Memoirs
, vol. iii. pp. 150, 151), writing from Oswestry, September 4, 1820, says,
"The dear inseparable inimitables, Lady Butler and Miss Ponsonby, were in the boxes here on Friday. They came twelve miles from Llangollen, and returned, as they never sleep from home. Oh, such curiosities! I was nearly convulsed.... As they are seated, there is not one point to distinguish them from men; the dressing and powdering of the hair; their well-starched neckcloths; the upper part of their habits, which they always wear, even at a dinner-party, made precisely like men's coats; and regular black beaver men's hats. They looked exactly like two respectable superannuated old clergymen.... I was highly flattered, as they never were in the theatre before."
Among the many people who visited them in their retreat, and have left descriptions of them, are Madame de Genlis, De Quincey, Prince Pückler-Muskau. Their friendships were sung by Sotheby and Anne Seward, and their cottage was depicted by Pennant.
"It is very singular," writes John Murray, August 24, 1829, to his son (Memoir of John Murray, vol. ii. p. 304), "that the ladies, intending to retire from the world, absolutely brought all the world to visit them, for after a few years of seclusion their strange story was the universal subject of conversation, and there has been no person of rank, talent, and importance in any way who did not procure introductions to them."
Lord Tavistock's experience at Cambridge resembled that of Byron. He had received only a "pretended education," and the Duke of Bedford had come to the conclusion that "nothing was learned at English Universities." "Tavistock left Cambridge in May," Lord J. Russell notes in his Diary for 1808, "having been there in supposition two years" (Walpole's
Life of Lord John Russell
, vol. i. pp. 44 and 35).