Page:Notable Irishwomen.djvu/30

 Arcadia." The enthusiasm about her beauty still continued. When she visited York, seven hundred people sat up all night to see her get into her post-chaise next morning, and a shoe-maker at Worcester made two guineas and a half in pennies by exhibiting her Grace's shoe to an admiring public.

Lady Coventry, meanwhile, distinguished herself by her silliness as well as by her beauty. She had a perfect genius for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. When the King (George II.) asked her if she were not sorry that there were no more masquerades, she answered, "No, she was tired of them, but there was one thing she did want to see—a coronation!" The King used to tell this story himself with much amusement.

Mrs. Delany, writing in 1754, gives a vivid pen and ink sketch of Lady Coventry's appearance. "Yesterday, after chapel, the Duchess of Portland brought Lady Coventry to feast me, and a feast she was! She is a fine figure, and vastly handsome, notwithstanding a silly look sometimes about her mouth. She has a thousand airs, but with a sort of innocence that diverts one. Her dress was a black silk sack, made for a large hoop, which she wore without any, and it trailed a yard on the ground; she had on a cobweb laced handkerchief, a pink satin long cloak, lined with ermine, mixed with squirrel skins; on her head a French cap, that just covered the top of her head, of blonde,