A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Hastings, Elizabeth
HASTINGS, ELIZABETH,
Daughter of Theophilus, Earl of Huntington, deserves a place in this collection, from the number of her public and private charities, which were perhaps never equalled by any of her sex. Congreve speaks of her, in the forty-second number of the Tattler, as the "Divine Aspasia;" and in the forty-ninth number of the same work gives a farther account of her:—"Her cares," says her biographer, "extended even to the animal creation; while over her domestics she presided with the disposition of a parent, providing for the improvement of their minds, the decency of their behaviour, and the propriety of their manners. She would have the skill and contrivance of every artificer used in her house, employed for the ease of her servants, and that they might suffer no inconvenience or hardship. Besides providing for the order, harmony, and peace of her family, she kept great elegance in and about her house, that her poor neighbours might not fall into idleness and poverty for want of employment; and while she thus tenderly regarded the poor, she would visit those in the higher ranks, lest they should accuse her of pride or superciliousness." At her table her countenance was open and serene, her voice soft and melodious, her language polite and animated. It might truly be said of this lady, that "her mind was virtue, by the graces drest." The sympathy, tenderness, and delicacy, which accompanied her liberalities doubled their value: she was the friend and patroness, through life, of Mrs. Mary Astell; to whom, her circumstances being narrow, she frequently presented considerable sums. Her benefactions were not confined to the neighbourhood in which she lived; to many families, in various parts of the kingdom, she gave large annual allowances. She also maintained a charity-school, gave exhibitions to scholars in the universities, and contributed to the support of several seminaries of education. To this may be added her munificence to her' relations and friends, her remission of sums due to her, in cases of distress or straitened circumstances, and the noble hospitality of her establishment. To one relation she allowed five hundred pounds annually, to another she presented a gift of three thousand pounds, and to a third three hundred guineas. She acted also with great liberality towards a young lady, whose fortune had been injured in the South-sea scheme: yet the whole of her estates fell short of three thousand pounds a year. It was by economy and strict self-denial that this noble lady was enabled thus to extend her bounties. Her favourite maxim was, first to attend to justice; secondly, to charity; and thirdly, to generosity.
She died in 1770, aged thirty-nine. Previous to her decease, she destroyed the greater part of her writings; so that her talents must be estimated from her works of benevolence, not from the productions of her pen, although she had a very superior mind. She would never marry, preferring, in a single and independent life, to be mistress of her own actions, and the dispenser of her own income.