great Chatham must have been fanciful; but at the time of my seeing
her, the large commanding features of the gaunt woman, then sixty
years old or more, certainly reminded me of the statesman that lay
dying {15} in the House of Lords, according to Copley's picture.
Her face was of the most astonishing whiteness; {16} she wore a
very large turban, which seemed to be of pale cashmere shawls, so
disposed as to conceal the hair; her dress, from the chin down to
the point at which it was concealed by the drapery which she held
over her lap, was a mass of white linen loosely folding--an
ecclesiastical sort of affair, more like a surplice than any of
those blessed creations which our souls love under the names of
"dress" and "frock" and "boddice" and "collar" and "habit-shirt"
and sweet "chemisette."

Such was the outward seeming of the personage that sat before me,
and indeed she was almost bound by the fame of her actual
achievements, as well as by her sublime pretensions, to look a
little differently from the rest of womankind. There had been
something of grandeur in her career. After the death of Lady
Chatham, which happened in 1803, she lived under the roof of her
uncle, the second Pitt, and when he resumed the Government in 1804,
she became the dispenser of much patronage, and sole secretary of
state for the department of Treasury banquets. Not having seen the
lady until late in her life, when she was fired with spiritual
ambition, I can hardly fancy that she could have performed her
political duties in the saloons of the Minister with much of
feminine sweetness and patience. I am told, however, that she
managed matters very well indeed: perhaps it was better for the
lofty-minded leader of the House to have his reception-rooms
guarded by this stately creature, than by a merely clever and