It is not too much to say of the Admiral's wife that she was worthy of him, and that she was duly proud of his name and reputation. We have seen how she thought her daughter Elizabeth was no unfit match for a duke, remarking that she was 'Admiral Boscawen's daughter;' and she was dearly fond of the sea, 'delighting in it (as she used to say) beyond all sights and all objects whatever,' until the mournful day came when he for whose sake she had loved it so dearly had ended his connexion with it for ever; and then she spoke of it as that sea whose memories 'had cost her so many tears.' She was the only daughter of William Evelyn Glanville, Esq., of St. Clere near Ightham, Kent, and was of the family of the celebrated John Evelyn, whom she was fond of calling her 'good, old uncle;' and she took immense interest accordingly in the production of Dr. Hunter's new edition of the 'Sylva.'[100]
When twenty-four years of age she was married, in December, 1742, to Admiral Boscawen, seven years her senior, and they seem to have been a well-suited, happy couple. Her character is perhaps best seen in the interesting gossiping letters which she and Mrs. Delany (a Grenville of Stow) interchanged. She was also a correspondent of Hannah More and Mrs. Chapone.
Hannah More, in her 'Sensibility,' writes thus of her:
'Accept, Boscawen! these unpolish'd lays,
Nor blame too much the verse you cannot praise.
For you far other bards have wak'd the string;
Far other bards for you were wont to sing.
* * * * *
You heard the lyres of Lyttelton and Young;
And this a Grace, and that a Seraph strung.'
And in another place she adds:
'On you, Boscawen, when you fondly melt
In raptures none but mothers ever felt,
And view, enamour'd, in your beauteous race,
All Leveson's sweetness, and all Beaufort's grace!
Yet think what dangers each lov'd child may share,
The youth if valiant, and the maid if fair?'
The reason for dedicating this poem of 'Sensibility' to Mrs. Boscawen is glanced at in the following couplet:
''Tis this, whose charms the soul resistless seize,
And gives Boscawen half her pow'r to please.'
On the death of her husband, Dr. Young thus addressed her, in a postscript to his poem 'Resignation',