I do not know that Lady Cork’s reputation for beauty ever equaled that she had for wit, but when I knew her, at upward of ninety, she was really a very comely old woman.  Her complexion was still curiously fine and fair, and there was great vivacity in her eyes and countenance, as well as wonderful liveliness in her manner.  Her figure was very slight and diminutive, and at the parties at her own house she always was dressed entirely in white—­in some rich white silk, with a white bonnet covered with a rich blonde or lace vail on her head; she looked like a little old witch bride.  I recollect a curious scene my mother described to me, which she witnessed one day when calling on Lady Cork, whom she had known for many years.  She was shown into her dressing-room, where the old lady was just finishing her toilet.  She was about to put on her gown, and remaining a moment without it showed my mother her arms and neck, which were even then still white and round and by no means unlovely, and said, pointing to her maid, “Isn’t it a shame! she won’t let me wear my gowns low or my sleeves short any more.”  To which the maid responded by throwing the gown over her mistress’s shoulders, exclaiming at the same time, “Oh, fie, my lady! you ought to be ashamed of yourself to talk so at your age!”—­a rebuke which the nonagenarian beauty accepted with becoming humility.

The unfortunate propensity of poor Lady Cork to appropriate all sorts of things belonging to other people, valueless quite as often as valuable, was matter of public notoriety, so that the fashionable London tradesmen, to whom her infirmity in this respect was well known, never allowed their goods to be taken to her carriage for inspection, but always exacted that she should come into their shops, where an individual was immediately appointed to follow her about and watch her during the whole time she was making her purchases.

Whenever she visited her friends in the country, her maid on her return home used to gather together whatever she did not recognize as belonging to her mistress, and her butler transmitted it back to the house where they had been staying.  I heard once a most ludicrous story of her carrying off, faute de mieux, a hedgehog from a place where the creature was a pet of the porters, and was running tame about the hall as Lady Cork crossed it to get into her carriage.  She made her poor “Memory” seize up the prickly beast, but after driving a few miles with this unpleasant spiked foot-warmer, she found means to dispose of it at a small town, where she stopped to change horses, to a baker, to whom she gave it in payment for a sponge cake, assuring him that a hedgehog would be invaluable in his establishment for the destruction of black beetles, with which she knew, from good authority, that the premises of bakers were always infested.

The following note was addressed to Lady Dacre on the subject of a pretty piece called “Isaure,” which she had written and very kindly wished to have acted at Covent Garden for my benefit.  It was, however, judged of too slight and delicate a texture for that large frame, and the purpose was relinquished.  I rather think it was acted in private at Hatfield House, Lady Salisbury filling the part of the heroine, which I was to have taken had the piece been brought out at Covent Garden.