CONTENTS INTRODUCTORY DEDICATION WHERE PERSONS OF QUALITY LIVED IN THE LONDON OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY: WITH SOME PARTICU- PAGE V LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Balls Park, when first built (according to Drapentier) Frontispiece The Ranelagh Jubilee Ball 58 60 Balls Park, Hertford Interior of the Rotunda at Ranelagh Ranelagh Admission Tickets View of Vauxhall Gardens Miss Chudleigh (afterwards Countess of Bristol and Duchess of Kingston) A Running Footman 62 66 Interior of the Pantheon A Sedan-Chair 98 104 Admission Ticket to Ranelagh Masquerade Admission Ticket to Sçavoir-Vivre Club The "King's Bath" at Bath Ethelreda (or Audrey), Viscountess Townshend Interior of the Sardinian Chapel, Lincoln's Inn Fields Le Chevalier D'Éon in female attire Selina, Countess of Huntingdon Costumes of the late Eighteenth Century CHAPTER I CONCERNING THE FOREBEARS OF THE LIVELY LADY TOWNSHEND AND HER EARLY MARRIED LIFE Balls Park: Sir John Harrison: Mariages de Convenance: Hertford in the eighteenth century: Marriage of Ethelreda Harrison to Lord Lynn: the rival Courts at St. James's and Leicester House: Eccentricities of the third Viscount Townshend Separation of the Lively Lady Townshend from her husband: her bitterness against him and his family. AMID THE SURROUNDINGS of grossness, immorality and corruption in which the fashionable world of the Georgian era passed their lives, lived also Ethelreda (or Audrey)1 Townshend, wife of Charles, third Viscount Townshend, one of the most beautiful, fascinating and witty women of a fascinating and witty age, who held her own, brilliantly and audaciously as a lady of quality, from her marriage in 1723 almost to the date of her death in 1788. 1 Mr. Justin M'Carthy, Mr. Percy Fitzgerald, even Mr. Jesse, in speaking of Lady Townshend, ridicule her for calling herself " Ethelreda" instead of Audrey", though she always signed her letters "E. Townshend". Indeed, Mr. Justin M'Carthy, with characteristic inaccuracy, writes "Ethelfreda ". Though her grandmother and her own daughter were both called "Audrey", Ethelreda is the real name and Audrey only a corruption, like Harry for Henry and Dolly for Dorothy. At the great fair of Ely (in the cathedral of which city was the shrine of St. Ethelreda) cheap and flashy goods were largely sold, especially a particular sort of rosary called "St. Audrey's beads". Hence the word “tawdry”, signifying cheap stuff bought at the fair of St. Audrey or Ethelreda. The village of St. Awdries in Somerset is so called because the parish church was dedicated originally to St. Ethelreda. |