Emery Walker Ph. Sc.
Miss Sarah Morris
Mr. Robinson, who drew and painted in a style worthy of a professional artist, was anxious Elizabeth should become a proficient in the same art, but she writes to the duchess—
“If you design to make any proficiency in that art, I would advise you not to draw old men’s heads. It was the rueful head countenance of Socrates or Seneca that first put me out of conceit of it; had my Pappa given me the blooming faces of Adonis or Narcissus, I might have been a more apt scholar; and when I told him I found those great beards difficult to draw, he gave me St. John’s head in a charger, so to avoid the speculation of dismal faces, which by my art I dismalized ten times more than they were before, I threw away my pencil.”
1735
TUNBRIDGE WELLS
In October, 1735, the duchess’s first child was born, Elizabeth, eventually wife of the 1st Marquis of Bath. Elizabeth writes to congratulate her, and states she heard Dr. Mead (then the great ladies’ doctor) pronounced it the finest child he ever saw. Elizabeth had just returned from her first visit to Tunbridge Wells for her health, suffering much from headaches and weak eyes. At this period the Dowager Duchess of Portland died. The letters up to this date were addressed to “To Her Grace, The junior Duchess of Portland.”
LORD STANHOPE
Elizabeth writes a description of her five weeks at Tunbridge Wells. After comments on an unhappy marriage recently made, she says—