Thus, at the age of eighteen, she received from a playful remark her first incentive to take up that serious study of art in which she attained such eminence. Her portrait by Cosway, which hung at Strawberry Hill, shows her to have been of a beautiful and refined appearance, with something of genius in the pretty oval face and the look of mastery in the very hands which grasp the chisel and mallet as she leans upon the pedestal of a completed bust. Gay and witty in society, she yet had opinions of her own which she held with good reason and would not lose. She was especially well read, and in all ways was fitted to adorn any circle of society in which the wits and queens made merry sport or discussed, in heavier moments, questions of import and weight. However, the remark of Hume, which led her to retire by herself and practise with wax and clay, was the means of deciding her to devote herself with assiduity to what was now a chosen profession. Her first production Hume laughed at, and told her that to model in yielding substances was a very different thing from chiselling in marble. After an argument with her obstinate critic, she decided to attempt some work in marble, and, procuring tools and the stone, she set to work privately upon her task. Having ample means at her command, she was able to have the best of instruction, and very soon she became the pupil of Ceracchi and Bacon, the former being her instructor in modelling, and the latter in the use of the chisel. Ceracchi lost his life for plotting against Napoleon, and Bacon made a justly celebrated monument to Lord Chatham, which is in Westminster Abbey. Cruikshank, too, was one of her teachers, and from him she learned enough of anatomy to draw figures with accuracy. Married at nineteen to George Darner, a young and foolish spendthrift, whose chief pleasure lay in appearing in three new suits a day, her married life was not pleasant; but she bore with her husband's folly, while losing the love he had at first enkindled. Things went from bad to worse with him and he blew his brains out in August, 1776, at the Bedford Arms, leaving a wardrobe worth some 140,000. With renewed interest his widow turned her attention to her art, and travelled extensively on the Continent in order to study the best models. A number of her groups of animals, Walpole chivalrously declared to be equal to those of the ancient masters, and Darwin wrote the following lines, which may be taken to express the common opinion of this gifted lady of noble rank. " Long with soft touch shall Darner's chisel charm, With grace delight us, and with beauty warm; Forster's fine form shall hearts unborn engage, And Melbourne's smile enchant another age." Mrs. Darner was greatly interested in the ideas of that peculiar person, Charles James Fox, who, in spite of his widely known habits and his unpleasant appearance and manners, could be so fascinating to the fair sex, and she with other noble women, dressed in the Continental colors of blue and buff (in which Fox then appeared in the House of Commons), went forth electioneering for the champion of the liberties of the American colonists. In 1797, upon the death of Walpole, Mrs. Damer entered into possession of Strawberry Hill, and here gathered about her those friends she admired and loved. Among the amusements of the place, amateur theatricals held no unimportant part, and in them Mrs. Damer showed herself to have considerable ability. For a full score of years she occupied the charming old estate and had for her particular friends the Misses Berry and the widow of David Garrick. Among her famous works of sculpture are a statue of George III. and a bust of Nelson. Very fittingly does her delightful book-plate commemorate her achieve- ments in her art, and very properly is it given a choice place among the treasures of the collector.
Very suggestive of this delightful plate of Anna Darner is the plate of Charles Hoare, Esq., of whom and whose plate, however, but little is known. The design cannot but suggest the pencil of Agnes Berry, nor is the engraving not unlike to that of Legat, who engraved the other. In this plate, which is enclosed within an oval frame, a muse, presumably Calliope, sits in an attitude of reflection before a marble monument upon which stands a bust of Homer, which is evidently from a well-known marble of antique workmanship, and upon the side of which are the arms of the said Charles Hoare. The family of Hoare has attained prominence in art and letters through several of its members, and it may very possibly be that this plate belonged to the half-brother of that Sir Richard Colt Hoare who wrote the Ancient and Modern History of Wiltshire. Charles James Fox used a book-plate also. In the inscription he terms himself the Honorable, etc., showing that the plate was made previous to his appointment as Secretary of State in 1782, which office he held but a few months on account of the death of the premier, Rockingham. His plate is of the ordinary sort used by the folk of his day, and of no interest save for the accident of ownership.
There is a bit of a record preserved regarding some books from the cabinet of the gay actress Peg Woffington. There was a library sold in England somewhere in the early forties in which several of her books were dispersed. Among the interesting items was this of a religious character, Catechisme du Diocese de Boulogne, Boulogne, 1730. Not only does this item from the sale catalogue interest us because of its remarkable ownership, but more particularly because of the delicious scribbling in the hand of the fair Margaret herself which several pages reveal and which reads as follows : -
Miss Woffington, her book, God give her grace therein to look. Ce livre appartien a Mademoiselle Woffington.
Garrick, who survived the fascinating performer some thirty odd years, became possessor of this volume and regarded it with no little affection as a juvenile book of his favorite Peggy. It will be interesting to note that at this sale the book mentioned brought only seven shillings and sixpence, and that a second one owned by the same fair reader and which had her autograph within its covers brought but two shillings.
Another plate, which must be grouped with those which draw some interest from the association of their owners with Horace Walpole, is that of Lady Hervey, the "fair Molly Lepel" of the ballad written by Lords Chesterfield and Bath. In itself the plate attracts no particular notice, as is the case with many a book-plate; but when one knows something of the story of the times and the society in which Lady Hervey moved, even so small a bit as this receives its quota of value. The plate is armorial in form with the motto, Je n'oublierai jamais, on a ribbon below. The name Mary, Lady Hervey, is below this again. Lady Hervey was one of those three Marys — Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Mary Bellenden, and Mary Lepell—who were so famous for their beauty, their intelligence, their wit, and their savoir faire: women of the gay and fashionable world they were and they wielded the powers granted them over no small or insignificant number of adherents. Upon Lady Hervey's death in 1768, Walpole wrote more feelingly than was his wont upon such occasions. The following extract is from his voluminous letters : -
" My Lady Hervey, one of my great friends, died in my absence. She is a great loss to several persons: her house was one of the most agreeable in London, and her own friendliness and amiable temper had attached all that knew her. Her sufferings with the gout and rheumatism were terrible, and never could affect her patience or divert her attention from her friends."
One of the treasures of Strawberry Hill was a portrait of Lady Hervey by Allan Ramsay, in which she is represented in what was probably her ordinary dress, laced in front, a fichu of muslin upon the shoulders, the sleeves falling in abundant folds over the arms but being caught back at the elbow. There is a hood upon the head tied becomingly under the chin with a tiny ribbon. The expression is attractive, while the features cannot be called perfect.
In the year 1758 Walpole printed at the Strawberry Hill Press a thin volume called An Account of Russia as it was in the Year 1770, by Charles Lord Whitworth, and among his letters to Lady Hervey is one dated October 17 of that year, in which, towards the end, he says: "A book has been left at your house. It is Lord Whitworth's account of Russia." It so happens that through the generosity of a book-collector now dead, a large number of choice books from his collection were left to the Watkinson Library of Hartford, Conn., and among them is the very copy of this book which Walpole presented to Lady Hervey. Her book-plate is still intact upon the front cover, and what is perhaps of even greater interest and importance in establishing the identity of the book, the name M. Hervey is written by Walpole himself in two places, once upon the cover above the bookplate and again on the title-page. This volume, the fifth issue of the famous press, thus bears an added value to the book-lover. The name of the former owner of this precious volume, George D. Sargeant, is also penned upon the title-page. Mary Berry, the eldest of the " twin wives " of Horace Walpole, had a charming little book-plate the design of which Walpole himself must have had something to do with. It represents a strawberry plant with the motto, Inter folia frucfus, and the name under it. The choice of this design for her book-plate is, of course, in plain allusion to her home and her name, and it calls to mind at once that verse from a poem which Walpole addressed to her, and which he himself printed upon his press, having it ready for the sisters to see as a surprise when he took them out to see the press-room.
" To Mary's lips has ancient Rome
Her purest language taught;
And from the modern city home
Agnes its pencil brought.
" Rome's ancient Horace sweetly chants
Such maids with lyric fire;
Albion's old Horace sings nor paints,
He only can admire.
" Still would his press their fame record,
So amiable the pair is!
But, ah ! how vain to think his word
Can add a straw to Berry's."
The interesting history of the delightful Countess of Blessington is brought to mind by a very unobtrusive little book-plate which occupies the corner of a page in the album which contains most of the plates these pages describe. There is simply the coronet of the earl and the letters, M. B. When one thinks of the books in which these plates were placed and of the hands which may have handled them, when he recalls the visitors they looked down upon from their shelves in Gore House and the conversations carried on before them, as if they had no life, he regards the plate with something more than interest. Perhaps the very hands, the models of whose beauty in wax, ivory, and marble were to be seen at that house in Kensington Gore, had deftly pasted these bits of paper within the covers of the precious volumes. Here to this house, once the residence of William Wilberforce, where the rooms were large and lofty and whose garden was one of extraordinary beauty, with its extensive lawns, its terraces, and its flower-pots, came such people as the Prince Louis Napoleon, then a refugee; Count d'Orsay of course, who indeed made the place his home in order, for one reason, to escape the punishment due him for contracting debts amounting to $500,000; the old friend of Lady Blessington, the Countess Guiccioli, no longer the charming creature who captivated the famous poet; Dickens, and John Forster. Misfortune overtook Lady Blessing- ton, and her house was sold under the hammer, the price it brought just about paying her debts, which amounted to some $60,000. She went to Paris, where the d'Orsays and the Countess Guiccioli, now the wife of the Marquis de Boissy, an old French nobleman who boasted of his wife's intimacy with Byron, received her kindly. When she died in 1839, d'Orsay raised a beautiful mausoleum in her memory in the churchyard of Chambourcy pres de St. Ger-main-en-Laye. The ground around it was covered with turf and ivy brought from her old home, and within were two sarcophagi, one for her and the other for d'Orsay, who survived her but three years.


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