  "'Tis a warm day," remarks George Selwyn in a letter to Lord Carlisle, "and someone proposes a stroll to Betty's front shop; suddenly the cry is raised, 'The Gunnings are coming,' and we all tumble out to gaze and to criticize." The two lovely sisters from Roscommon in Ireland, introduced by their beauty, were the sensation of fashionable England in 1751. Maria, a year the elder, was the more dashing and at first the more conspicuous of the two. She became Countess of Coventry, and died at twenty-seven. Elizabeth married the Duke of Hamilton, after his death, refused the Duke of Bridgewater, but later married the Duke of Argyll. Four of her children were Dukes, two of Hamilton and two of Argyll. So much Irish luck and beauty kept the Gunnings constantly in the centre of court affairs. A poem celebrating their conquests was entitled, "The Grand Contest between the Fair Hibernians and the English Toasts." The Queen of the Bluestockings said of them, when she saw them together, "Indeed very handsome; nonpareille, for the sisters are just alike take them together, and there is nothing like them." |
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