Aristocrats (64 page)

Charles Bunbury with a wild and haunted look in the year his marriage collapsed: a print after Reynolds.

The châteaux at Aubigny to which Emily and Ogilvie retreated from the fray in 1776.

William Ogilvie in his mid fifties, stern and unbending, sketched by his son-in-law, Charles Lock about 1795.

Emily, painted by Reynolds about the time of her second marriage.

‘Til I was past 36 I never knew what
real happiness
was’: Sarah in the 1780s.

Sarah’s plans of houses; Celbridge which she and Napier bought in 1787 and Moldcomb on the Goodwood estate.

George Napier, short sighted but ‘the most perfect made man’.

The third Duke of Richmond by Romney in 1777: political differences (and with Sarah, money) were beginning to strain family relations.

An entry from Caroline’s journal of 1768: her sons teased her about her illegible handwriting.

Emily’s hand remained exquisite all her life. This note was written to her great niece, Ste’s daughter Caroline Fox.

Louisa’s open unpretentious hand from a letter written when she was 74, also to Caroline Fox.

Sarah’s ‘blind’ hand, written on ‘carbonic’ paper using a spcial machine that kept the lines straight.

Fox, a Jacobin Macbeth is refusing to take responsibility for corrupting the Irish rebels.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the staff of the following libraries, record offices and archives, without whom my research would not have been possible: the Bodleian Library, Oxford, the British Library, Cork University Library, the Photographic Survey in the Courtauld Institute, the Greater London Record Office, the Guildhall Library, the London Library, the Mellon Centre for the Study of British Art, the National Library of Ireland, the National Portrait Gallery, the National Register of Archives, Nottingham University Library, the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, Trinity College Dublin, the West Suffolk Record Office, the Witt Library and the Yale Center for British Art.

Many individuals helped in researching the book and making its writing better and easier. First I must thank Dorothy Porter, whose dramatic rendition of the highlights of Sarah Lennox’s life gave me the germ of the book. Roy Porter’s steady supply of bibliographies and comments have been invaluable: the enthusiasm of both has been unflagging and accompanied with the bonus of multi-coloured Balkan Sobranies. Brian Moore advised me early on to keep my story firmly focused on the sisters’ lives and I have tried to do just that despite the temptations of the lives of Charles James Fox and Lord Edward Fitzgerald that haunted the narrative. Jayne
Lewis read the earliest bits of manuscript and I gratefully absorbed her encouragement. Simon Schama’s enthusiasm and optimism has been like a beacon on the horizon, making me feel that the world of infinite words and boundless confidence is possible; he and Ginny Papaiannou have also been friends and co-conspirators in a host of plans. John Brewer has been everything to me and I am tempted to thank him for cooking, child-minding and proof-reading and to add that without him none of this would have been possible.