was by no means economy, yet she could submit to any privation that would gratify his wants or his caprices. If he loved anyone it must be her who had no love but for him, or rather for his reputation. Yet I saw no sacrifices on his part for her ease and quiet or to the essential comforts of her life.'