l known as Mrs. Robert Arkwright, an inseparable friend
and companion. My aunt lived with Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Kemble, who were
excellent, worthy people. They took good care of the two young girls
under their charge, this linsey-woolsey Rosalind and Celia--their own
beautiful and most rarely endowed daughter, and her light-hearted,
lively companion; and I suppose that a merrier life than that of these
lasses, in the midst of their quaint theatrical tasks and homely
household duties, was seldom led by two girls in any sphere of life.
They learned and acted their parts, devised and executed, with small
means and great industry, their dresses; made pies and puddings, and
patched and darned, in the morning, and by dint of paste and rouge
became heroines in the evening; and withal were well-conducted, good
young things, full of the irrepressible spirits of their age, and
turning alike their hard home work and light stage labor into fun. Fanny
had inherited the beauty of her father's family, which in her most
lovely countenance had a character of childlike simplicity and serene
sweetness that made it almost angelic.

Far on in middle age she retained this singularly tender beauty, which
added immensely to the exquisite effect of her pathetic voice in her
incomparable rendering of the ballads she composed (the poetry as well
as the music being often her own), and to which her singing of them gave
so great a fashion at one time in the great London world. It was in vain
that far better musicians, with far finer voices, attempted to copy her
inimitable musical recitation; nobody ever sang like her, and still less
did anybody ever look like her while she sang. Practical jokes of very
doubtful taste were the fashion of that day, and remembering what
wonderfully coarse and silly proceedings were then thought highly
diverting by "vastly genteel" people, it is not, perhaps, much to be
wondered at that so poor a piece of wit as this should have furnished
diversion to a couple of light-hearted girls, with no special
pretensions to elegance or education. Once they were driving together in
a post-chaise on the road to Newcastle, and my aunt, having at hand in a
box part of a military equipment intended for some farce, accoutred her
upper woman in a soldier's cap, stock, and jacket, and, with heavily
corked mustaches, persisted in embracing her companion, whose frantic
resistance, screams of laughter, and besmirched cheeks, elicited
commen