Page:Hutton, William Holden - Hampton Court (1897).djvu/322

This page has been validated.
230
HAMPTON COURT

as her picture shows her, beautiful even in old age, she was the mother of the most eminent triad of public servants that the same family ever produced—Richard, the "great proconsul," Arthur, Duke, of Wellington, and Henry, Lord Cowley. Her other children would rank as distinguished were their brothers less famous. The Wellesleys, as they came to call themselves before the end of the century (Richard was matriculated at Christ Church as Wellesley in 1778), soon formed a little colony in the Palace. Another son, Gerald Valerian, who held one of the rich prebends of Durham, was chaplain of the Palace—and a daughter, Lady Anne, had also rooms in what are called "the Queen's half-storey." Years afterwards, in 1843, the beautiful Marchioness of Wellesley received apartments in the Palace. An American lady, whose sisters were Duchess of Leeds and Lady Stafford, she had married the great Marquis in 1825, when he was for the first time Viceroy of Ireland. They had lived happily together till his death in 1842, chiefly in London, in literary society and among old friends. The Marquis's little volume, "Primitiæ et Reliquiæ," published when he had reached the age of eighty, shows the charm of those quiet years; and in the copy which he gave to his wife he wrote Dryden's lines—

"All of a tenour was their after-life,
No day discoloured with domestic strife,
No jealousy, but mutual truth believed,
Secure repose and kindness undeceived."

Lady Wellesley lived till 1853. It is interesting to