As will be seen by this comprehensive list, of the fifteen children of
Walter Spencer-Stanhope and his wife, three only failed to attain
maturity. The tale of their brief lives has no part in the following
correspondence, and might be dismissed without comment, save that the
mention of them serves to bring yet nearer to us that mother whose
powerful brain, warm heart and tireless pen bound to her the affections of
her children with a devotion seldom surpassed.

Of Henry Stanhope, destined to die after much suffering, many letters, not
inserted here, remain eloquent of the manner in which, throughout his long
illness, his mother denied herself to all her acquaintance and never left
his side. Of little Catherine Stanhope, who expired at the age of five,
two pathetic mementoes exist. One is a large marquise ring which never
left the mother's finger till she, too, was laid in the grave; the other a
silken tress like spun sunshine, golden still as on that day in a dead
century when, viewing it through her tears, Mrs Stanhope labelled it
tenderly--"_My dear little Catherine's hair, cut off the morning I lost
her, November 20th, 1795._" Of little Elizabeth a more curious and
harrowing reminiscence has survived.


_Grosvenor Square, Saturday, April the 28th, the day on which the
remains of my dear child were deposited in the vault at Mrs
Armstrong's Chapel between six and seven in the morning, attended by
her dear, afflicted father._


So little Elizabeth, in the spring-time of her life, passed to her grave