Sir Walter was touring in the Lake District in July
of that year, and while staying at Gilsland Wells he first saw a
fascinating and elegant young lady, the daughter of Jean Charpentier of
Lyons, then under the charge of the Rev. John Bird, a Minor Canon of
Carlisle Cathedral. She was described, possibly by Sir Walter himself,
as being rich in personal attractions, with a form fashioned as light as
a fairy's, a complexion of the clearest and finest Italian brown, and a
profusion of silken tresses as black as the raven's wing. A humorous
savant wrote the following critique on this description of the beauty of
Sir Walter's fiancee:
It is just possible the rascal had been reading some of the old Welsh
stories collected in the twelfth century and known as the Mabinogion
stories. In one Oliven is described so--
"More yellow was her head than the yellow of the broom, and her skin
was whiter than the foam of the wave, and fairer were her hands and
her fingers than the blossoms of the wood anemone amidst the sprays
of the meadow fountain. The eye of the trained hawk, the glance of
the three-mewed falcon was not brighter than hers.
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