THE LADIES OF LLANGOLLEN. From an Old Print.
As time wore on, they came to know and be visited by every one of note. Wordsworth enjoyed their hospitality, and composed a sonnet, as a kind of votive offering, in the grounds: grounds graced by fonts and fragments of ancient crosses, stolen from Valle Crucis Abbey and other places, to fit the whim of these insatiable collectors of “curios.” Wordsworth’s offering was, sad to say, not accepted with enthusiasm. Why not? For the reason that he had dared to call their home a “low-roofed cot”:—
... Where faithful to a low-roofed cot,
On Deva’s Banks, ye have abode so long:
Sisters in love, a love allowed to climb,
Even on this earth, above the reach of time.
The Ladies declared they could write better poetry themselves!
XXXVI
The great Duke of Wellington was, of course, well known to the Ladies. They had known him from a boy. It was from an old Spanish Prayer Book given him by Lady Eleanor that he learnt that language when going out to his campaigns in the Peninsula.