# A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Delany, Mary

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DELANY, MARY,
Was the daughter of Bernard Granville, Esq., afterwards Lord Lansdowne, a nobleman celebrated for his abilities and virtues. His character as a poet, and his friendship with Pope, Swift, and other eminent writers of the time, as well as his general patronage of men of genius and literature, have been so often recorded that they must be familiar to our readers. His daughter Mary received a very careful education, and at the age of seventeen was induced to marry, against her own inclination, Alexander Pendarves, a gentleman of large property at Roscrow, in Cornwall. From a great disparity of years, and other causes, she was very unhappy during this connexion. However, she wisely employed the retirement to which she was confined in cultivating her mind and her musical talents. She was distinguished for her powers of conversation, for her epistolary writing, and her taste.
In 1724 Mrs. Pendarves became a widow, when she left Cornwall for London. For several years after this she corresponded with Dean Swift. In 1743 she married Dr. Patrick Delany, whom she had long known, and their union was a very happy one. He died in 1768, and after that she was induced by the Duchess-dowager of Portland, who had been an early and constant friend of hers. ​to reside a part of the time with her; and Mrs. Delany divided the year between London and Bnlstrode.
On the death of the Duchess-dowager of Portland, the king assigned Mrs. Delany, as a summer residence, the use of a furnished house in St. Alban's Street, Windsor, adjoining the entrance to the castle, and a pension of three hundred pounds a year. Mrs, Delany died at her own house in St. James' Street, on the 15th. of April, 1788, having nearly completed her eighty-eighth year.
The circumstance that has principally entitled Mrs. Delany to a place in this work was her skill in painting, and other ingenious arts. She was thirty years old before she learned to draw, and forty before she attempted oil-painting; but she devoted herself to it, and her proficiency was remarkable. She was principally a copyist, but painted a few original pictures, the largest of which was the raising of Lazarus. She excelled in embroidery and shellwork, and at the age of seventy-four invented a new and beautiful mode of exercising her ingenuity. This was in the construction of a Flora. She cut out the various parts of the flower she wished to imitate, in coloured paper, which she sometimes dyed herself, and pasted them, accurately arranged, on a black ground. The effect was so admirable that it was impossible often to distinguish the original from the imitation. Mrs. Delany continued to carry out this favourite design till she was eighty-three, when the partial failure of her sight obliged her to lay it aside, but not till she had finished nine hundred and eighty flowers. This is the completest Flora ever executed by one hand, and required great knowledge of botanical drawing.
Mrs. Delany has left a beautiful example to her sex, by the manner in which she improved her time; she never grew old in feeling; always employed, and always improving her talents, she kept youth in her heart, and therefore never lost her power of pleasing. Miss Burney, who was the intimate friend of her last years of life, thus describes Mrs. Delany just before her death, when she had entered her eighty-eighth year:—
"Her eyes alone had failed, and these not totally. Not even was her general frame, though enfeebled, wholly deprived of its elastic powers. She was upright; her air and her carriage were full of dignity; all her motions were graceful; and her gestures, when she was animated, had a vivacity almost sportive. Her exquisitely susceptible soul, at every strong emotion, still mantled in her cheeks, and her spirits, to the last, retained their innocent gaiety; her conversation its balmy tone of sympathy; and her manners their soft and resistless attraction: while her piety was at once the most fervent, yet most humble."
Mrs. Delany was interred in a vault belonging to St. James' Church, where a monument has been erected to her memory.