[Illustration: THE LADIES OF LLANGOLLEN. _From an Old Print._]
As time wore on, they came to know and be visited by every one of note. Wordsworth enjoyed their hospitality, and composed a sonnet, as a kind of votive offering, in the grounds: grounds graced by fonts and fragments of ancient crosses, stolen from Valle Crucis Abbey and other places, to fit the whim of these insatiable collectors of “curios.” Wordsworth’s offering was, sad to say, not accepted with enthusiasm. Why not? For the reason that he had dared to call their home a “low-roofed cot”:—
... Where faithful to a low-roofed cot, On Deva’s Banks, ye have abode so long: Sisters in love, a love allowed to climb, Even on this earth, above the reach of time.
The Ladies declared they could write better poetry themselves!
The great Duke of Wellington was, of course, well known to the Ladies. They had known him from a boy. It was from an old Spanish Prayer Book given him by Lady Eleanor that he learnt that language when going out to his campaigns in the Peninsula.
Reminiscences of this queer old couple abound in the published diaries and correspondence of old-time travellers; but none afford so good a picture as that drawn by Lockhart, who accompanied Sir Walter Scott on a visit to Llangollen in 1825. Lockhart, writing to his wife, says: “We proceeded up the hill, and found everything about them and their habitation odd and extravagant beyond report. Imagine two women—one apparently seventy and the other sixty-five—dressed in heavy blue riding habits, enormous shoes, and men’s hats, with their petticoats so tucked up that at the first glance of them, fussing and tottering about their porch in the agony of expectation, we took them for a couple of hazy or crazy old sailors. On nearer inspection they both wear a world of brooches, rings, etc., and Lady Eleanor positively _orders_—several stars and crosses, and a red ribbon, exactly like a K.C.B. To crown all, they have cropt heads, shaggy, rough, bushy, and as white as snow, the one with age alone, the other assisted by a sprinkling of powder. The elder lady is almost blind, and every way much decayed; the other in good preservation. But who could paint the prints, the dogs, the cats, the miniatures, the cram of cabinets, clocks, glass cases, books, bijouterie, dragon china, nodding mandarins, and whirligigs of every shape and hue—the whole house, outside and in (for we must see everything, to the dressing closets) _covered_ with carved oak, very rich and fine some of it; and the illustrated copies of Sir Walter’s poems, and the joking, simpering compliments about Waverley and the anxiety to know who Melvor really was, and the absolute devouring of the poor Unknown, who had to carry off, besides all the rest, one small bit of literal _butter_ dug up in a Milesian stone jar lately from the bottom of some Irish bog. Great romance (_i.e._, absurd innocence of character) one must have looked for; but it was confounding to find this mixed up with such eager curiosity and enormous knowledge of the tattle and scandal of the world they had so long left. Their tables were piled with newspapers from every corner of the kingdom, and they seemed to have the deaths and marriages of the antipodes at their fingers’ ends. Their albums and autographs, from Louis XVIII. and George IV. down to magazine poets and quack doctors, are a museum. I shall never see the spirit of blue stockingism again in such perfect incarnation. Peveril (a family name for Sir Walter) won’t get over their final kissing match for a week. Yet it is too bad to laugh at these good old girls; they have long been the guardian angels of the village, and are worshipped by every man, woman, and child about them.”