Kitty Douglas, duchess of Queensberry
and Dover
Catherine [Kitty] Douglas,
duchess of Queensberry and Dover (1701–1777),
literary patron, was the second daughter of Henry Hyde, second
earl of Rochester, later fourth earl of Clarendon (1672–1754), son of
Laurence Hyde, first earl, and his wife,
Jane Hyde (c.1672–1725), daughter of Sir William Leveson-Gower, though
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu always said that Kitty's real father was
Henry Boyle, first Baron Carleton.
Henry Hyde, Baron Hyde, was her brother. Her mother was a great beauty
and Catherine, usually known as Kitty, was brought up in a household
frequented by literary celebrities such as Alexander Pope and Matthew
Prior. They made much of her, and when she was about sixteen Prior
composed his well-known poem ‘The Female Phaeton: upon Lady Kitty
Hyde's First Appearing in Publick’.
On 10 March 1720 Kitty
married her second cousin
Charles Douglas, third duke of
Queensberry and second duke of Dover (1698–1778), at a magnificent
ceremony in her father's house in Whitehall, London. Both were tall
and slim, Kitty with large brown eyes, fair hair, and a famously
graceful figure. They were a devoted couple. The duke, who had
inherited great wealth when he was only twelve, was a quiet, patient
man, a good listener, and a natural diplomat. This was fortunate, for
Kitty had strong opinions and no hesitation in voicing them. Perhaps
as a reaction to the flattery heaped upon her in her mother's house,
she hated artifice. She could dress magnificently when she chose, but
she rarely wore jewellery, as her portraits show, and she often
startled her friends by appearing at court in the simplest of
garments. She avoided alcohol, loved walking, and was an enthusiastic
planter of trees on her husband's estates. Convinced that she knew
best, she was all too ready to tell other people how they should live
their lives, but in spite of her blunt manner she had a kind heart and
her friends valued her common-sense advice. She and the duke had two
sons, Henry, Lord Drumlanrig, born in 1723, and Charles, born in 1726.
A daughter, Catherine, died in infancy.
The duke was lord of
the bedchamber to George II, and at their London residence,
Queensberry House, their regular guests included Handel, Pope, Prior,
William Kent the architect, Charles Jervas the painter, and John Gay
the playwright. When, in 1729, Gay was refused a licence for
Polly, a sequel to his immensely
successful Beggar's Opera, Kitty took up
his cause, quarrelled with the lord chamberlain, offended the king,
and was ordered to withdraw from court. London society was horrified
at her temerity, but the duke stood by her and resigned his
appointment as vice-admiral of Scotland, despite the king's kindly
urgings that he should stay on. When Gay fell ill, Kitty took him in
and nursed him tenderly. The duke and duchess, he told Swift, could
not have treated him more kindly had he been their nearest relative.
On his death in 1732 they arranged his magnificent funeral in
Westminster Abbey and put up a monument by Rysbrack, describing him as
‘the warmest friend, the gentlest companion, the most benevolent man’.
For the next fifteen years the duke and duchess divided their time
between Amesbury, their Wiltshire and Oxfordshire estates, and
Drumlanrig Castle, the duke's ancestral home in Dumfriesshire. Kitty
was finally received back at court in 1747. By then her sons were
grown up, but her happy family life was shattered when the recently
married Lord Drumlanrig apparently committed suicide in 1754 while
suffering from depression, and his younger brother died of
tuberculosis the following year. After that, Kitty and the duke
preferred to live quietly at Amesbury. Even in her seventies she was
as tall, upright, and energetic as ever. She died at Queensberry House
in London on 17 July 1777, after a brief illness caused, according to
Horace Walpole, by a surfeit of cherries. Her servants said that she
had been suffering from a chest complaint. She was buried in the
duke's family vault at Durisdeer, near Drumlanrig, Dumfriesshire.
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