It was a roystering, revelling company; and political as well as personal penury became the portion of many as the result of these improvident and profligate days.  The episode of the Duchess’s career which is most known, is her purchase, by a kiss, of a vote for Fox when she was championing his cause in an election, and canvassing for votes in company with her sister, Lady Duncannon.  It was said, “never before had two such lovely portraits appeared on a canvass.”  A butcher bargained for his vote by asking a kiss from the lovely lips of the seductive Duchess.  The price was paid, amid the plaudits of the crowd.  An Irish elector, impressed by the fair appellant’s vivacity, exclaimed:  “I could light my pipe at her eyes.”

Fox was elected for the Tory borough of Westminster, and great was the rejoicing at Carlton House.  A fete was given on the grounds the day following, and the ordinarily well-apparelled Prince appeared in a superb costume of the radical colors, blue and buff.  This was the period of the Duchess’s greatest glory, as well as of her most superb charm of personality; and it was about this period that Gainsborough painted his perennially delightful presentment of her.  She was then twenty-seven years of age, and had been married ten years.  Wraxall wrote what is probably the best contemporary description of her:  “The personal charms of the Duchess of Devonshire constituted her smallest pretensions to universal admiration; nor did her beauty consist, like that of the Gunnings, in regularity of features, and faultless formation of limbs and shape; it lay in the amenity and graces of her deportment, in her irresistible manners, and the seduction of her society.  Her hair was not without a tinge of red; and her face, though pleasing, yet, had it not been illuminated by her mind, might have been considered an ordinary countenance.”

It is said of Gainsborough that, while painting the Duchess, “he drew his wet pencil across a mouth all thought exquisitely lovely, saying, ‘Her Grace is too hard for me.’”

The lady later knew the cuts of comment, and the keen pain of justifiable jealousy.  The rival in her husband’s attentions was Lady Elizabeth Foster, daughter of the Earl of Bristol, a brunette of handsome presence, and at the death of Georgiana, in 1806, she became the second wife of the Duke.  There was an apparent friendship between the ladies, and Lady Elizabeth for a time lived under the same roof as the Duchess.

Madame d’Arblay, in 1791, visited her at Bath, and made record then of her introduction to the Duchess, and indicated the premonition of trouble in this wise.  “Presently followed two ladies; Lady Spencer, with a look and manner warmly announcing pleasure in what she was doing, then introduced me to the first of them, saying, ’Duchess of Devonshire, Miss Burney.’  She made me a very civil compliment upon hoping my health was recovering; and Lady Spencer then, slightly, and as if unavoidably, said, ‘Lady