The Duchess’s early admirer, Colley Cibber, must not be omitted in the list of those who have contributed to exalt her fame. Cibber, as we have seen, wrote with enthusiasm of her personal charms, which with equal liberality he alleged to have outlived the days of her youth. And not only from the custom, at that time fashionable, of admitting actors and actresses, even of doubtful character, into the society of the great, but in the practice of his profession as a player, Cibber must have had frequent opportunities of marking the gradual ripening to perfection, and the less gradual process of decay of those charms which riveted his faculties. The company of comedians to whom Cibber belonged were called the King’s servants, and styled gentlemen of the great chamber. They wore a livery of scarlet and gold, and were made the peculiar concern of the court, the King frequently interfering in their concerns and management. This company performed at Drury Lane, except when by royal command it was transported to Hampton Court, or to Windsor, to entertain the assembled court.[357] On such occasions, the Duchess must frequently have encountered the sculptor’s son, who, elated with a commission in a regiment of horse, had had, when first they met, indulged brighter day-dreams than his future existence realised. The stage, nevertheless, was at that time at its height of prosperity: all classes contributed to honour and support its ornaments. The original Lady Townly and Lady Betty Modish, the beautiful but the frail Mrs. Oldfield, is said to have acquired her inimitable art of representing the manners of aristocratic females, from the number of high-born ladies whom she visited, whilst yet under the acknowledged protection of General Churchill, and, afterwards, of Arthur Maynwaryng. Bolingbroke, with all his Jacobite notions, thought himself not degraded by an intimate friendship with Booth. The spirit of the age was dramatic, as Steele’s “extravagant pleasantry” exemplifies. Being asked, by a nobleman, after the representation of Henry the Eighth, at Hampton Court, how the King, George the First, liked the play, “In truth,” answered the accomplished manager, “so terribly well, my lord, that I was afraid I should have lost all my actors; for I was not sure the King would not keep them to fill the posts at court, that he saw them so fit for in the play.”[358]