My face is my fortune, sir, she said,
a burst of acclamation was sent forth, almost equal to that which greeted her entrance. The two lines which succeeded were, if possible, still more applicable to recent events, which have occupied so much of the attention of the Bar and of the public.
Then I’ll not marry you, my pretty maid.
There’s nobody asking you, sir, she said.
The good-humoured approval that followed these lines, which was in no degree abated by the arch air with which Miss Foote gave them, cannot be conveyed by verbal description. At the expression of the sentence, ‘This moment is worth a whole existence,’ Miss Foote bowed to the audience in grateful acknowledgment of the reception she had met with. Altogether Miss Foote’s reappearance has been most gratifying. She has been hailed as a favourite of the public, who has been basely lured from virtue, but who is not on that account treated as an alien from its path.”
The total receipts that evening amounted to £900. 16s. At the latter end of 1830, Madame Vestris took the Olympic Theatre, and opened it, on 3 January of the following year, with a drama on the subject of Mary Queen of Scots, in which Miss Foote, who appears for a time to have been in partnership with her, played the heroine. But she soon after quitted the stage, and on 7 April, 1831, was married to the eccentric Charles Stanhope, eighth Earl of Harrington and Viscount Petersham. He was aged fifty-one and she aged thirty-three. They had one daughter; he died in 1851, and she, as Dowager Countess of Harrington, lived until 27 December, 1867.
Mrs. Bancroft, in On and Off the Stage (London, 1888), gives us a pleasant recollection of Maria Foote in her old age as Dowager Countess of Harrington.
“My father had known her slightly when she was in her zenith, and would often speak of her as one of the loveliest and most amiable of women. He would often recall not only the charm she possessed as an accomplished actress, but her good-nature to everybody, high and low, in the theatre.... My mother had never met Lady Harrington, but she soon grew much attached to one who became a true friend to me, and as time went on seemed more and more endeared to me. She must have been very beautiful when young, being still extremely handsome as an old lady. She was as good, too, as she was handsome; and I can never forget her kindness to me. When I was once seriously ill with an attack of bronchitis, Lady Harrington was unwearying in her attention to me, and would, day after day, sit by my bedside reading to me, and would bring with her all the delicacies she could think of. When I had sufficiently recovered my strength, she sent me to the seaside to recruit my health. To record all the kindnesses she bestowed on me and mine would fill up many pages, but my gratitude is indelibly written on my heart. She gave me a portrait of herself, as Maria Darlington in A Roland for an Oliver, and by it one can see how lovely she must have been. Among her other gifts was a beautiful old-fashioned diamond and ruby ring, which she told me was given to her by the Earl when he was engaged to be married to her.... Lady Harrington was much attached to (her old butler) Payne, and also to her maid, who, I believe, had been in her service since she was quite young, and often spoke of them as Romeo and Juliet. I recall many a happy visit to Richmond Terrace, and until her last illness I had no better friend than Lady Harrington.
“On the afternoon of Friday, 27 December, 1867, my mind was unaccountably full of thoughts about her. I had been making some purchases in Regent Street, and on my way home in a cab was wondering, as I was driven through the crowd of vehicles, if I should ever see her in her well-known carriage again, with its snuff-coloured ‘Petersham brown’ body, the long brown coats, the silver hat cords of the coachman and footman, the half-crescents of white leather which formed part of the harness across the foreheads of the horses.
“On the following day I received the sorrowful news that Lady Harrington was dead at the time I had thought so much of her, and that I had lost a friendship for which Time can never lessen my gratitude.”