She whirls around! she bounds! she springs!
As if Jove's messenger had lent her wings.
Such Daphne was....
Such were her lovely limbs, so flushed her charming face!
So round her neck! her eyes so fair!
So rose her swelling chest! so flow'd her amber hair!
While her swift feet outstript the wind,
And left the enamour'd God of Day behind."
Now, this goddess became to Booth one of the truest, most charming, and most unselfish of mortal wives.[129] But see of what perilous stuff she was made who enraptured the generally unruffled poet Thomson almost as much as she did Barton Booth. For her smiles, Marlborough had given what he least cared to part with—gold. Craggs, the Secretary of State, albeit a barber's son, had made her spouse, in all but name, and their daughter was mother of the first Lord St. Germans, and, by a second marriage, of the first Marquis of Abercorn. The Santlow blood thus danced itself into very excellent company; but the aristocracy gave good blood to the stage, as well as took gay blood from it. Contemporary with Booth and Mrs. Santlow were the sisters, frolic Mrs. Bicknell and Mrs. Younger. They were nearly related to Keith, Earl Marshal of Scotland. Their father had served in Flanders under King William, "perhaps," says Mr. Carruthers, in his Life of Pope, "rode by the side of Steele, whence Steele's interest in Mrs. Bicknell, whom he praises in the Tatler and Spectator." Mrs. Younger, in middle age, married John, brother of the seventh Earl of Winchelsea.
When Miss Santlow left the ballet for comedy, it was accounted one of the lucky incidents in the fortune of Drury. Dorcas Zeal, in the "Fair Quaker of Deal," was the first original part in which Miss Santlow appeared. Cibber says, somewhat equivocally, "that she was then in the full bloom of what beauty she might pretend to," and he, not very logically, adds, that her reception as an actress was, perhaps, owing to the admiration she had excited as a dancer. The part was suited to her figure and capacity. "The gentle softness of her voice, the composed innocence of her aspect, the modesty of her dress, the reserved decency of her gesture, and the simplicity of the sentiments that naturally fell from her, made her seem the amiable maid she represented."