Page:The house of Cecil.djvu/274

 238 THE CECILS

picture of her drawn by Creevey on the occasion of a visit of the Dowager to Stoke in 1828 :

" Old Salisbury arrived yesterday ... in her accus- tomed manner, in a phaeton drawn by four long-tail black Flanders mares. She driving the wheel horses and a postilion on the leaders with two outriders on correspond- ing longtail blacks. Her man and maid were in her chaise behind, her groom and saddle horses arrived some time after her. It is impossible to do justice to the antiquity of her face. If as alleged she is only 74 years old [she was 77], it is the most cracked or rather furrowed piece of mosaic you ever saw ; but her dress, in the colours of it at least, is absolutely infantine. ... I wish you just saw her as I do now. She thinks she is alone, and I am writing at the end of the adjoining room, the folding doors being open. She is reclining on a sofa, reading the Edinburgh Review, without spectacles or glass of any kind. Her dress is white muslin, properly loaded with garniture, and she has just put off a very large bonnet, profusely gifted with bright lilac ribbons, leaving on her head a very nice lace cap, not less adorned with the brightest yellow ribbons."

But it was not only as a society leader that Lady Salisbury was famous. She achieved perhaps even greater renown in the hunting field. In early life she hunted with the Quorn hounds, which belonged to the celebrated Hugh Meynell, of Quorndon Hall. In those days foxhunting was in its infancy, and she was one of the first English ladies to devote herself to the sport. In 1793 she became Mistress of the Hertfordshire Hounds called the Hatfield Hounds during her reign and hunted with them regularly until her

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