little fun of the shy and over-sensitive intruder.[233] The
ladies, however, made it up to him. Shelburne made him read his 'dry
metaphysics' to them,[234] and they received it with feminine docility.
Lord Shelburne had lately (1779) married his second wife, Louisa,
daughter of the first earl of Upper Ossory. Her sister, Lady Mary
Fitz-Patrick, married in 1766 to Stephen Fox, afterwards Lord Holland,
was the mother of the Lord Holland of later days and of Miss Caroline
Fox, who survived till 1845, and was at this time a pleasant girl of
thirteen or fourteen. Lady Shelburne had also two half-sisters,
daughters of her mother's second marriage to Richard Vernon. Lady
Shelburne took a fancy to Bentham, and gave him the 'prodigious
privilege' of admission to her dressing-room. Though haughty in manner,
she was mild in reality, and after a time she and her sister indulged in
'innocent gambols.' In her last illness, Bentham was one of the only two
men whom she would see, and upon her death in 1789, he was the only male
friend to whom her husband turned for consolation. Miss Fox seems to
have been the only woman who inspired Bentham with a sentiment
approaching to passion. He wrote occasional letters to the ladies in the
tone of elephantine pleasantry natural to one who was all his life both
a philosopher and a child.[235] He made an offer of marriage to Miss Fox
in 1805, when he was nearer sixty than fifty, and when they had not met
for sixteen years. The immediate occasion was presumably the death of
Lord Lansdowne. She replied in a friendly letter, regretting the pain
which her refusal would inflict. In 1827 Bentham, then in his eightieth
year, wrote once more, speaking of the flower she had given him 'in the
green lane,' and asking for a kind answer. He was 'indescribably hurt
and disappointed' by a cold and distant reply. The tears would come into
the old man's eyes as he dealt upon the cherished memories of
Bowood.[236] It is pleasant to know that Bentham was once in love;
though his love seems to have been chiefly for a memory associated with
what he called the happiest time of his life.

Shelburne had a project for a marriage between Bentham and the widow of
Lord Ashburton (Dunning), who died in 1783.[237] He also made some
overtures of patronage. 'He asked me,' says Bentham,[238] 'what he could
do for me? I told him, nothing,' and this conduct--so different from
that of others, 'endeared me to him.' Bentham declined one