“I forgot to go to tea parties; I overslept myself of a morning. I protested against the moon and derided that blessed planet most villainously. In a word I was soon given up as a young man of most preposterous and incorrigible opinions, and was left to do e’en just as I pleased. Yet, believe me, I did, notwithstanding, admire the fair damsels of Richmond exceedingly; and, to be candid at once, the character of the whole sex, though it has ever ranked high in my estimation, is still more exalted than ever.” Bless the young man! The fair damsels would have been flattered at his general impressions of them, even though not one of them had succeeded in winning his heart. They may have reflected that, had they encountered him when Richmond weather was more on their side they might have made greater headway. If Miss Fairlee was as sentimentally inclined as the young ladies in Richmond she must have felt reassured by this evidence that the handsome young Washington Irving would return home to New York as detached and uninvolved as though he had never been exposed to the wiles of designing southern belles. On the other hand, after reading the letter and reflecting on the character it unconsciously revealed, might she not have concluded that Irving’s imperviousness to the assaults of impressionable females knew no sectional bounds? During the first week in June the _Enquirer_ in its columns had hailed the arrival in Richmond of the “celebrated Cowper.” The _Enquirer_ hoped that the manager of the new brick theater on the edge of Shockoe Hill would not fail to avail himself of the opportunity of gratifying the public by engaging him for a few evenings at least. The “celebrated Cowper” was without doubt Thomas Abthorpe Cooper, a handsome and talented young Irish actor. No doubt Cooper, too, had been attracted to Richmond by the gathering of celebrities there and had concluded that the list would not be complete without the presence of the leading actor of the day. Richmond in the summer of 1807 not only attracted the leading actor of the day; it attracted also an artist recently arrived from France who was making a name for himself in the cities of the coast through his ingenious manner of making likenesses. On Friday, July 17, the _Enquirer_ carried on its front page a paid notice under the heading “Likenesses Taken and Engraved.” It stated that the subscriber, as an advertiser was politely known in those days, begged leave to inform the ladies and gentlemen of the city of Richmond that “he takes and engraves Likenesses in a style never introduced before in this country.”