The CATALOGUES will be ready Three Weeks
prior to the Sale; and may be had at 3s. each, at the Villa; Phillips’s Hotel, and the King’s Head, Llangollen; the Lion, Shrewsbury; the Owen Glendower, Corwen; the Great Hotel, at Bangor; the Waterloo Hotel, Liverpool; the Hen and Chickens, Birmingham; York Hotel, Bath; of Mr. Guernon, Molesworth-street, Dublin, and at Mr. George Robins’ Offices, Covent Garden.”
* * * * *
The present occupiers were also purchasers of many of the rare “curiosities and relics.”
We shall now proceed to cite the descriptions which have been put upon record by several distinguished and popular authors, relative to the “Ladies of Llangollen.”
It appears from Volume VI. of the published Letters of the late Miss Anna Seward, that a friendly intimacy was cultivated between that clever literateur and the recluses of Plas Newydd; and it would seem from her correspondence, that their tastes were very comprehensive and multifarious; poetry and politics, music and mystery, tragedy and tattle, being alike acceptable. In a letter addressed to Lady Eleanor Butler and Miss Ponsonby, under date Lichfield, October 4, 1802, Miss Seward exclaims:—
“Ah! dearest ladies, it is under the pressure of a severe cold, fierce cough, and inflamed lungs, that I address you. A duty so delightful had, but for this incapacitating malady, been earlier paid.
“I have to thank dear Miss Ponsonby for a manuscript of many verses, which she had the goodness to make for me in hours so engrossed, amid engagements so indispensable. I had the honour to receive it as I was stepping into the chaise which was to convey Mrs. Smith and myself far from that Edenic region where we had recently passed so many happy hours; from those bowers in Llangollen Vale, whence the purest pleasures have so often flowed to my heart and mind, as from a full and overflowing fountain.”
From Lichfield, Nov. 9, 1802, Miss Seward discourses to Miss Ponsonby on modern tragedy, and concludes with the following bit of “blue-stocking gossip:”—
“Though I know her not, I am pleased that Mrs. Spencer has had the good fortune to interest and delight you; for I am always desirous that men of genius should not do what they are so prone to do, marry every-day women.
“Naughty brook, for having behaved outrageously again! That little stream of the mountain is a true spoiled child, whom we love the better for its faults, and for all the trouble and alarm they occasion. You see I presume to involve myself, as if, in some sort, the interesting little virago belonged to me. Certainly it is my peculiar pet amongst your scenic children, dear to my taste, as they are beautiful; to my heart as being yours.”
In a letter from Lichfield, June 13, 1805, Miss Seward begins:—