MAID OF FIVE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 18 October 1940, Page 6

MAID OF FIVE

LITTLE PENELOPE BOOTHBY. There cannot be a long story about her because she was born before the bluebells came in 1785 and she died before the daffodils were over in 1791. She was little Penelope Boothby, and a lovelier child never breathed in England, a sweeter bit of life never laughed in the sunshine. Her father was Sir Brooke Boothby of Ashbourne Hail in Derbyshire, extremely wealthy and of a celebrated and ancient family. That is all. But she is immortal. As a very little child she used to play in Sir Joshua Reynolds’ studio in Leicester Square, and there was one awful day when consternation reigned in the Boothby town house for Penelope was lost. They found her eventually prattling to Sir Joshua, so all was well. It was a happy thing the great artist did when he made little Penelope wear a mop cap. Then he painted her in all her sweetness, and the picture was afterwards sold for a thousand guineas, and towards the end of the century it fetched £20,000. One day Edie Ramage went to a fancy dress ball pretending to be the girl in the Mop Cap. She was the hit of the evening, Sir John Millais painting her as Cherry Ripe. Another day Thomas Banks, the sculptor, made a little marble figure of Penelope sleeping on a mattress in Ashbourne Church; and it was that monument which Francis Chantrey went to see. Had he never seen it he would never have given Lichfield Cathedral his wonderful carving of the Sleeping Children. How much beauty Penelope has given us!