GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES 
It is difficult to recognize in the writer of the “Journal,” the 
Lady Holland of the Princess Lichstenstein’s ‘‘ Holland House,” 
of Macaulay’s letters to his sisters, and of the accounts and casual 
remarks of contemporaries. Unfortunately the “ Journal ” ceases 
in 1811, and therefore does not help us as it might otherwise have 
done, to trace the gradual hardening that undeniably took place 
in her character. 
There were two Elizabeths, one capable of committing a felony 
to keep her child, and yet of giving her up at last, lest she should 
injure the man who held her heart—and the brilliant, but embittered 
woman who founded what was virtually a salon on the French 
lines where she queened it over the wits, men of letters, and poli- 
ticians, whom her genial and cultured husband—aided no doubt 
in the first instance by her own beauty and piquant personality 
—attracted to Holland House. I am sure she was embittered : 
I believe that rebellion against what she probably felt to be a 
monstrous price for a woman to pay for happiness—first led 
her to assume those “airs of Queen Elizabeth,’ upon which 
Macaulay remarked; and that she assumed them as defensive 
armour against a world prepared to ostracize her unheard. Un- 
happily she wore it so long that it became part and parcel of 
herself. 
Other children gathered round her to whom she was a tender 
mother. Her daughter, Mary Fox, afterwards Lady Lilford, 
who died in 1891, was a charming character, greatly beloved by 
her family—though, as years went on Lady Holland’s sharp tongue 
did not spare even her. From time to time she saw the young 
Websters secretly, at her mother’s. The eldest boy went to Harrow, 
and we learn from the ‘“‘ Journal ”’ that she could see the spire of 
Harrow Church from her window, and “sighed to be near 
him.” 
Harriet grew up and married ; she never lived in close intimacy 
with her mother, but when Lady Holland, who survived her 
‘husband, was dying, the daughter, in obedience to an urgent 
summons, promptly crossed the Channel and came to receive her 
last breath. 
But that was long after, and meanwhile we see her, not without 
amusement, rapping on the table with her fan, calling first one and 
then another of her guests to order—commanding them to do 
214 
