Page:Wives of the prime ministers, 1844-1906.djvu/160

WIVES OF THE PRIME MINISTERS Cowper. She gave up the house in Piccadilly, and Bulwer Lytton sold her Breadalbane House, 21 Park Lane, where she settled in February 1866. She was now seventy-eight, almost unaltered in appearance, indeed a very handsome old lady, and, though subdued at times, she preserved her cheerful spirits. Age had not dulled her sensibility nor her susceptibility to impressions of more than ordinary keenness. She took the same vivid interest as of old in things and in people. Very rarely did she show any sign of the despondency common to age. In thanking Abraham Hayward for his pamphlet on the Junius Letters, a subject in which she had always taken great interest, she wrote: "There are so many disagreeable things nowadays in every way that it is pleasant to be able to take shelter in the past." She liked at all times to surround herself with young and pretty people. The very year of her death she would go to her grandson Jocelyn's room between eleven and twelve at night, taking with her the Times or some other newspaper, and read out to him long speeches without spectacles, with only a couple of candles for light. She was keenly opposed to Gladstone's Bill for the 128