ds in wet clay and be covered with marble dust--to say
the least, Miss Conway was eccentric.

She at once began the study of anatomy under Cruikshanks, modelling with
Cerrachi, and the handling of marble in the studio of Bacon.

Unfortunately for her art, she was married at nineteen to John Darner,
eldest son of Lord Milton, a fop and spendthrift, who had run through a
large fortune. He committed suicide nine years after his marriage. It is
said that Harrington, in Miss Burney's novel of "Cecilia," was drawn from
John Damer, and that his wardrobe was sold for $75,000--about half its
original cost!

Mrs. Damer was childless, and very soon after her husband's death she
travelled in Europe and renewed her study and practice of sculpture with
enthusiasm. By some of her friends her work was greatly admired, but
Walpole so exaggerated his praise of her that one can but think that he
wrote out of his cousinly affection for the artist, rather than from a
judicial estimate of her talent. He bequeathed to her, for her life, his
villa of Strawberry Hill, with all its valuables, and L2,000 a year for
its maintenance.

Mrs. Damer executed many portrait busts, some animal subjects, two
colossal heads, symbolic of the Thames and the Isis, intended for the
adornment of the bridge at Henley. Her statue of the king, in marble, was
placed in the Register Office in Edinburgh. She made a portrait bust of
herself for the Uffizi Gallery, in Florence. Her portrait busts of her
relatives were numerous and are still seen in private galleries. She
executed two groups of "Sleeping Dogs," one for Queen Caroline and a
second for her brother-in-law, the Duke of Richmond. Napoleon asked her
for a bust of Fox, which she made and presented to the Emperor. A bust of
herself which she made for Richard Payne Knight was by him bequeathed to
the British Museum. Her "Death of Cleopatra" was modelled in relief, and
an engraving from it was used as a vignette on the title-page of the
second volume of Boydell's Shakespeare.

Those who have written of Mrs. Darner's art have taken extreme views.
They have praised _ad nauseam_, as Walpole did when he wrote: "Mrs.
Darner's busts from life are not inferior to the antique. Her shock dog,
large as life and only not alive, rivals the marble one of Bernini in
the Royal Collection. As the ancients have left us but five animals of
equal merit with their human figures--viz., the Barberini Goat, the
Tuscan Boar, the Mat