About the time of Mara’s departure from England Mrs. Billington was wonderfully popular.  No fashionable concert was complete without her, and the constant demand for her services enabled her to fix her own price.  Her income averaged fifteen thousand pounds a year, and at one time she was reckoned as worth nearly one hundred thousand pounds.  She spent her large means with a judicious liberality, and the greatest people in the land were glad to be her guests.  She settled a liberal annuity on her father.  Having no children, she adopted two, one the daughter of an old friend named Madocks, who afterward became her principal legatee.  Her hospitality crowded her house with the most brilliant men in art, literature, and politics; and it was said that the stranger who would see all the great people of the London world brought together should get a card to one of Billington’s receptions.  Her affability and kindness sometimes got her into scrapes.  An eminent barrister who was at her house one night gave her some advice on a legal matter, and sent in a bill for services amounting to three hundred pounds.  Mrs. Billington paid it promptly, but the lawyer ceased to be her guest.  As a hostess she was said to have been irresistibly charming, alike from her personal beauty and the witchery of her manners.

Her kindness and good nature in dealing with her sister artists Avere proverbial.  When Grassini, who at first was unpopular in England, was in despair as to how she should make an impression, Mrs. Billington proposed to sing with her in Winter’s opera of “Il Ratto di Proserpina,” from which time dated the success of the Italian singer.  Toward Mara she had exerted similar good will, ignoring all professional jealousies.  Miss Parke, a concert-singer, was once angry because Billington’s name was in bigger type.  The latter ordered her name to be printed in the smallest letters used; “and much Miss Parke gained by her corpulent type,” says the narrator.  Lord Mount Edgcumbe tells us that the operas in which she specially excelled were “La Clemenza di Scipione,” composed for her by John Christian Bach; Paesiello’s “Elfrida”; “Armida,” “Castore e Polluce,” and others by Winter; and Mozart’s “Clemenza di Tito.”  For her farewell benefit, when she quitted the stage, March 30, 1806, she selected the last-named opera, which had never been given in England, and existed only in manuscript form.  The Prince of Wales had the only copy, and she played through the whole score on the pianoforte at rehearsal, to give the orchestra an idea of the music.  The final performance was immensely successful, and the departing diva sang so splendidly as to prove that it was not on account of failing powers that she withdrew from professional life.  It is true that Mrs. Billington continued to appear frequently in concert for three years longer, but her dramatic career was ended.  A curious instance of woman’s infatuation was Mrs. Billington’s longing to