Page:Poems of Anne Countess of Winchilsea 1903.djvu/48
It is probable, however, that as the years went by her health improved. Her spirits certainly did. When she was at Tunbridge in 1706 she was sufficiently at leisure from herself to examine into the love-making then so popular a pastime at the Wells and to write it up with fine scorn. And she threw a playful jibe at the doctors who thought to cure the spleen with a formula. Further proof of this increased gayety of spirit is in a letter, written August 1708, from Lady Morrow to her daughter, Lady Kay:
Friday last I went to town. . . . . From the Vice Chamberlain I went to see Mrs. Finch, she ill of the spleen. Lady Worsley has painted a pretty fire-screen and presented her with; and notwithstanding her ill-natured distemper, she was very diverting—Mrs. Finch I mean.
It is not certain that Ardelia ever discovered Green's famous remedy for the spleen,
Throw but a stone, the Giant dies,
but it is more than probable that the simple life at Eastwell, the long, entrancing walks in the park, and the peace growing out of congenial companionships and congenial occupations were better cures than Tunbridge or Astrop. No record of Ardelia's life at Eastwell would be satisfactory without as full an account as possible of the "one from whom she was inseparable." In her description of her ideal retreat from the world the one person needed to make its charms complete was
Solitary, pleas'd and kind;
Who, partially, may something see
Preferred to all the World, in me;
Slighting, by my humble Side,
Fame and Splendour, Wealth and Pride.
Inasmuch as this was a description after the event, the lines may be counted a fairly accurate, though they are not