Supposed to be a copy by Sir Peter Lely from the original, which was painted about 1636, and destroyed in the fire at Whitehall in 1697. He talked of Maulevrier Castle, and said that I reminded him of a picture by Lely, a portrait of a Lady Maulevrier. It was all stillness, filled with bright sunlight that burnished the ancient wood pieces, gave them a mellow glow and brought into focus the old paintings of her ancestors by such master portraitists as Lely, Gainsborough and Romney. Near the window thus emblazoned hung a portrait, by Sir Peter Lely, of one of the Lucy family, a great beauty of the time of Charles the Second: the old housekeeper shook her head as she pointed to the picture, and informed me that this lady had been sadly addicted to cards, and had gambled away a great portion of the family estate, among which was that part of the park where Shakespeare and his comrades had killed the deer. I gazed upon them, depicted with amorous, half-dishevelled tresses, and the sleepy eye of love, I blessed the pencil of Sir Peter Lely, which bad thus enabled me to bask in the reflected rays of beauty.
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