Portrait of Dido Elizabeth Belle Lindsay,

Great-Niece of Lord Mansfield, and Her

Cousin, Lady Elizabeth Murray, c. 1779 (by
unknown artist)
Honore Fanonne Jeffers

A Black came in after dinner and sat with the ladies...Lord M...calls her Dido, which I
suppose is all the name she has. He knows he has been reproached for showing fondness
for her...
From The Diary and Letters of His Excellency Thomas Hutchinson,
August 1779

Dido moves quickly

as from the Latin anime.

Breath or soul.
Beside her, the generations-free kin,

a biscuit figurine in pink.

Dido standing in irony

the lowest are taller here

Elizabeth should provide

an unkind contrast: pretty, blond,

pale in uncovered places

but no.
The painter worships the quickened other.

Dido, his coquette of deep-dish

dimples, his careless, bright love.

Forget history.
Shes a teenager.

We know what that means.

Cocky, stupid about reality.

No thought of babies
feathers in her arms.

She might wave them, clearing

dead mothers from the air

and surely, shes special

her uncle dressed her with care,

hid her from triangles and seas

outside this walled garden.

Let her be.

Please.

No Dying Mythical Queen

weaving a vivid, troubled skin

but Dido, full of girlhood,

and Elizabeth reaching

a hand. Behave, cousin,

she begs.

Dont run away from me.

Dido was the great-niece of William Murray, First Earl of Mansfield; as Lord Chief Justice of the Kings Bench, he is responsible for the Somersett ruling
(1772), which essentially outlawed slavery in England, though not in the colonies.