I was not in safety, neither had I rest, and the trouble came.

The dedication was inscribed: 

   TO PENELOPE

   ONLY CHILD OF SIR BROOKE BOOTHBY AND DAME SUSANNAH BOOTHBY.

   Born April 11th 1785, died March 13th 1791.  She was in form and
   intellect most exquisite The unfortunate parents ventured their all
   in this Frail bark, And the wreck was Total.

The melancholy reference to their having ventured their all bore upon the separation between the father and mother, which immediately followed the child’s death.

The description of the monument reads as follows: 

The figure of the child reclines on a pillowed mattress, her hands resting one upon the other near her head.  She is simply attired in a frock, below which her naked feet are carelessly placed one over the other, the whole position suggesting that in the restlessness of pain she had just turned to find a cooler and easier place of rest.

[Illustration:  PENELOPE.]

Her portrait was painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds, her name appearing in his “Book of Sitters” in July 1788, when she was just over three years of age, and is one of the most famous child-pictures by that great master.  The picture shows Little Penelope in a white dress and a dark belt, sitting on a stone sill, with trees in the background.  Her mittened hands are folded in her lap, and her eyes are demurely cast down.  She is wearing a high mob-cap, said to have belonged to Sir Joshua’s grandmother.

This picture was sold in 1859 to the Earl of Dudley for 1,100 guineas, and afterwards exhibited at Burlington House, when it was bought by Mr. David Thwaites for L20,060.

The model for the famous picture “Cherry Ripe,” painted by Sir John Everett-Millais, was Miss Talmage, who had appeared as Little Penelope at a fancy-dress ball, and it was said in later years that if there had been no Penelope Boothby by Sir Joshua Reynolds, there would have been no “Cherry Ripe” by Sir John Everett-Millais.

Sir Francis Chantrey, the great sculptor, also visited Ashbourne Church.  His patron, Mrs. Robinson, when she gave him the order to execute that exquisite work, the Sleeping Children, in Lichfield Cathedral, expressly stipulated that he must see the figure of Penelope Boothby in Ashbourne Church before he began her work.  Accordingly Chantrey came down to the church and completed his sketch afterwards at the “Green Man Inn,” working at it until one o’clock the next morning, when he departed by the London coach.

Ashbourne is one of the few places which kept up the football match on Shrove Tuesday, a relic probably of the past, when the ball was a creature or a human being, and life or death the object of the game.  But now the game was to play a stuffed case or the biggest part of it up and down the stream, the Ecclesbourne, until the mill at either limit of the town was reached.