I hate Southwell
.
Yours, etc.
Lady Eleanor Butler (c. 1745-1829), sister of the seventeenth Earl of Ormonde, and Sarah Ponsonby (circ. 1755-1831), cousin of the Earl of Bessborough, were the two "Ladies of the Vale," or "Ladies of Llangollen." About the year 1779 they settled in a cottage at Plasnewydd, in the Vale of Llangollen, where they lived, with their maidservant, Mary Caryll, for upwards of half a century. They are buried, with their servant, in the churchyard of Plasnewydd, under a triangular pyramid. Though they had withdrawn from the world, they watched its proceedings with the keenest interest.
"If," writes Mrs. Piozzi, from Brynbella, July 9, 1796, "Mr. Bunbury's Little Gray Man is printed, do send it hither; the ladies at Llangollen are dying for it. They like those old Scandinavian tales and the imitations of them exceedingly; and tell me about the prince and princess of this loyal country, one province of which alone had disgraced itself"
(
Life and Writings of Mrs. Piozzi
, vol. ii. p. 234). Nor did they despise the theatre. Charles Mathews (