Ah, the price of beauty…<\/p>\n
Maria Gunning was born in 1733 to a humble family in central England.\u00a0 But the family soon moved to a meager rental house in Dublin.\u00a0 To help the family get by, Maria and her younger sister Elizabeth worked as actresses in local playhouses, which was a somewhat dubious profession (actresses were often known to make other “professional income” on the side.)\u00a0 But it earned them a little celebrity, and an invitation to a grand ball at Dublin Castle.\u00a0 Unfortunately, they had no dresses sufficient for such an occasion.\u00a0 So they reached out to a local theater manager, who let them pull a few things off his costume rack.\u00a0 Attending the ball dressed as Lady Macbeth and Juliet, Maria and Elizabeth were presented to the Earl of Harrington, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.\u00a0He was so struck by their innocence and beauty he took pity upon the Gunning family and paid for their relocation back to England.<\/p>\n
There the girls were a sensation. They were, in the vernacular of the day, “hotties.”\u00a0 Soon after, they were attending events in London.\u00a0 When they were presented to the Court of St. James, the event was covered by the national newspapers.\u00a0 Pop went the Gunning sisters!\u00a0 Within a year, Elizabeth had married the Duke of Hamilton and had moved to a castle in Scotland.\u00a0 In 1752, Maria bagged an even bigger prize: George William Coventry, the 6th Earl of Coventry, Viscount Deerhurst, Lord Lieutenant of Worcestershire, a Lord of the Bedchamber of King George II and a peer in the House of Lords.\u00a0The couple were married (he was 30, she was 19) and took a honeymoon trip to Paris.\u00a0 When they returned to London, Maria was mobbed by adoring fans, and had to be escorted through Hyde Park by the King’s Guard.\u00a0 She was now regarded as the most beautiful woman in the country.<\/p>\n
But as quickly as the marriage was underway, things got ugly.\u00a0 Maria loved and courted the publicity, but her husband found it vulgar.\u00a0 She would dress up, he would dress her down.\u00a0 She would cover her face in white powder and rouge, he would wipe it off.\u00a0 Maria’s face soon broke out, and she used more makeup to cover it up.\u00a0 Frustrated, George turned his affections to a mistress; Maria turned her affections to her adoring public.\u00a0 She wore gaudier dresses, glitzier jewelry, and more makeup than ever.<\/p>\n
In the end, her vanity proved to be her downfall. \u00a0While still in her mid-twenties, Maria became sick.\u00a0 Doctors were called in, but could not diagnose the cause. \u00a0No amount of costuming or makeup could conceal the fact that she was dying.\u00a0 The papers were soon reporting that she didn’t have long to live.\u00a0 And so it came to pass:\u00a0 250 years ago today, the star who had blazed so brightly across London’s social scene, flamed out at the age of 27.<\/p>\n
The culprit?\u00a0 Well, as Sherlock Holmes might have said, the Makeup Did It.\u00a0 You see, the rouge of the day was based on a lead foundation.\u00a0 All that applying and wiping of toxic lead powder on her face resulted in an acute and fatal case of blood poisoning.<\/p>\n
Maria Gunning, Countess of Coventry:\u00a0 Society superstar, fashion victim.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ah, the price of beauty… Maria Gunning was born in 1733 to a humble family in central England.\u00a0 But the family soon moved to a meager rental house in Dublin.\u00a0 To help the family get by, Maria and her younger sister Elizabeth worked as actresses in local playhouses, which was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[297,417,779,785,1301],"class_list":["post-137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-5","tag-countess-of-coventry","tag-fashion","tag-makeup","tag-maria-gunning","tag-victim"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}