Now, this goddess became to Booth one of the truest, most charming, and most unselfish of mortal wives.[129] But see of what perilous stuff _she_ was made who enraptured the generally unruffled poet Thomson almost as much as she did Barton Booth. For _her_ smiles, Marlborough had given what he least cared to part with--gold. Craggs, the Secretary of State, albeit a barber's son, had made her spouse, in all but name, and their daughter was mother of the first Lord St. Germans, and, by a second marriage, of the first Marquis of Abercorn. The Santlow blood thus danced itself into very excellent company; but the aristocracy gave good blood to the stage, as well as took gay blood from it. Contemporary with Booth and Mrs. Santlow were the sisters, frolic Mrs. Bicknell and Mrs. Younger. They were nearly related to Keith, Earl Marshal of Scotland. Their father had served in Flanders under King William, "perhaps," says Mr. Carruthers, in his _Life of Pope_, "rode by the side of Steele, whence Steele's interest in Mrs. Bicknell, whom he praises in the _Tatler_ and _Spectator_." Mrs. Younger, in middle age, married John, brother of the seventh Earl of Winchelsea. When Miss Santlow left the ballet for comedy, it was accounted one of the lucky incidents in the fortune of Drury. Dorcas Zeal, in the "Fair Quaker of Deal," was the first original part in which Miss Santlow appeared. Cibber says, somewhat equivocally, "that she was then in the full bloom of what beauty she might pretend to," and he, not very logically, adds, that her reception as an actress was, perhaps, owing to the admiration she had excited as a dancer. The part was suited to her figure and capacity. "The gentle softness of her voice, the composed innocence of her aspect, the modesty of her dress, the reserved decency of her gesture, and the simplicity of the sentiments that naturally fell from her, made her seem the amiable maid she represented." Many admirers, however, regretted that she had abandoned the ballet for the drama. They mourned as if Terpsichore herself had been on earth to charm mankind, and had gone never to return. They remembered, longed for, and now longed in vain for, that sight which used to set a whole audience half distraught with delight, when in the very ecstasy of her dance, Santlow contrived to loosen her clustering auburn hair, and letting it fall about such a neck and shoulders as Praxiteles could more readily imagine than imitate, danced on, the locks flying in the air, and half a dozen hearts at the end of every one of them.