​​my playing card collection
Countess Mary Day von Jenison-Walworth
Mary Day Beauclerc was the illegitimate child of Lady Diana Bolingbroke and Topham Beauclerc (or Beauclerk) and was obviously born with a propensity to shock.
Diana (1734-1808), Mary's mother, was the second daughter of Charles Spencer, 3rd Duke of Marlborough, and a descendant of King Charles II of England and Scotland. She had two sons from a previous marriage to Frederick St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke and she bore another four children with Topham, including Mary and her twin sister Elizabeth. Only one, Charles, was born in wedlock after the couple married in 1768. Their children were:
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The twins had little to do with their mother’s two sons by her first marriage to until in 1787 Mary paid a visit to her half-brother George Richard St John, his wife Charlotte, and their three young children, where she clearly forgot her manners.
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The siblings embarked upon an incestuous relationship and later that same year Mary, George, and Charlotte fled to Paris where Mary gave birth to a son fathered by her half-brother. Her sister-in-law, Charlotte, tried to pass the baby off as her own to avoid a scandal but a second son was born a year later. And in 1789, Mary, pregnant for a third time, her half-brother George, and their two young sons headed yet again for Paris where they intended to live as Mr and Mrs Barton, in exile and in secret, for the rest of their lives.
However the couple’s affair soon became common knowledge and the subject of gossip in court circles and they escaped again to a bolt-hole in Heidleburg, Germany. It was there that, after seven years and four sons, in May 1794, George deserted Mary and the children for a Belgian noblewoman. The resourceful Mary didn’t hang about though. Surprisingly, considering she had four illegitimate sons in tow, she soon found herself a new husband in Heidelberg.
In 1797 Mary became the second wife of Count Franz II von Jenison-Walworth, Grand Chamberlain of the Household to the King of Wurteemburg, and proceeded to have a further four children.
Lady Diana Beauclerc's Two Daughters
A charming study of her daughters, Elizabeth, later Countess of Pembroke in profile, and Mary, later Countess Jenison-Walworth. Drawn by Lady Diana Beauclerc
Engraved by F. Bartolozzi with in etching and stipple. Date: 1780
Mary's mother Diana was an accomplished artist, much admired by Horace Walpole. And it seems that Mary followed in her footsteps. Four of the six sets of transformation cards produced by Johann Friedrich Cotta between 1805 and 1811 are attributed to Countess Jenison-Walworth.
