I.—AT HAWARDEN CASTLE
SHORTLY after I had settled in Alpha House three of the many beautiful daughters of Mr. Joseph Rowley, "Taffy" in Du Maurier's "Trilby," came to see me. While having tea in the garden under the shade of the great weeping ash-tree which was said by the Princess Dolgorouki, who lived there as a girl, to be the largest in England, I could not help noticing the resemblance of the three sisters to Romney's portraits of Lady Hamilton, and particularly to Ethel, Mrs. Myles Kennedy, whose commanding beauty, as I afterwards was to discover, arrested attention wherever she appeared. The conversation naturally turned upon Romney, the portraits, and Emma Lyon herself, who, as a young girl, lived in the parish of Hawarden, near the Gladstones, the Glynnes and the Rowleys, in whose families traces of a similar and remarkable beauty could be found: the Romney portrait of Lady Hamilton in the gallery of Tabley Hall, Cheshire, was always called "Mrs. Gladstone," from the striking resemblance. The outcome of the talk was a suggestion from Maud, who afterwards became Mrs. Strickland, that I ought to paint Mr. Gladstone, and Alice agreed to take me to Hawarden Castle and introduce me to Mrs. Gladstone and Mrs. Drew, if I would care to spend a month on the banks of the Dee.
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