her behaviour is such as has acquired her many sensible admirers, and
we have good man society, and all the female nobility, with the Queen
at their head, show her every mark of civility." Hamilton writes
further: "Hitherto, her behaviour is irreproachable, but her temper,
as you must know, unequal." Lady Malmesbury (with a decidedly sly
scratch) says of her: "She really behaves as well as possible, and
quite wonderfully, considering her origin and education." Sir George
Elliot says: "Her manners are perfectly, unpolished, very easy, but
not with the ease of good breeding, but of a barmaid; excessively
good-humoured, wishing to please and be admired by everybody that came
in her way. She has acquired since her marriage some knowledge of
history and of the arts, and one wonders at the application and pains
she has taken to make herself what she is. With men her language and
conversation are exaggerations of anything I ever heard anywhere; and
I was wonderfully struck with these inveterate remains of her origin,
though the impression was very much weakened by seeing the other
ladies of Naples." A naval lieutenant at Naples stated he "thought her
a very handsome, vulgar woman." There is no stabbing with a sneer
about this opinion. It expresses in a few words the candid opinion of
the sailor. Mrs. St. George thinks her "bold, daring, vain even to
folly, and stamped with the manners of her first situation much more
strongly than one would suppose, after having represented Majesty and
lived in good company fifteen years. Her dress is frightful. Her waist
is absolutely between her shoulders. Her figure is colossal, but,
excepting her feet, which are hideous, well shaped. The shape of all
her features is fine, as is the form of her head, and particularly her
ears; her teeth are a little irregular, but tolerably white; her eyes
light blue, with a brown spot in one, which, though a defect, takes
nothing away from her beauty or expression. Her eyebrows and hair,
which, by the bye, is never clean, are dark and her complexion coarse.