LAVINIA

FENTON (1708-1760)  , English actress, was probably the daughter cf a naval lieutenant named Beswick, but she bore the name of her mother's husband . Her first appearance was as Monimia in Otway's Orphans, in 1726 at the Hay-market . She then joined the company of players at the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields, where her success and beauty made her the toast of the beaux . It was in Gay's Beggar's Opera, as Polly Peachum, that Miss Fenton made her greatest success . Her pictures were in great demand, verses were written to her and books published about her, and she was the most talked-of person in London . Hogarth's picture shows her in one of the scenes, with the duke of Bolton in a box . After appearing in several comedies, and then in numerous repetitions of the Beggar's Opera, she ran away with her lover Charles Paulet, 3rd duke of Bolton, a man much older than herself, who, after the death of his wife in 1751, married her . Their three children all died young . The duchess survived her husband and died on the 24th of January 176o .