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Kitty Hancomb (Photographed from the original Painting)
bust; her eyes have a more glowing tone of colour, they are singularly liquid and melting; her profile is slightly aquiline, and an indescribable expression of finesse and determination lurks about her full but firmly-closed mouth; the carriage of the lady’s head is haughty, and she looks perfectly conscious of her commanding beauty, as, with one slender bloodless hand, she daintily fingers a blue scarf, which falls over the right side of her dusky pink dress. The original of this portrait was, for a short time, the wife of one of my great-uncles, whom I will call Mr. St. George, therefore hers is a family story, which I am often called upon to tell whether in the vein or not; so, once for all, I have resolved to put it on paper, this dreary summer day, when the wind is whistling an autumnal tune, and the leaves and flowers are weeping in the rain, and the air is heavy with the scent of the large white syringa blossoms which are laid in foreign countries about the beloved dead; the monotonous tolling from a distant cemetery falls upon my ear meanwhile, in grave concord with the melancholy weather, and the task to which I have set myself.
On the 11th day of February, 1720, Robert Hancomb, and Judith his wife, brought their little daughter to be baptised, and they gave her the name of Catherine. Her father was a prosperous yeoman, dwelling on a fertile promontory which juts out boldly into the German Ocean. He farmed several hundred acres of the best corn lands in England; they are salted by the sea fogs, and a tract of marine marshes lies beyond, where his cattle fed, and the plovers grey and golden came in autumn, and long strings of wild fowl alighted in frosty nights—the wild white swans, and dun birds were among them, and the heavy black geese. A picturesque old manor house was the residence of the occupying tenant of this great farm; it is built of dark bricks, with curious round gables, and a tiled roof. On one side, among a few fine elms, stands the parish church, at a considerable distance from the village and parsonage to which it belongs. On the other is the old-fashioned plentiful kitchen-garden, with sunny fruitful walls, and a many-coloured margin of well-known English flowers, while the wealthy stackyard, and extensive range of farm-buildings are grouped on a green opposite the house.
The happiest and most innocent years of Kitty Hancomb’s life were spent in this pleasant home, but the old hall, in its most manorial days, had never sheltered a spirit so restless and aspiring as hers. The fame of her great loveliness spread early: before she had advanced far in her teens she was the beauty and popular toast of her agricultural district. The eyes of every man she met paid her the same tacit homage of involuntary admiration; but she looked down upon her equals among the wealthy yeomanry, for her thoughts wandered to the two great houses of the neighbourhood, where “the faithful Commons” were powerfully represented by a selfish placeman, enjoying the most lucrative appointments, of whose character and career we may read in Lord Stanhope’s “Life of Pitt,” and “Selwyn’s Memoirs;” while a great Earl, who descended illegitimately from the Princes of Orange, did the honours for the House of Peers on the same promontory; so, when time went heavily at these fine places, a gay band of guests would sally forth in quest of amusement, and very gallant gentlemen, and ladies, whom Sir Joshua painted, sometimes found their way to the lonely old hall, to gaze at the rare young beauty who blossomed among her native corn fields; and, while they patronised and flattered her, the girl adroitly caught something of their tone and air, as well as the fashion of their dresses. But though the fine gentlemen stared very boldly, and whispered with her when the great ladies were not looking that way, not one of them talked to her of marriage—it remained for that rash step to be taken by the young vicar of a neighbouring parish. He bore the name and arms of a knightly family, now ennobled, and long resident in a midland county: he was the second of three brothers who had received their education at the University of Cambridge, and were afterwards well beneficed clergymen in our Church. When Alexander St. George had resolved on taking so much beauty and restless pride to his retired parsonage, he invited the youngest of his fraternal band to accompany him on one of his visits to Kitty Hancomb.
Now, Maurice St. George was a far shrewder man than Alexander. Though a popular preacher, he enjoyed the reputation of being the best hand at whist in his county: he was a fine scholar, a genial, intelligent bon-vivant. Of course, such a man was the chaplain and intimate friend of the Earl, and the constant guest of the wealthy placeman we have described: his social and literary talents were rewarded by a vicarage, and a rectory, and a prebendal stall; moreover, he had himself made a prudent marriage; there-