Having become entirely dependent on herself through her direct opposition to her father’s wishes, Ann Ford again made another bid for public favour at the end of the following year. From the 24th to the 30th of October she was announced to sing “English airs accompanying herself on the musical glasses” daily in the large room, Cock’s Auction-room, Spring Gardens, and before the following year she published her “Instructions for playing on the Musical Glasses.” This was before the introduction of the “armonica” by Marianne Davies, so that the instrument employed by Ann Ford consisted simply of a series of glasses containing various quantities of water. This sort of art could have hardly been to her taste, and she very soon threw it up. In the following month she accompanied her friends, Lady Elizabeth Thicknesse and her husband, Philip Thicknesse, to Landguard Fort, of which the latter was Lieutenant-Governor. Shortly after their arrival Lady Thicknesse gave birth to a son, whom she lived to see only a few months old, as she died on the 28th March 1762. Circumstances thus threw the whole care of the child upon Ann Ford, and so devoted and sympathetic a foster-mother did she prove herself to be that, six months after his wife’s death, Philip Thicknesse made Ann Ford his (third) wife. For some years after this event Ann Thicknesse lived a life of peaceful happiness, residing in the summer months at Felixstowe Cottage. This residence was the subject of an enthusiastic article in “The School of Fashion,” 1800, and Gainsborough’s sketch of it was published in _The Gentleman’s Magazine_ (vol. ii. 1816). During the years of her married life, Mrs Thicknesse turned her attention to literature, and while residing in Bath, from 1778 to 1781, wrote her sketches of the “Lives and Writings of the Ladies of France,” which filled three volumes. In 1792, an abrupt ending to this placid existence was caused by the sudden death of Philip Thicknesse at Boulogne, where Ann and her husband had made a temporary halt on their way to Italy. In spite of the danger entailed by English people in France at that time, Ann Thicknesse intrepidly remained in that country after her husband’s death, and paid for her temerity by arrest and confinement in a convent, where she remained for two years. With the execution of Robespierre and the liberation of all prisoners who could prove themselves capable of earning their own living, Ann Thicknesse easily gained her liberty and returned to England. In 1800 her novel, “The School of Fashion,” in which she introduced many well-known characters under fictitious names (she herself figuring under the guise of Euterpe) appeared.