Page:Hannah More (1887 Charlotte Mary Yonge British).djvu/38

26 "Nine," as uniting all the nine Muses in one, was Garrick's pet name for the lady. It was a wonderful season for her, though one drawback to her good taste was the style of dress, which it was necessary in some degree to follow. She writes: "Some ladies carry on their heads a large quantity of fruit, and yet they would despise a poor useful member of society who carried it there for the purpose of selling it. Some, at the back of their perpendicular caps, hang three or four ostrich feathers of different colours."

Surely Hannah must have concocted with Garrick the head-dress with which he put these enormities out of fashion by appearing on the stage in the character of Sir John Brute with a whole kitchen garden on his head, including glass cucumber frames, and a pendant carrot at each ear.

He had sold the patent of Drury Lane, and was going through all his great parts for the last time. To his devoted admirer, Hannah, the sight appeared, she said, "like assisting at the funeral obsequies of the poets who had conceived them"; but she wrote some lively verses in the character of Dragon, the watchdog at Mr. Garrick's house at Hampton, describing his pleasure in his master's return.

Since Hannah More had become famous, her father's Norfolk relations recollected her existence, and she was invited to pay a visit to a family named Colton, living at Bungay. There she found even the London ladies'