Notes and Queries, Vol. V, Number 120, February 14, 1852 / A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc.

When found, make a note of. —CAPTAIN CUTTLE.
VOL. V.—No. 120.
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 14. 1852.
Price Fourpence. Stamped Edition, 5 d.
Transcriber's Note: Ϲ (Greek Capital Lunate Sigma Symbol) rather than Σ has been used in some words to reproduce the characters exactly; Hebrew characters have been represented as printed.
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I feel much obliged to J. H. M., who writes from Bath, and has directed my attention to Horace Walpole's minute inquiry respecting the Old Countess of Desmond, as also to Pennant's Tours, all which I have had opportunity of examining since I wrote to you last. The references do not incline me to alter one word of the opinion I have ventured as to the identity of this lady; on the contrary, with the utmost respect for his name and services to the cause of antiquarian research, I propose to show that Horace Walpole (whose interest in the question was, by his own confession, but incidental, and ancillary to his historic inquiries into the case of Richard III., and who had no direct data to go on) knew nothing of the matter, and was quite mistaken as to the individual.
Before I proceed on this daring undertaking, I beg to say, that an inspection of Pennant's print, called The Old Countess of Desmond, satisfies me that it is not taken from a duplicate picture of that in possession of the Knight of Kerry: though there certainly is a resemblance in the faces of the two portraits, yet the differences are many and decisive. Pennant says that there are four other pictures in Great Britain in the same dress, and without any difference of feature, besides that at Dupplin Castle, from which his print was copied; but that of the Knight of Kerry must be reckoned as a sixth portrait, taken at a much more advanced period of life: in it the wrinkles and features denote extreme old age. The head-dresses are markedly different, that of Pennant being a cloth hood lying back from the face in folds; in the Knight of Kerry's, the head-dress is more like a beaver bonnet standing forward from the head, and throwing the face somewhat into shade. In Pennant's, the cloak is plainly fastened by leathern strap, somewhat after the manner of a laced shoe; in the other, the fastening is a single button: but the difference most marked is this, that the persons originally sitting for these pictures, looked opposite ways, and, of course, presented different sides to the painter. So that, in Pennant's plate, the right side-face is forward; and in the other, the left: therefore, these pictures are markedly and manifestly neither the same, nor copies either of the other.