Horace Walpole was convinced that even the Gunnings envied the beauty of Maria Walpole, his niece. "Yesterday," he writes, "t'other famous Gunning dined there. She has made a friendship with my charming niece, to disguise her jealousy." To the surprise of all London, Maria, daughter of Sir Edward Walpole and Maria Clements, married the Earl of Waldegrave, "for character and credit the first match in England." At her husband's death, she refused the Duke of Portland, but secretly married the Duke of Gloucester, brother to the King. Her admirers point out the romance of her fortunes--how she was daughter of a milliner, granddaughter of a great Prime Minister, widow of an Earl, wife of a Duke, sister-in-law to the King, mother of the three ladies Waldegrave, and, in her second marriage, mother of Prince William and the Princess Sophia.

Sir Joshua Reynolds made seven portraits of the lovely "Walpole Beauty." Years afterward, when he was at work on his famous painting of her three daughters, Walpole begged him to pose them "as the three Graces, adorning a bust of the Duchess as the Magna Mater." "But," adds the veteran of Strawberry Hill, with what resignation he can muster, "my ideas were not adopted."

Maria Walpole, Countess of Waldegrave and her daughter Elizabeth Laura afterwards Countess of Waldegrave.
Maria Walpole, Countess of Waldegrave and her daughter Elizabeth Laura afterwards Countess of Waldegrave.