sion that seems to ask for sympathy and support. Essentially feminine as she was, Elizabeth Farren had strength of will and discretion, so that she kept her reputation untarnished, and in a most corrupt age, though she might be accused of meanness, ingratitude, and parsimony, scandal had nothing to say against her moral character. On her marriage with the twelfth Earl of Derby, she was received at Court by the virtuous Queen Charlotte, and was even allowed to join in the wedding procession of the Princess Royal with the Duke of Wurtemburg. What a transition from her early years, when it was said she used to beat the drum as the strolling company made their entrance into a provincial town!
The father of Elizabeth—or as she is often called, Eliza Farren—was a surgeon-apothecary by profession, a native of Cork, who married the daughter of a Liverpool brewer, or, some say, publican, named Wright. It was at Cork that Eliza Farren was born in 1759. George Farren grew tired of medicine, and took to the stage, for which he had a marked ability. He joined a company of strolling players, and with his wife and family—a family that, by degrees, mounted up to the number of seven, he travelled about in England from town to town. The lot of strolling players in those days was certainly not a happy one, and unfortunately George Farren
