Assisted by the force of early associations, the stronger mind quickly asserted an influence over the weaker intellect, an influence retained so long as prudence directed its workings. But the Duchess, in what appears to be an impartial statement of facts, declares that she owed this influence partly to a dislike which the Princess had imbibed against Lady Clarendon, her relation and first lady of the bedchamber, who, according to the Duchess, “looked like a mad woman, and talked like a scholar.” And, indeed, she adds, “her Highness’s court was so oddly composed, that I think it would be making myself no great compliment if I should say, her choosing to spend more of her time with me than with any other of her servants did no discredit to her taste.” The writer of the foregoing paragraph might, however, have carried away the palm from women superior even to the Countess of Clarendon, whom she has been accused of misrepresenting. Beautiful according to the opinion of her contemporaries, her beauty indeed appears, in the portraits painted in her bloom of youth, to have been commanding as well as interesting. Her figure is asserted to have been peculiarly fine, and her countenance was set off by a profusion of fair hair, which she is said to have preserved, without its changing colour, even at an advanced age, by the use of honey-water.[74] Several years after she had become a grandmother, the freshness of her lovely complexion, and her unfaded attractions, caused her, even in the midst of four daughters, each distinguished for personal charms, to be deemed pre-eminent among those celebrated and high-bred belles.[75]