Chapter XII
What I have stated and mean to state hereafter I will abide by and swear to; and let them deny it if they can. I allude to all such facts as might be likely to prejudice my reader against any individual. As to mere harmless conversations, I do not profess more than general accuracy; I often add a yes, a nod, or a no, or I neglect my dates and relate anecdotes together which happened at different periods; but happen they did; and no conversation is described herein which did not take place within my own knowledge, and, for the most part, in my own hearing.
In regard to the Lambtons, I have related all I ever heard or knew of them, good or bad; and, judging of the youngest, from my slight observation, never having conversed with him for an hour together in my life, I should pronounce him well read; rather sensible; not one bit witty; touchy, sulky, proud, and overbearing: but, having yet the fear of God always before him, he prefers growling to duelling, as in duty bound. So much I guess; yet, being uncertain as to what relates to his religious principles I beg that all his friends will consider him as bold as a lion, until he shall himself have proved to them the contrary.
To proceed, I refused to permit the Duke of Leinster to accompany me home, although he declared himself ready to mount the box, or to stand behind with my dapper little footman! I was out of sorts and out of spirits at the idea of having promised to meet Frederick Lamb at The Cock at Sutton on the following morning. Oh, this tiresome Fred Lamb! I wonder if any woman alive was ever in love with him, with the exception of the once celebrated Charlotte Windham: who would have taken him into keeping, at least so I have heard, and found him in washing, tea, sugar, and raw eggs to the end of his natural life, had he not cut her dead, pour mes propres beaux yeux. Handsome, clever, young, a great plenipo, and the recorded son of the Earl of Melbourne! What would ladies be at? "On ne connait pas toujours son père, c'est un malheur; on est sûr, cependant, d'en avoir eu un, cela console!" as says Pigault Le Brun.
Fred Lamb certainly had a father and, in my conscience, I believe him to have been a man of high rank, no matter whether he was a lord, a duke, or a prince, and, what is more, his mother was a married woman: and yet, notwithstanding these multifarious advantages of both, I looked forward with disgust to the idea of meeting him at The Cock at Sutton. How could I be so deficient in good taste?
I found two letters on my dressing-table; the first I took up was in my young nephew's well-known round text. I knew that he would not write, unless he wanted money or clothes, whips or cricket-bats, and, as I happened to be very poor, I did not venture to break the seal, till I had examined the other letter in search of consolation. It was addressed in an unknown, and I fancied, disguised hand. I hastily broke open the plain wafer seal, and found a two hundred pound bank-note, merely enclosed in a blank cover. "Charming correspondent," said I, "how eloquent is thy silence!"
"It is very clear," continued I to myself, "that there is a providence, which is kind enough to take particular care of me; for I have only to spend my last shilling to ensure to myself a full purse, which comes to me nobody knows how." I was at loss to guess at the munificent being who could find pleasure in thus secretly disposing of so large a sum without even the chance of being thanked for it. "It must be Lord Ponsonby," thought I, and, strange to say, the idea gave me pain instead of pleasure. I would rather have been indebted to any man's goodness than his. It was a relief to my mind to believe him heartless and unworthy of my affection.
To change the current of my thoughts I opened my young nephew's letter, which also contained an enclosure, in the shape of a little dirty note directed to William Halliday, my footman.
The letter to me was as follows:
"MY DEAR AUNT,--I hope you are well, as this leaves me at present. Excuse this bad writing as I am so very bad, and my head aches fit to split, but I am ordered this very moment, before the post goes out, to acquaint you with my accident, as Monsieur Codroie says, perhaps, you may wish me to come to town, to have the rest of my teeth put to rights, the fact is then, to be short, dear Aunt, I was running just now, and I hit my face against another boy's head, and broke out my two front teeth,
"Your affectionate Niece, "GEORGE WOODCOCK.
"P.S.--Pray deliver the enclosed to William, in answer to a long stupid sermon he has written to me about five shillings he says I borrowed of him."
George's enclosure was merely poor William's laboured epistle turned inside out, with these eloquent words written near the seal,--
"Five and four makes nine, Mind your business, and I'll mind mine."
"Vive la poésie!" said I, throwing the letter aside, and ringing for my femme de chambre, whom I desired to prepare for my journey to The Cock at Sutton on the following morning.
I did not awake till twelve o'clock, when I rang my bell.
"Madame, la voiture est à la porte," said my French maid, as she entered my bedroom.
"I cannot help it; so bring me a cup of chocolate, pour me donner du courage," I replied.
Before I had finished it, the Duke of Leinster was announced, and I went down to him in my dressing-gown and slippers.
"Upon my honour," said His Grace, "I am very glad you did not keep your appointment with Fred Lamb. I have brought little George some strings to mend his fiddle with and, if you will give it me, I will string it for him."
I rang for the fiddle, and Leinster set to work in great glee.
"How did you get home last night?" I asked.
"Oh," said Leinster, "my brother Fitzgerald has found out such a woman! Upon my honour I never laughed so much in all my life. He told me she was Venus herself, just emerged from the froth of the sea! I wanted to go home and think of you; but Fitzgerald dragged me by force to No. 2 Upper Norton-street. We were shown into a parlour by an old, dirty duenna, who assured us her mistress was engaged, and she regretted it of all things.
"'Good gracious!' said I, 'Fitz, you are not going to wait?'
"'Yes,' said my brother, mysteriously; 'she is in keeping, and has been these five years. I shall ruin her if I am found here, so pray be quiet. The gentleman who keeps her is a captain of horse-marines.'
"'For God's sake, let me be off,' said I, making the best of my way to the door. 'I can stand a lick or two as well as most lads of my age and country; but, being in love elsewhere, and not quite come to my strength, I do not feel much inclined to encounter this horse-marine to-night.' However, Fitzgerald overruled all my objections and kept me there in perfect misery for more than half an hour. At last, we heard the creaking of heavy boots descending the stairs. I scarcely ventured to breathe, expecting every minute to be called to account by the horse marine, for being found concealed on his premises at past two in the morning.
"Upon my honour, I did not half like it! and only just fancy my horror when, instead of going out at the street door as we both expected, this much-dreaded horse-marine strutted into the parlour in search of his hat! He did not look much like a horse-marine, but reminded me more of a city hosier. Nevertheless, I made myself as small as possible, and strove to hide behind the scanty, red window-curtain. As to Fitzgerald, believing that all was lost, he became bold from desperation and, folding his arms across his breast, he fixed his eyes steadily on his rival. The horse-marine, who had entered with the sort of strut which became a commander-in-chief of No. 2 Upper Norton Street, started back, instead of encountering my brother's fixed regard, and began to stammer out an apology. He had just taken the liberty of seeing the lady home safe from the Opera; he begged pardon if it had been wrong, he was sure no harm nor disrespect was meant, &c.
"By this time my brother, who, I assure you, is by no means such a fool as I am, saw exactly how the case stood, and that the horse-marine was but the creature of his fair mistress's imagination, a sort of circular bug-bear by which she contrived to frighten all her lovers, while she flattered their vanity with the idea that her acquaintance was an unusual bonne fortune, which their peculiar merits alone had obtained for them. This conviction being impressed on my brother's mind, he interrupted his rival in the midst of his humble apologies by playing himself, for that night only, the character of the terrific horse-marine! And, waving his hand with much pomp towards the door, as he fixed his back against the fireplace, said, 'No offence, my good fellow, no offence! only, there is the door you know, and, unless you prefer making your exit by the window, never let me see your rascally, ugly face in this house again!'
"Upon my honour," continued Leinster, "I could not stand it any longer, and, before the poor trembling wretch got to the street door, we both broke out into a roar of laughter, which was interrupted by the entrance of the frail fair one herself, whom my brother immediately accosted thus:
"'Fair lady, since I have been allowed to make so very valuable an acquaintance as that of your horse-marine, my conscience will not permit me to interfere with his happiness:' and we hastened out of the house before the lady could recover from her confusion and surprise."
"Now, duke," said I, "there's the door," placing myself before the fire, and pointing to it in humble imitation of Fitzgerald.
Leinster took this gentle, delicate hint, with much good-nature, and left me at about two o'clock. I felt really ashamed of myself and, hurrying on my travelling dress, was soon with my maid, on our road to The Cock at Sutton. Fred Lamb was waiting at the door, and his joy, on perceiving my carriage, overcame all his late vexation.
"I shall be nicely quizzed and laughed at," said Fred Lamb. "Harry Wyndham and Lord Egremont alighted here this morning, on their road to his lordship's house at Brighton. They asked me so many questions as to where I was going, that I was obliged to confess I was waiting for somebody to meet me. They remained with me an hour. 'Why you will not wait any longer, surely,' said Harry! 'Who can the cruel fair one be?' It was too bad of you."
"Well, do not scold," I answered, "for I could not help it."
Fred Lamb had a book in his pocket, and he read to me in the garden while our dinner was preparing. His remarks on the fine poem he read were very sensible; but his manner of reading, like that of his brother William, I dislike: it might rather be called singing; and yet some say it is proper, and all admit it to be the fashion to read so.
We had an excellent dinner and, as long as I saw daylight, I kept in pretty good spirits; but when the waiter brought us candles, and we seemed as though settled for the night at The Cock at Sutton, my heart completely failed me. I tried hard to reason myself out of this repugnance. I argued with myself that, since I had already been under Frederick's protection, one night more or less could not make much difference,--that to leave him now were to treat him really ill and make, perhaps, a bitter enemy of a man well disposed towards me: but all would not do. "I cannot help it," said I to myself, in a sort of frenzy, "I would rather die than pass another whole night with Fred Lamb, now the thing is gone by and I have been so attached to another." My case was desperate; for I almost equally dreaded telling Lamb I would not stay with him.
"Fred Lamb," said I, at last, absolutely pale with terror, "I really must return to town to night. Do not ask me why, for you may be sure, if I wished to stay, I should not go, and, if I do not, my society cannot be worth having, to a man of taste, who can easily make himself beloved and desired by more likeable objects than I am. You will, I know, have a right to reproach me with caprice, because my good heart made me wish to avoid the appearance of unkindness towards an old friend; mais vous savez bien que les passions ne se commandent pas."
Fred Lamb on this occasion behaved very well and very gentlemanlike, much as his pride and feelings were hurt. He ordered out my carriage and accompanied me home with friendly politeness, nor did he make a single unpleasant observation on my refusal to remain there.
The favourite topic on my arrival in town was the Marquis of Anglesea's elopement with the wife of Sir Henry Wellesley. His Grace of Argyle was soon expected to console Lady Anglesea by the offer of his hand and heart, in case that good lady could contrive, by hook or by crook, by English law, or by Scotch law, to obtain her liberty.
Amy Madden, alias Sydenham, alias Argyle, had long been led to believe, according to her own account, that she was to become the legitimate wife of the Duke of Argyle. At last, when Amy was very near her confinement, Argyle, fearful least the sad truth might fall heavier on her tender heart from a third person than from his own lips, one fine morning, after breakfast, having no doubt previously fortified himself with a bumper of brandy, for Amy was a practical Tartar, opened to her with the utmost delicacy he was master of, the appalling fact that he was about to marry Lady Anglesea.
Amy had a hysterical fit, or was afflicted with sore eyes, I forget which; but I know that she was very bad and vented her rage in all the refined expressions usual on these most celebrated occasions. It will scarcely be expected that I should feel much commiseration for her. When I state these facts it must be understood that Amy said so; but then, will methodistical Luttrell add, with his eyes turned up towards the sky, or the ceiling, as the chance may be--if all the lies that have been uttered since the flood were put into a scale with Amy's, they would weigh as a hair in the balance; so that, perhaps, the less I say on this matter the better.
At last, when a whole month had elapsed beyond the period Amy had named for the expected event, Argyle could keep on the mask no longer; and, having asked her one evening how she felt, and received for answer that she was perfectly well and free from pain, he said, in a passion, "Why, Amy, you are surely a Johanna Southcott, and never mean to be confined at all." This was certainly very cruel, though no less certainly circumstances did rather appear to justify such a suspicion!
At last, oh, blessed news for Argyle! Amy declared she felt a slight pain; but whether it proceeded from the sweet pledge of love she carried in her bosom or from what else was time to determine: and my kind readers will probably recollect that, in a like protracted case, Old Time determined against the late Marchioness of Buckingham, without the least respect to all the splendid paraphernalia which had been profusely got up for the anticipated joyful occasion. Amy, however, not being quite so stricken in years, Argyle bustled about in the joyful hopes of a speedy deliverance, and said, "No harm in sending to Dr. Merriman, and getting the knocker tied up, and a little straw laid before the door?" As to the nurse, she had been in the house for the last month!
By the time the knocker was tied up, the straw laid down, and Dr. Merriman shown upstairs into her room, Amy declared herself quite well again, and so she continued for another week.
"Good Lord deliver us!" exclaimed Argyle.
"Amen!" responded the old nurse: for who would differ from a duke, however pleasant it might be to enjoy present pay and good quarters for doing nothing!
I cannot help pitying anything in labour, even a mountain! At length, Amy herself really experienced the so often anticipated pains. She now declared that she could not stand it, and would not, that was more!
"Give me a pair of scissors!" said she in a fury to the doctor, "and I will cut my own throat directly."
Dr. Merriman answered with perfect sangfroid.
Apropos! I do remember this said Dr. Merriman of Curzon-street, an apothecary, and often has he stood behind his uncle's counter to serve me when I was a child and fond of sweets, with a pennyworth of Spanish liquorice. His father was a respectable accoucheur and had the honour to bring all my respectable family into this respectable world, one by one, except my youngest sister Julia; and he would have done as much by her, but that he happened to die one day, and the present Dr. Merriman, his nephew, formerly well known by the appellation of Sam Merriman, officiated, faute de mieux, my dear mother being too shy to endure the idea of a perfect stranger.
As soon as he got possession of his dead uncle's carriage he took the small liberty of cutting the shop, Spanish liquorice and all, and ventured to change the name of Sam for the more dignified one of Doctor, but it would not pass current everywhere. Many refused to pay a fee, and voted him ignorantus, ignoranta, ignorantum! and so Sam, à force de battre le fer, contrived to take out a degree, and became Dr. Merriman indeed, at any lady's service.
"My dear Lady," said the doctor to Amy, in answer to her request for a pair of scissors to cut her own throat, "my dear lady, I should be happy to oblige you, if you could first insure my own neck": and then, turning to the nurse as he warmed his hands by the fire, "I always let them halloa, and make just as much noise as they like; but, for myself, as it will be necessary for me to pass the night here, I shall thank you to give me some warm blankets on that sofa; with a cup of tea and a bottle of wine."
In due season, the gentle Amy was delivered of a fine boy, by my old friend Sam Merriman, and was duly announced to be as well as could be expected. For another fortnight, Amy contrived to keep Argyle in London, as might be supposed to his no small annoyance, just on the eve of his approaching nuptials with Lady Anglesea. The time however did arrive when His Grace took his departure northward, to the destruction of all the airy visions which had long flitted before the anxious eyes of Amy, who had adorned them with ducal coronets and almost every other attribute of a resolutely, ambitious and selfish mind. She declared that her death must be perfectly an event of course; yet she got up in a month, as blooming and well as she had ever been in her life. It is true she worked herself up into a dreadful frenzy of passion, when anybody told her that the Duchess of Argyle was, or would soon be, in the way which all ladies who love their lords wish to be in; but she was easily consoled by adding a few years to Her Grace's age, or detracting from the duchess's charms, personal or mental.
Enough of Amy. I hate to dwell long on any subject, unless indeed it were the merits of these my most interesting and valuable memoirs! which I assure you might have been better still--but that Stockdale won't let me or any one else study and correct them. "The merits of such a light work as this," stupidly says he, "is, that it is written without study, and naturally, and just as you converse. There are learned books enough, and more than people are aware of, all written with such correct precision, as to defy the Edinburgh Reviewers themselves! and yet half of them do not take the trouble, although months have been spent in poring over heavy volumes, to secure the accuracy of a single date! This research is highly creditable in its way; but, since the world, in their rage for variety, require a little of everything, write you in your own natural language, and of life, manners, and men as they strike you, and, take my word for it, your own genuine spirit will please and the book will sell." So here am I, seated on an easy chair at No. 111, in the Rue de Faubourg St. Honoré à Paris, writing, not for the benefit of my readers, but for my own amusement and profit to boot, and in the full expectation that my work is to pass the twentieth edition! Apropos, I have just got a letter from Stockdale, who tells me he has hopes, even beyond what he at first anticipated, as to the success of my Memoirs: but then he consents to observe my directions as to the pretty pictures; which he says shall certainly adorn the work before it gets to the conclusion.
Love me, love my dog!
"Apropos to what?" says the reader.
I really don't know. I have had my head leaning on my finger, which is my usual attitude, as you see me in the portrait, for the last three minutes, after I had finished the word edition, considering what was to be my next subject.
I yesterday dined with a lady, who assured me that it often cost her an hour to begin a letter; but, having once decided on the first five or six words, she could scribble on till doomsday.
"I'll put anything down," said I to myself, "just now, if only to try my fortune in that way," and, looking towards my window, from which I have a full view of everybody who passes in the Faubourg St. Honoré, I saw a thin _ancien régime-_looking, powdered Frenchman, in a threadbare coat and a pair of yellow old silk stockings, which showed to much disadvantage what, I suppose, he calls les beaux restes of his calves.
"It is rakish and interesting," says Lord Foley, "to have a thin leg; but you must never admit that you were not born with a large calf, while you declare that your high breeding has left you only, les beaux restes."
However, to proceed with my Frenchman in the threadbare coat, who just now stopped near my window to take off his hat to an opulent-looking man with a large, black dog.
"What sort of a man is an opulent-looking man?" perhaps the reader may inquisitively ask, and particularly if he should happen to belong to that fraternity vulgarly called blacklegs.
Why gentlemen, if you will take off your dreadful Thurtel-looking, white great-coats, and sit down quietly, and not frighten one, I will tell you.
I generally guess to be opulent, a man who, being vulgar, and with the air and manners of low birth, appears not at all proud of a new coat, which he wears not well brushed, and a chain of value, which is not dragged too forward; and generally appears discontented with whatever poor men are most apt to admire. He likewise makes a particular sort of bow; putting on his hat always less ceremoniously than he had taken it off to salute you, as though, on second thoughts, it had scarcely been worth his while. All these, my favourite marks, had the man whom the thin old beau just now saluted with such profound respect.
The supposed opulent man apparently, to the great surprise and delight of the poor one, made a full stop, and addressed him.--While they were conversing, the large, black, dirty dog, jumped on his hind legs, and began playing with the thin old beau, covering him with mud. Instead of driving the nasty animal away in anger as I fully expected, he caressed and patted him, as though quite enchanted. The opulent man, whose frightful dog I should imagine had never before been tolerated, appeared all gratitude and respect for him who saw his qualities with the same partial eyes that he did himself.
"Love me, love my dog," said I to myself, and, trusting to providence for what was to follow, I put the words down in my manuscript. It is a very natural feeling, certainly, yet many carry it much too far. I have known men, and women too, who could love nothing for the life of them, however amiable, with whom everybody was not charmed! Some men quarrel with those who will not admire their mistress; others love her no longer than she happens to continue the fashion; if, indeed, one may dignify such selfish feelings of admiration as originate only in vanity by the appellation of love! Still it is perfectly natural to desire that our friends and those we respect should sanction our affections by partaking of our admiration.
"It is sweet to do a great many things," Lord Byron said, and he might have added, how very sweet and pure is the delight we all experience at the genuine spontaneous praise bestowed on the object of our choice.
Lord Ponsonby was certainly one of the most reserved and shy men in England, and, being a married man, was naturally, for reasons, desirous of concealing his affections when his wife was not their object. One day, during the time we were living together, I walked into the Green Park with my young brother George. We met Lord Ponsonby in a barouche, accompanied by his sister, Lady Howick.
"What two merry, lovely faces are those," said her kind ladyship to her brother, "how closely they resemble each other! What a delightful girl! The boy of course must be her brother."
Ponsonby always described this as one of the very happiest moments of his life, nor could all his dread of notoriety, his constitutional reserve, and his sense of what was due both to his wife and his sister, prevent his acknowledging, in answer to Lady Howick's question, why he blushed so deeply, that we had loved each other for more than a year.
"Oh, for shame, John!" said his good-natured sister, at least, so Lord Ponsonby told me, "but then to be sure, this very nice girl does resemble Lady Ponsonby extremely."
"Do you think that fine boy, her brother, would like to go to sea?"
Ponsonby said he would inquire.
"I have taken such a fancy to your Harriette," continued Lady Howick, "that I wish I could be of service to her. I know I can make Lord Howick send her brother out as midshipman."
It was very, very kind!
My little brother wished to go out, and I was ready to do my best to fit him out. Lord Ponsonby was very persevering about it for more than a month; but my poor mother wanted courage to part with so young and certainly so fine a boy....
Chapter XIII
What do you think of Elliston the actor? I will tell you my opinion. He is one of the most mercenary, selfish creatures I ever met with. I once thought better of him; that was at the very beginning of our acquaintance. I had absolutely been in love with the man ever since I accompanied my mother to witness his performance in the comedy of The Honeymoon. Elliston, in the character of the duke, appeared so very manly, so very gentlemanlike, so everything which a man ought to be to win a fair lady's heart, that I did not recover myself for more than a fortnight.
One day, little Livius, of some Dragoon regiment which I have forgotten, having only a sort of bowing, nodding acquaintance with him, met me in Great Portland-street. He touched his hat and begged pardon for running after me; but knowing my talent, he was anxious to obtain my opinion of a little farce he was about to bring out at Drury-lane Theatre, under the title of Maid and Wife.
"Will you appoint a time to call on me, and read your piece?" said I.
"Yes, provided you promise to give me your frank and most candid opinion of it, whether good or bad."
I promised to do this on my word, and nine o'clock on the next evening was fixed for his reading the farce to me.
Livius was punctual; he read his little piece with spirit, and played and sung the songs. They were borrowed from the French, as was the farce, but Livius had adapted it with some taste to the English stage. It was un assez joli petit rien, and I doubted not would have its run for a fortnight at least. I expressed my approbation, at which Livius did me the honour to appear very proud.
"Elliston himself is kind enough to play one of my characters, and the others he has given to his very best performers."
"What a charming actor is Elliston," I remarked.
"Would you like to be acquainted with him?" said Livius.
"Of all things in the world," I replied. "The impression he made on me when I was only thirteen years of age, I have not forgotten yet."
"If then," added Livius, "you will allow me to make up your party for the play to-morrow, I have a private box at your service, and I will invite the Honourable George Lamb to join us. Elliston plays in Wild Oats, but he will come to us between the acts, or after the play, I have no doubt. At any rate with your permission, we will all sup together at my hotel in Dover Street. I have very good rooms there and three pianofortes, on either of which I shall be delighted to hear you play."
I assured him that I would hold myself in readiness at any hour he would appoint to call for me.
"Will you be offended if I venture to introduce a young lady to you?" Livius asked.
"Not at all, provided you permit me to cut her dead, in case her society should not be to my taste."
"Certainly," said Livius; and after begging me to expect him in his own carriage, at seven on the following evening, he left me.
Livius's little farce of Maid and Wife was advertised for the approaching Monday. On that day, Livius and I and a pretty, weak, childish young lady found our way to a private box at Drury Lane Theatre, just at the close of the first of Wild Oats. We were soon joined by my own faithful Frederick's brother, the honourable George Lamb, to whom I was presented by Livius. I immediately began to discuss the merits and demerits of Frederick with my usual and abrupt frankness.
"Can anything be more ridiculous," I exclaimed, "than the rage which is caused alone by your not returning a man's passion! Why blame one for what really cannot be helped?"
"Very fine talking," retorted George Lamb, "but, in fact, love is the most arbitrary passion we are susceptible of. If you torture a man he must naturally hate you."
"Do you believe in God?" I asked.
"Et vous, Madame?" said George Lamb.
"I do indeed," I replied, "believe in his goodness, but not in his vengeance. I dread and abhor the idea of offending him because I believe he would forgive all my faults."
George Lamb looked incredulous.
"If I do really believe in a God, and a hereafter, would you have me affect to be a disbeliever? Because there is an ironical smile on your countenance."
"Not at all," replied George Lamb, with honest truth, or the resemblance of it at least: "not at all; those who do believe in God are mean and contemptible, when they feel ashamed of confessing their faith."
Take him all in all I rather like George Lamb, notwithstanding they say he does eat too much dinner, which occasions him to drink too much wine in order to wash too much dinner down. This does not however prevent his being one of the frankest men I ever met with.
I did not altogether like Elliston in Wild Oats. He made too many faces, and reminded me of the minor theatres, where grimace is in considerable request. Perhaps also, since the time I fell in love with him in The Honeymoon, he was all the worse for having presided over a small theatre as manager for several years. He joined us after the play, and being tipsy, which is generally the case with him, I thought him very pleasant, although as I have since discovered there is not a heavier, more matter-of-fact, stupid companion on earth than Elliston, when he is sober.
I asked George Lamb if he had heard Mr. Livius's new piece.
"Part of it only; but, from what I saw, I think it must be a very lively petite comédie," answered Lamb.
Elliston made very free with us all, and especially with George Lamb.
As soon as the curtain dropped and we were all seated in the carriage, Elliston got in a passion with Livius's coachman for not immediately moving on.
"What the devil is the matter?" said he, "what detains your man? All this fuss about a rascally three hundred pound-house and not twenty carriages!"
"I told you Munden's day was over, and that he would not fill the house, before you engaged him for to-night," said George Lamb.
"I say," answered Elliston, "Munden would have filled the house if it had been a fine night."
"Not he," said George Lamb, "your crownation might, but not Munden!"
"Hold your tongue, you are a Whig," said Elliston; and George Lamb was silent, after a grunt.
"But what in the name of the devil is your ass of a coachman keeping us here for?" said Elliston.
"Why, Livius, I thought you piqued yourself on being at all times remarkably well appointed."
Livius confessed he knew not what to make of it; and put out his head to inquire of his footman what was the reason of being kept stationary.
The footman's voice was drowned by the vociferation of Elliston from the opposite window.
"Where's Townsend, or any of the constables?"
A constable approached the carriage.
"Why the devil don't you manage better?" roared out Elliston; "why is the road blocked up in this manner?"
"It is not blocked up at all, Mr. Elliston," answered the constable, "it's nothing in the world but the coachman as is so drunk, he can't sit on his box."
"God bless my soul!" said Livius, and then he called out again to his footman to know what was the matter.
The footman either could not or did not choose to explain.
"Get you then on the box and drive us home, Jem," said Livius.
No sooner said than done. Jem, having mounted the box, entreated his fellow servant to give up the reins.
"Touch my honour, touch my life," said the coachman, who absolutely refused to part with the whip.
"D--n his rascally drunken soul!" said Elliston, trying to force open the carriage-door. "I'll settle him! Trust me for having him off his perch in half a second. Of all things I abhor a drunkard!"
"For God's sake, Elliston, be quiet," said George Lamb.
"You seem to take it perfectly easy," said I, to Lamb, "seeing that all our precious necks are in danger!"
"We must take our chance," answered Lamb quietly. "The only thing I particularly dread is the idea of Elliston attempting to drive us home himself. I can bear anything but that."
The coachman and footman now appeared to be fighting on the box, Livius was scolding and bawling out of one window, Elliston faisant un bruit tel qu'il n'y en eut jamais en enfer, at the other, because he could not get the coach door open, and nobody would come to his assistance. At last he succeeded; the footman made room for him on the box, and Elliston quietly threw the drunken coachman off on to the pavement, box-coat and all, in spite of his swearing and kicking.
Livius got out of the carriage, and picked the man up, to ascertain that he was alive, as he fell without uttering a groan.
"Oh! for shame, you cowardly wretch, to treat an honest poor coachman in that brutal way! Why you've killed him, poor dear soul!" said an old hag, who happened to pass at the instant.
Elliston, still smarting with the knocks, kicks and scratches he had got in his scuffle with the obstinate coachman, was not in a very gentle humour. The woman forced herself in his way, and he, I presume, pushed her rather ungallantly aside.
"Oh you coward! oh you coward!" screamed out the woman; "strike a woman, hay! here's a coward for you!"
"Oh! Mr. Elliston," said I, shaking my head at him, as he stood at the carriage window.
"I only touched her just so," said Elliston, tapping me on the head.
"Just so!" repeated his fair antagonist, "why he has half kill'd me; here, watchman! watchman!"
The rattle was sprung, and behold Elliston and Livius surrounded by the guardians of the night.
What became of the coachman I know not; but, in about five minutes more, Elliston jumped into the carriage and ordered the footman to drive to Mr. Livius's Hotel in Dover Street.
"Where is Livius?" asked we all three in a breath.
"Gone to the watch-house," said Elliston, with the most perfect composure.
"How so?" asked George Lamb.
"What has he done?" inquired the young lady in a pet, declaring that no one had been to blame but Mr. Elliston; therefore she would not stir till Mr. Livius was safe.
"Nonsense, nonsense! fair lady. Let him use my name at the watch-house!"
"Where, I presume, you are well known, Mr. Mountebank," added I.
"One of us must have gone," said Elliston, laughing, "and I tell you he will join us before we have finished our supper. It serves him right for having a drunken coachman. Why all our necks would have been broken by this time, but for me."
"To hear that man talk," said George Lamb, "one might almost be led to believe he was a very fine fellow!"
On our arrival at Livius's lodgings in Dover Street, we found an elegant, cold supper laid out, with plenty of champagne on the side-board.
"Your master is gone to the watch-house," said Elliston, "and has requested me to do the honours. Ah! ah!" continued he, taking up one of the soup plates, "we have white soup, I presume. I am very fond of white soup, and am very hungry. Pray, bring it up directly."
The young lady and I declare that it was a shame and a sin to sit down without Livius.
George Lamb begged leave to differ in opinion; because he wanted his supper.
Elliston insisted, and the white soup made its appearance. In about a quarter of an hour after we were seated, Livius entered the room quite out of breath.
"Did not I tell you he would soon join us?" said Elliston. "Sit down, my dear Livius. Your white soup was so excellent, that there is none left. You used my name, of course, at the watch-house?"
"If he had, he would have been kept there for a week," observed George Lamb, and Elliston laughed heartily, though very slily.
"This," said Elliston, drawing out a small unbound volume from his pocket, "this is the French farce from which Kemble has taken the new piece he is to bring out next Thursday. What think you of our getting it up the same evening?"
"Let me see it," said Livius. Elliston desired that he would translate a few lines.
George Lamb and Elliston together, after they had listened to a page or two, with one voice exclaimed, "Very stupid."
"Mine is but mere literal translation," said Livius. "Harriette, no doubt, could make something of it."
"Will you oblige me by undertaking it, madam?" inquired Elliston, "and completing it in two days?"
"If anybody can be found to accomplish the songs," I observed, "I won't be behindhand."
"I will rhyme them in English," said George Lamb, "if you really wish it."
"And I will set them to music," added Livius, "provided Mr. Lamb will sit up all night to get them done in time for me."
"I think it wont answer," said George, "and be only tiring the poor performers, as well as ourselves, to no purpose; but, if you really have fixed your heart upon the thing, I will devote a night, and finish the songs."
Elliston waxed more generous as he waxed more drunk, and suddenly throwing the farce behind the fire, exclaimed, "This competition with the other house is paltry and ungentlemanlike. I will have none of it. It is in too bad a taste; besides," said he, half in mockery, "Mr. Livius's piece is to have such a run, we shall want nothing else all the season!"
"Apropos of that little piece," said I, "I wish Livius would play the songs, and sing them to us."
Livius was immediately seated at the pianoforte. When he got to the last chorus-song Elliston jumped up, declaring he was to sing that with the rest, and had not yet heard a word of it. He then began, with a serious face, accompanying Livius.
"Oh 'tis love, 'tis love, 'tis love."
"Elliston!" bawled out George Lamb, "why the deuce don't you come and finish your supper? I want to speak to you."
Elliston took no notice; but continued his "Oh! 'tis love, 'tis love, 'tis love."
"Livius," then said George Lamb, "I want to ask you whether you have places to spare for your night?"
"Elliston won't allow me to leave off," replied Livius, still continuing to play, to Elliston's "Oh! 'tis love, 'tis love, 'tis love!"
"Leave off, you blockhead!" said George Lamb to Elliston. "I will lay you fifty guineas that you do not repeat one line as Livius has written it, either in your song or your speech."
Elliston appeared to agree, and give up the matter as hopeless, for, darting from the pianoforte towards Livius's young, female friend, who still continued at table, he gave her such an ardent embrace that she was quite frightened, and then, as I sat next, he conferred the same honour on me.
"Good heavens! what a mountebank is here!" said I, pushing him from me.
George Lamb sat next; for he had not half finished his supper. Elliston placed himself in a theatrical attitude ready to embrace him.
"And, as to you, my George!" said he, with much pathos.
"For God's sake," exclaimed George Lamb, with his mouth full of dried cherries, "for God's sake, do not play the fool with me!"
Elliston now seated himself by my side, and said, in a whisper, "Don't you want tea?"
"No, but you do, I see," answered I, and I had the charity to request Livius to give me some tea.
Elliston did the honours of the tea-table. The tea had a surprising effect in making him stupid; because it made him sober. He politely offered me his private box for Livius's night, and regretted that it was not a better one. It was a large box, on the stage; but rather too high up. Livius had a private box to himself, and tickets for a host of friends.
"It is three o'clock," said I, at last, "and I dare not risk my petite santé, another instant."
"Good people are so scarce!" added George Lamb.
"No," I added, "I am good for very little. You will find better people every day, and wiser; but nobody at all like me."
George Lamb expressed himself quite of this opinion.
It was past four o'clock in the morning when I got home.
The Duke of Leinster, Harry De Roos, and Sophia dined with me on the following day. Just as we were about to sit down to dinner Lord Deerhurst was announced.
"Dear me, how tiresome," said Sophia.
"Do not send him here, pray," said Leinster and de Roos in the same breath. I went down to ask him what he wanted, and informed him of my dinner-party, with whom I knew he was unacquainted.
"Oh, I wish much to know the Duke of Leinster, so pray do introduce me," said Deerhurst.
"No," I answered, "I shall do no such thing. That's frank and flat. If you don't like Sophia to dine here you may, with her consent, take her away with you, but I will never present you to any friend of mine. Sophia told you this morning that she was to meet the Duke of Leinster and his cousin."
"Certainly," answered Deerhurst, "I have not the slightest objection; but do, there's a dear good creature, present me to the Duke of Leinster."
"You are, in all and everything, the meanest man on earth," was my civil remark.
"You refuse then?" said Deerhurst.
"I do," repeated I impatiently, "and you must now allow me to wish you a good morning, as we were going to dinner immediately."
"Then," said Deerhurst, "I must introduce myself, that's all:" and, disregarding all I could say or do to prevent him, he ran into the drawing-room, took off his hat with a low bow, and said,
"Duke, allow me to introduce, and earnestly recommend to your notice, Viscount Deerhurst."
The Duke had no pride, and was very mean and stingy, nobody more so; but he paid his bills, and was what the world calls an honourable man. To do him common justice, I do not think he would like to break his word, however much it might be to his interest, and well as he loved money. He disliked Deerhurst's character, and was too natural and not half polite enough to conceal his displeasure at being so unceremoniously intruded upon. He bowed very slightly without speaking, and the smile with which he greeted his lordship was scarcely perceptible.
Harry De Roos was as proud as he was shy, and took no sort of notice of Deerhurst, beyond rising from his chair when his lordship turned from His Grace to his cousin.
Deerhurst's stock of assurance was not to be diminished by two mere boys. He seated himself near Sophia, ever certain of her unqualified approbation at all events.
"Well, Soph, my love, are you glad to see me?"
"Yes, I am very glad indeed," replied Sophia.
"I'll tell you something, Lord Deerhurst," said I. "I do not like quarrelling with people and especially in my own house; but, seriously, I must tell you that these gentlemen expected to meet Sophia and me only, and your intrusion is really a little cool."
Sophia said I was quite right, it really was very cool indeed, and she had heard His Grace request that we would fix on a day when nobody else was coming.
"If His Grace will say he wishes to get rid of me I am off," remarked his lordship.
What could the easy tempered Leinster do less than declare his happiness to see him?
Deerhurst possesses talents and can be very agreeable. He was growing tired of being cut by so many respectable people; therefore he set about winning the friendship of the Duke of Leinster. He talked of sailing and boats, big fiddles and Irish watchmen; praised to the skies such of the Irish nobility as lived on their estates, and imitated the Irish brogue as though he had been practising it all the days of his life. Leinster was delighted with him.
After dinner, Luttrell called to say that Amy gave her first party since her confinement, on this evening, and had permitted him to say that, as it was a mutual convenience that we should meet civilly at parties, and neither friendship nor intimacy was necessary for that purpose, she was ready to ratify the engagement made between us a few years back, to offer me no insult and desired I would go to her in the course of the evening, and bring as many of my male friends as I pleased.
I asked Leinster and De Roos if they would like to take me to Amy's with them.
"Most willingly," was their answer.
"Make no apologies for not asking me," said Deerhurst, "for, with all my impudence, I do not think I could face that tartar of a sister of yours without a special invitation."
"Are you fond of looking at jewellery?" I asked Luttrell.
"Very," answered Luttrell, "and I believe I am rather a good judge too."
"Then," said I, "Sophia, my dear, if you have brought your jewels with you, pray ask Mr. Luttrell's opinion of their value."
Sophia drew from her reticule two smart jewel-boxes, of Love the jeweller.
"These are the jewels which were presented to my sister by Viscount Deerhurst," said I, as I handed them to Mr. Luttrell.
The box contained a necklace of large green glass-beads, set in yellow metal. There was a leaden ring, with a blue bead in it, a small Tunbridge-ware tooth-pick case, with "When this you see, remember me," superscribed on it, and two brass seals, one with the name of Sophia on it, the other, with a little winged figure, evidently meant for a cupid or a parrot; but it was very difficult to decide which it most resembled. Everybody laughed heartily, but the loudest laugher of our party was Viscount Deerhurst.
"And then," said Deerhurst, trying to recover himself, "and then, having won the young lady by dint of these valuable jewels, Robinson, the attorney of Bolton street, first draws up an agreement to secure to her an annuity of three hundred a year, and the next day tells you his agreement is not worth six-pence!"
There was only one of our society who carried politeness so far as to seem amused at such disgusting profligacy.
Luttrell looked with unqualified contempt on his lordship. Leinster and De Roos, considering themselves too young to set an example, or reform the age, fixed their eyes steadily on the carpet, while De Roos's fair cheek was tinged with a deep blush. Sophia alone joined Lord Deerhurst in his laugh; declaring that it was very funny to be sure.
"Lord Deerhurst," said I, "Sophia is my sister, and if she chooses to submit to insult and ill-usage from you, it shall not be in my house, where you were not invited."
Sophia immediately worked herself up into a passion of tears, declaring that she did not want to be insulted, and would much rather not return to Lord Deerhurst, who, she was sure, was a very nasty man indeed, and hardly ever washed his head.
Deerhurst carelessly declared himself quite ready to support the dire calamity, and wished, of all things, Sophia would live with her sister Harriette.
"The man is not worth a thought, much less a tear," said I to Sophia. "You are welcome to my house as long as I have one to share with you; in the meantime let us drive to Amy's."
Sophia did not accompany us; but retired with Lord Deerhurst, who had remarked in her ear that I was jealous and wanted him myself.
"I think Harriette is a little jealous really, so I'll go home with you, to make her mad," said Sophia.
And off they went.
Amy's drawing-room was quite full. She looked very well, and fairer, as well as less fierce, than before her confinement. Fanny appeared unusually lovely, dressed in a pale pink crape dress, which set off her rosy, white, delicate skin, to the greatest advantage; and with her unadorned bright auburn curls, waving carelessly around her laughing, dark blue eyes and beautiful throat, she seemed the most desirable object in the room. Julia was very fair too; perhaps her skin was whiter than Fanny's and of quite as delicate a texture; but it had not the vermillion tinge, and the blue veins were less defined. Both were of the highest order of fine forms. They were also of the same height, which was that best adapted to perfect symmetry; their feet and ancles were alike models for the statuary's art, and Fanny's shoes fitted Julia as well as her own; but Fanny's hair was dark and more glossy than Julia's. Fanny's teeth were beautiful, while Julia's, though strong, were uneven; and Fanny's smile was infinitely more attractive than Julia's, whose countenance was in fact, as I think I have before mentioned, rather harsh than pleasing. Yet there was such a decided resemblance in their tout ensemble, that everybody mistook Julia for Fanny's elder sister.
This evening Julia, I suppose with a view to outshine us all, wore a dress of white silvered lama on gauze, and a Turkish turban of bright blue, fringed with gold. There was a voluptuous and purely effeminate languor about Julia's character, which was well adapted to the eastern style of dress. The large, strait, gauze sleeve did not at all conceal the symmetry of her beautiful arm. Fanny's dimpled arms were quite uncovered, and encircled with elegant but simple bracelets, composed of plaited hair, clasped with a magnificently brilliant ruby. They were both infinitely graceful. Fanny would lay her laughing face on her folded arms, reclining on a table, while she made some odd reflections, or she would fasten her pocket-handkerchief or her shawl across her head and ears, when she felt the air affect her head, without inquiring of her glass whether she had thus added to or diminished her attractions: yet everything became her; or rather all were determined to think faultless, her in whose beautiful eyes shone the warmest philanthropy, whose every word and action proved the desire she ever felt to make others appear to advantage.
Julia's attitudes, though graceful, were studied and luxurious; but always modest and effeminate.
Amy wore a yellow satin dress, fastened round the waist with a gold band. Her profuse raven locks were entirely unadorned, and her neck, arms and fingers were covered with glittering jewels of every colour. My own evening dresses were invariably composed of rich, figured, white French gauze over white satin; and I never wore any ornaments in my hair, of which I was not a little proud; but my earrings were of unusual length, and consisted of diamonds, rubies and turquoise stones. A Mrs. Armstrong, whom Amy had lately patronised, was of the party. She was the chère amie Colonel Armstrong, an aide-de-camp of the Duke of York. It was said of the duchess, that she carried her charity so far as to send yearly presents to the mistress of her royal husband's aide-de-camp, but if this were really true, I have always heard that, in all but the ceremony of marriage, the mother of Colonel Armstrong's children, from her steady adherence to her protector during seven years, and her resistance of temptation, which assailed her in every shape, deserved the encouragement of the great and the good.
In spite of the strict economy which she invariably practised, the colonel had lately decided that his circumstances would not, in common prudence, admit of his running the slightest risk of increasing his family.
"We will be excellent friends, my love," said he, to his better half, "but friends only."
This may be very easy at the age of fifty, but his Lucy was still in the prime of youth, and old as he was she loved her Tommy dearly, and was very melancholy at his determination.
"We cannot have separate beds you know, my dear," said Lucy; "because there is not a spare bed in the house."
"That is true, my love," answered her Tommy, "but it really must be all the same."
Lucy sighed heavily.
"Go and visit your friend Amy, my dear," said the kind colonel, "it will enliven you; and since our family is not to be increased, I can afford to put my last dozen of shirts out to be made. Now that our boy William can run alone, there is no necessity for my poor Lucy making such a slave of herself."
"Alas!" thought poor Lucy, "I am terribly afraid of being tempted in Amy's gay society;" but she did not say so.
Lucy was a very neat, lady-like little creature, who used to wear very fine muslin gowns, ornamented with her own beautiful embroidery. Her teeth were extremely white and regular, and her lips of bright vermilion; but I could not discern any other beauty in her. Nevertheless she was a great favourite with the men, and would make fifty conquests while Julia was bungling with one. Lucy had a way of disarming the most impudent, when they attempted to take the slightest liberty with her: not by her dignified deportment, nor by her wit; but by the mere simplicity of her truly modest carriage, which was so far removed from prudery that nobody knew how to offend her.
This evening was set apart for dancing, and Fanny and Julia being the very best dancers in the room were in their glory.
All the world were, or wished they were there, but many could not get further than the passage, the whole house being so crammed. Among others was the man they call the dancing Montgomery, although perhaps I do him too much honour by putting him in print; he was such a slovenly unlicked cub, of what particular family I am ignorant; but it was clear this man had originally been designed by nature for a lout, only he went to Paris and came home a dancer, every inch of him below the girdle. As for his shoulders and arms they continued as before; Frenchmen cannot work miracles like German princes! but they converted into a fop this ready-made clown, to the utter discomfiture of our gauzes and Indian muslins, which were sure to suffer, as often as we ventured to employ him to hand us tea, negus, or orgeat.
"Would you like to dance?" said George Brummell, to Mrs. Armstrong, en passant.
"I have only just left off," answered she, rising, and curtseying with much politeness; "but I am never tired of dancing."
"You have a dancing face," Brummell quietly observed, fixing his eyes steadily on her countenance for a second or two, and then passing on.
Poor Lucy, she afterwards declared to us, was never so ashamed and humbled since she had been born.
All this time, Montgomery's thick straight locks were steadily beating time on his watery forehead, as he trod the mazy dance with all his might, footing it away most scholastically. He did indeed dance famously; but then he was always out at the elbows, which appeared to have no connection whatever with his feet, particularly on this eventful night, when one of his elbows came in such neighbourly contact with the eye of the poor Duc de Berri, who was just entering the room, while Montgomery was swinging short corners near the door, as sent his Royal Highness reeling backwards.
Tout le monde fût au désespoir!
"Mon Dieu! Quel malheur, monsieur le duc!" said Amy.
"Rien, rien du tout," answered the good-natured Duc de Berri, holding his handkerchief to his eye.
"Il y a tant de monde ici, ce soir, et la salle n'est pas grande, comme vous voyez, monsieur," said Fanny, to His Highness; as usual endeavouring to excuse and conciliate all parties.
"Ma fois! je n'y vois goutte!" said the duke, laughing, with his handkerchief still before his eyes.
Montgomery came forward to express his regrets; but it was plain, from his manner, that he did not at all attribute the accident to anything like awkwardness on the part of himself or his elbows, of which he seemed not a part. However, I do not mean to depreciate Mr. Montgomery's dancing in the least; only do but give him elbow-room and he will astonish you!
Mr. Quintin Dick of Curzon Street Mayfair was now announced, and contrived to make his way towards Amy.
Quintin Dick is a man of fifteen or twenty thousand a year; at least, so I guess; for there is no subject on which people are more likely to be mistaken in than that of private finances. However, in spite of his fortune, Quintin Dick is and has been one of the most unpopular men within the United Kingdom. By birth an Irishman, by trade a linen-draper, no, by-the-bye, I am wrong, it was his father, who, they say, dealt in linen, not Quintin himself, carroty Quintin, of whom I cannot say I ever knew any particular harm. I however took it for granted that he was mean and vilely shabby, having never heard two opinions on that point.
I remember Colonel Armstrong telling me one day at Brighton, that the woman who ever got a shilling or a shilling's worth out of Mr. Quintin Dick, ought to be immortalised. I immediately resolved to make the attempt. Meeting Dick the next morning on the Steyne, I told him that I had taken a fancy to an article of millinery, which I was at that moment too poor to purchase, though the price of it was under five pounds. Can it be credited! he actually requested permission to send it home!
Armstrong would not believe me till I showed him the receipt. Au reste, Quintin is the man to whom somebody is said to have remarked, observing that he wore the wrist-bands of his shirt-sleeves so fashionably low as to pass his knuckles, "I am sorry, Mr. Dick, to see that you have so much linen on hand." It strikes me however, that this must be a joke of a hundred years old. No matter. He came this evening to ask us three sisters, as well as Julia and Mrs. Armstrong, to dine with him on the approaching Saturday.
"Who are your men?" I asked.
"Lords Hertford and Alvanly, the Hon. J. Ward, Nugent, Luttrell, and another man or two, whose names I have forgotten," Dick replied.
We all accepted his invitation on account of his party. For himself, he was a man of very few words. In fact, he scarcely ever spoke at all; and when he did he attempted to be satirical; but his were the very worst attempts I ever heard.
Montagu, the relation of the lady in Gloucester Place, of chimney-sweeping notoriety, assisted to keep up the spirit of the dance. Ward walked about, repeating Greek and Latin verses to himself as usual. He made love to Amy and Fanny alternately. I once knew a mistress of his, nay two! Perhaps I may tell you what sort of a character they gave him some other time. Napier came sneaking and grinning into the room, and informed us that either Lord Bath or Lord Bathurst, I forget which, was bringing him into parliament.
"More shame for you, who ought not to have given up your independence for millions," said I. "You cannot now vote against the man who gives you a seat."
Napier showed his teeth, merely observing, "You have such a comical way of talking to one."
Lord Fife now came sailing up the room, and all the women immediately made up to him. "My lord," said one, "have you spoken to the manager about bringing my young friend out at the opera house this season?"
"Yes, yes," said Fife, nodding his head, "I saw him to-day; he expects her. When you take her to him, send in my card and he will receive you well."
"Dear Lord Fife," said another, "we want to go to Elliston's masquerade."
"Certainly, certainly, to be sure," answered the good-natured Fife, still nodding assent, "I will send you tickets to-morrow."
"And I," said Amy, "want a box at Covent Garden on Monday."
"To be sure, to be sure," still continued the promising earl.
"Lord Fife," said I, "Sir Harcourt Lees wants to shoot grouse this season, on your estate in the North."
"To be sure, tell me when he goes, and I'll give him a letter to my brother."
"I know an excellent old Frenchwoman," said Mrs. Armstrong, "who wants you to buy a watch of hers."
"Let her come to me in the morning, to be sure! to be sure!"
I could not help laughing at Lord Fife. "Why what a good-natured man you are," said I.
"Oh!" answered Fife, "I have such female levées every morning, you'd be surprised. People of the first respectability, I assure you, do me the honour to come when they want money."
"How very condescending," said I.
"Too much so sometimes, I can tell you," answered Fife, "for one morning last week, I gave £500 among them; but this, you know, will not quite do every morning: besides time, time is what I regret; they take up all my time, I can't get out. It is often past seven before I can get in my carriage, for the life of me, and then I lose my dinner to get out at all."
"Why don't you make your servants deny you?" said I.
"Why I tried that, but then my valet denied me one day to a charming creature whom I wished of all things to see, and I was obliged to open my doors to them all again, lest this sweet girl should re-visit me, and a second time be refused."
I think it was on this evening I saw Colonel Parker for the first time. He appeared to have seriously attached himself to my sister Fanny. He was an officer in the Artillery, and a near relation to Lady Hyde Parker, I believe. I was anxious to see poor Fanny comfortably settled, and her tastes being all so quiet and her temper so amiable, I knew that riches were by no means necessary to her felicity. Colonel Parker possessed a comfortable independence, and was very anxious to have Fanny entirely under his protection. "She shall bear my name, and I will show her all the respect a wife can require, and she shall always find me a gentleman," said he. I could not however help thinking that Fanny, with her strictly honest principles, her modest, amiable character, and her beauty, ought to have been Parker's wife instead of his mistress, and therefore I did not advise her to live with him. His person was elegant; fine teeth and fine hair were however all he had to boast of in the way of beauty; but Fanny did not like handsome men, and appeared very much to admire and esteem Colonel Parker. I do not exactly know what age man he was; but I should think him under thirty.
I could not but observe the gay Montagu and his wonderful luck in addressing himself to witty persons. He was now laughing himself almost into hysterics at something Mr. Dick said to him at one of the windows. Then I heard him say, "Capital! charming!" in answer to something which the Duc de Berri had said. At last I saw him talking to Leinster. "This will decide it," said I to myself; "for if he says anything is excellent, or charming, or capital, that His Grace utters, I know what I will do." I had scarcely settled the business in my own mind, when I saw Montagu blowing his nose in an agony of laughter at something superexcellent, which he declared the poor bog-trotter Leinster had uttered. This was too much, well as I love a civil man; so, calling Montagu to my side, after having placed myself close to some noisy people, who were talking and gesticulating with all their might, I asked him if he had heard an excellent story about Amy and Harry Mildmay.
"No, but pray tell it me directly: it must be so very excellent."
"Listen then," said I, and I began to laugh and to say "you must know Amy met Mildmay in the park;" and then I went on with a few unconnected words, affecting suitable action, and to be half dead, or quite choked with laughter. So far from repeating anything like a story I did not connect two words of common sense together; and if I had, we were in such a noisy neighbourhood I could not have been heard, yet Montagu, with equal reason, once more gave full play to his risible faculties, and appeared quite as delighted with my story as he had been with Leinster's, declaring aloud it was the very best thing he had ever heard in his whole life.
But I am tired of this party of Amy's, therefore my kind readers will permit me to change the subject.
The next day, I was remarking to my young admirer, the Duke of Leinster, that life was nothing without a little love; and then begged him to say who was best worth having.
"I think the Duchess of Beaufort's brother, Lord George Leveson Gower, the most desirable man I ever saw," said Leinster.
"How is one to obtain a sight of your beauty?"
"I cannot assist you; and if I could I would not," His Grace replied.
"I do not care," said I to myself, after Leinster had left me, "I am not going to sit down all my life to love this fool. I must have something for the mind to feed on."
I was interrupted while making these wise reflections by a visit from Wellington.
"Here is a thing in the shape of an intellectual companion," thought I.
After Wellington had left me I entirely forgot him: nay, before; for I now recollect that he said something about my bad taste in talking on subjects irrelevant to what was going on; such as a remark I might have made about my rose-tree or my dinner, when I ought to have been all soul! No matter! The soul's fire is partly kept alive by dinner; or, whether it is or not, still dinner, or even a rose-tree, is infinitely more interesting than the Wellington!
First love is all in all, say a great many writers, and a great many more old maids, particularly ugly ones, who have been courted only once for first and last, and must even make the best of it. For my own part, if I am to credit the quiet, unimpassioned assertion of the Duke of Argyle, who knew human nature well, after the hey-day of mere blind love was over, I must believe myself not naturally given to change.
"Harriette," said Argyle, "is more steady in her attachments than almost any woman of her celebrity, so surrounded with flatterers, whom I have ever met with."
Of course, my fair readers would not have me guilty of such extreme ill-breeding as to differ in opinion from a noble duke! Nevertheless, I confess that I had only ceased to love one, who was bound for life to another, and who had most cruelly trifled with my feelings, while he took a most unfair advantage of my youth, of my warmth of heart, and of my total lack of experience.
I now felt le besoin d'aimer, with almost the same ardour as when I used to follow the handsome stranger and his large dog, which induces me to believe, that never did a fair lady die of love for one man, whilst others equally amiable were dying for her smiles.
In a fit of folly I wrote a letter to Lord G.L. Gower, requesting him to come and meet me in the Regent's Park at eleven o'clock on a Sunday morning; at the same time assuring him, that desirous as I was, from all I had heard of his perfections, to make his acquaintance, yet, if he expected to please me, he must show me just as much respect and humble deference, as though I had not ordered him up to Marylebone Fields to be looked at.
Lord G.L. Gower's reply was:
"I do not usually answer such letters; but there is something so eccentric and uncommon in yours, that I cannot resist complying with your request, therefore you will find me at the appointed time and place.
"G.L. GOWER."
As the hour drew near for fulfilling my engagement in the Regent's Park, I recollected that I did not in the least know the person of Lord G.L. Gower, and felt much puzzled how I should contrive to distinguish him from any handsome man who might happen to be enjoying the fresh air towards Primrose Hill. However, trusting to chance, or sympathy, or that instinct by which, according to Falstaff, the lion knows the true prince, I dressed myself with unusual care and contrived to be punctual. I observed a tall, rather handsome and gentlemanly man looking about him; but as I felt at once that he was not in any respect cut out for the honour of filling up the void in my heart, I prayed the God of Love to send me a better subject.
However, there was nothing to be seen at that early hour on Sunday morning which in the least resembled a gentleman, or even, in their Sunday new coats and bran new yellow leather gloves, could be mistaken for one, that came within a mile of me.
"This must be Leinster's Apollo," said I. How could I address myself to such a booby? True, this man may perhaps have a certain indescribable charm about him, a je ne sais quoi, which may not be discoverable at the first glance! I ventured to raise my eyes to his face, and, if I did not laugh, I looked as though I was thinking about it; and on this he spoke and smiled, and blushed, and bowed.
I conceived that, having brought a man up to Marylebone Fields on such a terribly hot morning, it would not have been fair or lady-like to have dismissed him, until I had given his talents and powers of pleasing a fair trial. I walked him up to the tip-top of Primrose Hill, and then towards Hampstead, and then back again to Great Portland Street.
At last his lordship made a full stop, while he took off his hat to wipe his face, declaring he could go no further, as he was quite unaccustomed to walking and the sun was so very oppressive. He therefore entreated that I would permit him to accompany me immediately to my house, if only to sit down and rest, or otherwise he apprehended--fever or sudden death!
I assured him I was sorry, very sorry, and hoped such fatal consequences would not follow our little rural bit of pleasure; at the same time I could only express my regrets, while I frankly declared to him that he was not in the least the sort of person I wanted.
Lord George L. Gower was too proud, too well-looking, to be deeply wounded at my determination, so he smiled, and bowed, and wished me good morning, declaring himself much amused with the eccentricity and frankness of my character.
It will not do, I see, to lay one's self out for love, thought I, after his lordship had left me. It comes, like money, when one is not thinking about it. Reading is a much more independent amusement than loving. Books one may cut, when one is tired of them; so I began immediately on arriving home with Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's Letters. The style was very unequal I thought: now paltry and ungraceful, now elevated. The same observations were applicable to the sentiments she expressed. In some letters one would accuse her of being both indecent and profligate; in others she displayed herself as the most refined, elegant and delicate of her sex. I read as far as this passage:--"Our vulgar notions that Mahomet did not own women to have any souls, is a mistake. It is true, he says they are not of so elevated a kind, and therefore must not hope to be admitted into the paradise appointed for the men, who are to be entertained by celestial beauties. But there is a place of happiness destined for souls of the inferior order, where all good women are to be in eternal bliss. Any woman that dies unmarried is looked upon to die in a state of reprobation. To confirm this, I believe they reason that the end of the creation of woman is to increase and multiply, and that she is only properly employed in the works of her calling, when she is bringing forth children, or taking care of them, which is all the virtue God expects of her."
I threw the book down at this passage, beginning to feel very much ashamed of myself; I rang my bell, and sent to my bookseller for the "History of Mahomet," hoping that most prolific prophet would put me in the way of obeying his commands in case, after duly studying his laws, I were disposed to turn Turk.
I seriously determined to choose my own religion, instead of following blindly that which happened to be my father's. If this determination be sinful, I must still think it ever has been, and ever will be the sin of all intelligent minds. The uneducated child, or the rudest clown who earns his hard fare by the sweat of his brow, and whistles as he returns home for want of thought, will give the same answers, when you ask why they say their prayers, namely, "Because the parson says I ought." Will it not occur to them that accident has had much to do with their being Christians, or Jews, or Turks? Will not they be aware of the force of early impressions, good or bad, and, if but to impress on their mind the wisdom and justice, as well as the superiority of the religion they were born in, will they not compare it steadily with that of the greater part of the creation? It may be answered that all religions are good, and we have but to act up to our belief of what is right, which is all that justice can require of us: yet will the ardent mind, while suffering under the various ills which flesh is heir to, be led to doubt and to search eagerly into the reason why a just God, who is our father, has created us for so much misery.
I pondered a whole night on these expressive words of Lord Byron, in his "Childe Harold":
Our life is a false nature, 'tis not in The harmony of things--this hard decree, This uneradicable taint of sin, This boundless Upas, this all blasting tree, Whose root is earth, whose leaves and branches The skies, which rain their plagues on me like dew, Disease, death, bondage--all the woes we see not, which throbs through The immedicable soul, with heart-aches ever new. Yet, let us ponder boldly--'tis a base Abandonment of reason, to resign Our right of thought--our last and only place Of refuge; this at least, shall still be mine: Though, from our birth, the faculty divine Is charmed and tortured--cabin'd, cribb'd, confined, And bred in darkness, lest the truth should shine Too brightly, in the unprepared mind, The beam pours in, for time and skill will couch the blind.
However all my time, and all my pondering, and all my skill, only confirmed me the more steadily in this opinion--that I know nothing about it.
I had long been sentimentally in love with Lord Byron, and some years previous to the publication of the last canto of "Childe Harold," I had written to him to solicit the honour of his acquaintance.
"If, my lord," said I, in my letter, "to have been cold and indifferent to every other modern poet, while I have passed whole nights in studying your productions with the eagerness of one who has discovered a new source of enjoyment as surprising as it was delightful, deserves gratitude from the vanity of an author, or the gallantry of a gentleman, you will honour me with a little of your friendship."
Would you believe, reader, this eloquent epistle obtained me no answer during three long days? I was furious, and wrote again to tell him that he was a mere pedant; that my common sense was a match for his fine rhymes; that the best of us poor weak mortals--and I acknowledged him to be at the head of the list--must still be ignorant, subject to sickness, ill-temper, and various errors in judgment, therefore was there little excuse for his impertinence, in presuming to find fault with the whole world, as he had done in his "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," at an age when his natural judgment could not be matured. It was vulgar, and showed the littleness which some want of philanthropy towards our poor fellow creatures always must evince. Was he really so superior, and would he crush the poor worms which dared not aspire to his perfections? Or was he but a mere upstart man, of extraordinary genius, without strength of mind to know what he would be at? Could he not, at least, have declined the honour I wanted to confer on him, civilly?
This eloquent letter ended simply thus, after assuring him that it was now much too late to make my acquaintance, as I had changed my mind and no longer desired it the least in the world--like the fox and the grapes--
"you be hang'd! "HARRIETTE WILSON."
This, to a favourite, was tolerably severe; but when I take a liking to a person I must and will be something to them; so if they will not like me I always make it my business and peculiar care that they shall dislike and quarrel with me. Let me once get them into a quarrel and I am sure of them.
The next day I received the following answer from Lord Byron, dated Albany, Piccadilly.
"If my silence has hurt 'your pride or your feelings,' to use your own expressions, I am very sorry for it; be assured that such effect was far from my intention. Business, and some little bustle attendant on changing my residence, prevented me from thanking you for your letter as soon as I ought to have done. If my thanks do not displease you now, pray accept them. I could not feel otherwise than obliged by the desire of a stranger to make my acquaintance.
"I am not unacquainted with your name or your beauty, and I have heard much of your talents; but I am not the person whom you would like, either as a lover or a friend. I did not, and do not 'suspect you,' to use your own words once more, of any design of making love to me. I know myself well enough to acquit any one, who does not know me, and still more those who do, from any such intention. I am not of a nature to be loved, and so far, luckily for myself, I have no wish to be so. In saying this, I do not mean to affect any particular stoicism, and may possibly, at one time or other, have been liable to those follies for which you sarcastically tell me I have now no time: but these, and everything else, are to me at present objects of indifference; and this is a good deal to say, at six-and-twenty. You tell me that you wished to know me better; because you liked my writing. I think you must be aware that a writer is in general very different from his productions, and always disappoints those who expect to find in him qualities more agreeable than those of others; I shall certainly not be lessened in my vanity as a scribbler, by the reflection that a work of mine has given you pleasure; and, to preserve the impression in its favour, I will not risk your good opinion by inflicting my acquaintance upon you.
"Very truly your obliged servant. "B."
This was very dry; but, I had not aspired to Lord Byron's love and I did not despair of making his acquaintance. I am indeed surprised that I never fell in love with his lordship; but, certain it is, that, though I would have given anything to have been his most humble friend and servant, his beauty was of a nature never to inspire me with warmer sentiments.
There was nothing whatever voluptuous in the character of it; it was wholly intellectual: and as such I honoured it; but give me for my lover an indolent being who, while he possesses talents and genius to do anything he pleases, pleases himself most and best in pleasing me! Au reste, I admire and look up to heroes, but indolent men make the best lovers.
I was a long while before I could convince Lord Byron that as a lover he would never have suited me; and really did not excite any passion in my breast; but, from the moment I had succeeded, his lordship threw off all reserve and wrote and spoke to me with the confidence of easy friendship and good-will, as though he had been delighted to find a woman capable of friendship, to whose vanity it was not at all necessary to administer by saying soft things to her.
Chapter XIV
On the Thursday which was to be big with the fate of Livius's farce, I took a party of friends to Mr. Elliston's private box. Drury Lane was crowded. Livius had at least eight people in the small box allotted to him by the manager. He paid me a flying visit and seemed as much agitated as though he were about to be tried for high treason. I proposed changing boxes with him, to accommodate his friends. He was highly delighted, and the exchange was made, much, I believe, to the annoyance of Mr. Elliston, though I knew not why it grieved him.
Livius's piece commenced almost as soon as we were quietly seated again. He was certainly much indebted to the exertions of all the very excellent performers who played in it, particularly Elliston and Harley. The piece went off with spirit. I never saw a poor man tremble as Livius did during the first act. "Who would write for the stage?" thought I. Livius was all over the house at once; both before and behind the scenes. He could not rest anywhere.
"Do sit down," said I, handing him a chair. "Let the public be hanged! What great crime would there be if your little piece happened not to be to their taste?"
"Oh, fancy," said Livius, "the agitation of coming thus before the public for the first time!"
"Fiddlestick!" said I.
He was now growing a little more tranquil, while Elliston was charming away his fears, as well as the ennui of the audience. It was at that part where he expresses his rapture at the beauty and loveliness of his valet's wife, while the unfortunate husband, so well represented by Harley, stands in an agony behind his master's chair, not daring to acknowledge his marriage for fear of losing his place.
The piece to be performed next was The Coronation. A man in the pit, at that moment when Elliston ought to have been most pathetic, mounted the boards which were erected down the middle of the pit, I suppose to obtain a better view.
"You must not stand there, sir," vociferated Elliston to the man, in a loud angry voice, in the midst of his love-speech, to the utter dismay of poor Livius, who absolutely gasped for breath.
Sams, who was Livius's publisher, was in my box, and ventured to hiss, which example was followed by a faint vibration from the pit. The valet's wife looked rather silly at being thus cut by her admiring swain. Elliston came forward, as though ashamed of his impetuosity, and, gracefully bowing, addressed the audience somewhat to this effect:
"As manager and proprietor of this theatre, I must request and desire that none of you gentlemen mount those boards," and then, with all the impudence of the most perfect nonchalance, he turned round to his neglected fair one, and resumed his vows of love from where he had left off.
"Elliston is very drunk," said poor Livius, looking as pale as a ghost with dread of what might follow.
"Not so very drunk yet, neither," said I, "since he has to play again, in The Coronation to-night."
"Oh!" said Livius, shaking his head mournfully, "Elliston always plays the king most naturally when he is most drunk."
"I have no doubt," answered I, "that Elliston plays his part best when he has been drinking, since he is always so excessively stupid and dull when sober. Except this trifling interruption, your little piece has gone off without a single accident or blunder; so be calm, man!"
Livius told me that he was about to bring out a young lady of infinite talent as a singer. "She is in my private box, and Elliston has promised to hear her best song, from the pit, after the audience have left the house to-night."
I asked if I might remain to hear her.
"Certainly," said Livius, "and for that purpose I will conduct you to a private pit-box. The young lady is to sing on the stage."
Livius's piece was announced for the next night, amidst loud plaudits.
We may guess that Livius naturally had a vast number of his own friends among the audience. It was in fact a very trifling production, and yet it was dramatic. However I never heard of it after it had run its allotted time, though I think I have seen many worse things last longer.
I thought that I too perhaps might find amusement in writing something from the French for the stage--so I, some days afterwards, fixed upon Moliere's comedy of the Malade Imaginaire, which I hastily transformed into an English three-act piece.
But I forgot to mention what became of Livius's protégée.
After the audience had left the theatre, Livius handed me downstairs to a pit-box, saying, "I must now leave you to attend my poor, timid, young friend." The lamps and candles were all extinguished, when Elliston threw himself along the benches in the pit. Soon afterwards Livius came upon the stage, now lighted by a single lamp, conducting a very ill-favoured young lady in a shawl. She began to sing very scientifically, but her voice was not pleasing. Study had done much for her, while nature had been a niggard.
Elliston appeared to be going to sleep, as soon as he had heard the first verse of a most barbarously long song; but, accidentally observing me, he climbed up to my box from the pit, making a noise, which altogether discouraged the poor young lady by this rude inattention to her melody.
"Why do not you play harlequin?" said I.
"I am too old," he replied: and then asked me how the farce went off.
"Famously," I replied. "I see you know how to profit by my advice, and you made fewer faces. But you took a great liberty with the public, when you began scolding the audience, instead of minding what you were engaged in," I observed to him.
"What business had that man to stick himself up there?" Elliston asked.
"From sympathy! He was looking at a mountebank!"
During the whole of this time, the poor young lady was exerting herself by the light of her solitary lamp, à pure perte!
"It is really unmanly," I observed, "to be so unfeelingly inattentive to a beginner, and one of the fair sex."
"Oh!" whispered Elliston, "Livius wants to father all his old sweethearts on me, I believe. I do not allude to this lady," said he, laughing, "it would be a libel on herself, and on mankind, to doubt her respectability; but then she cannot sing, and what is worse, he is going to bring me up three or four more next week."
Oh, mon Dieu! it has just occurred to me, that to have told this story of Elliston and Livius, in due time, it ought not to have come in these eight years at soonest; and I must now go back with my Memoirs; but what does it signify to my readers, the story will do as well, and amuse as much now, as later on; and if this book meets due encouragement, I may write something afterwards, with infinitely more regularity.
* * * * *
"It is all settled," said Fanny to me, on the night before Mr. Dick's dinner-party, "and I am to be Mrs. Parker."
"I hope you will be happy," said I; "but I wish you were married."
"Why should poor Parker marry a woman with a ready-made family?" asked Fanny.
I declined offering an opinion, fearing to do harm.
Fanny was four years my senior, and possessed perhaps a larger portion of what is called common sense than myself. Au reste, the thing was settled between her and Parker, who were to proceed together to Portsmouth, where Colonel Parker's regiment was stationed, after they had passed a fortnight at Brighton.
"Suppose we make a party, and hire a house for you and Julia and me?"
"The very thing I wish," said Fanny; "for London is growing very stupid. We meet no one but the Hon. Colonel Collyer and Lord Petersham about the streets."
"Oh, yes," said I, "we also see Lady Heathcote and Lady Ann Wyndham."
"And that makes it worse still," added Fanny, "for I really believe neither of those good ladies has missed Hyde Park or the Opera, one single night for the last twenty years, or changed the colour of their chariot blinds; Heathcote, rosy red! and the gentle Ann's interesting yellow! How very tired I am of seeing these women!"
Julia called on me before Fanny had left, and our little excursion to Brighton was fixed for the following week.
When we had settled this important affair, my servant informed me that a lady requested to offer herself in the place of Miss Hawkes, my late dame de compagnie, who had just left me to be married to her cousin. I desired him to show her upstairs. She came tripping into the room with the step of a child. She wore short petticoats, and a small French bonnet stuck at the top of her head. I should imagine her age to have been about forty: indeed she owned to six-and-twenty.
"Who will recommend you, pray, madam?"
"The Countess Palmella, wife of the Portuguese Ambassador, in South Audley Street; I have been educating her children."
I asked if the countess's had been her first situation.
She replied in the affirmative.
"What were you doing before that, pray, ma'am?"
"Why," said the lady, with much affectation, "you see I was daily, nay hourly, expecting to get settled in life. I had a small property and I went to Bath. Several of my friends had found charming husbands at Bath. However, time slipped away madam, and by some strange fatality or other I exhausted my little resources, and did not manage to get settled in life: that is the truth of it."
It stuck me that this curious woman with the odd bonnet, would amuse me as well as any other lion, pour le moment, and being acquainted with Amy's poor beau the Count Palmella, I told her she might come to me the following day.
She seemed absolutely enraptured, as though mine had been an atmosphere which would rain men upon her, and our bargain was concluded. She was a straight, tall, long-backed lath of a woman, with a remarkably long face, small twinkling eyes, fine hair, and a bad skin, in spite of the white paint she used to beautify it. So much for Miss Eliza Higgins.
The next evening found us all quite rayonnante, waiting for our dinner in Mr. Dick's elegant drawing-room.
"We will certainly not wait for Mr. Ward," said Dick, looking at his watch.
"To be sure not, who the devil waits for men?" exclaimed Lord Alvanly.
There was a thundering rap at the door, and then entered the Honourable Mr. Ward, looking for all the world like a tobacconist. He was followed by his servant to the very door of the drawing-room. He hoped he had kept nobody waiting.
"To be sure not," said Alvanly, "who the devil would wait for you?"
"I would, all my life, and with all imaginable patience," I observed.
"Ha! ha!" said Ward, growing pale, while he affected to be amused.
"But, my excellent friend Dick," said Ward, "I must send back a note by my servant, who is waiting for it."
"Why," said Dick, "the servants are going to serve the dinner immediately, and I should rather prefer your going into my dressing-room to write your note."
"I thank you," said Ward, with much asperity, "I thank you all the same; but I prefer having the paper here, with your permission. With your permission, mind, Dick!"
"You may ring, if you please," said Dick carelessly, and then, I believe, retired for the express purpose of desiring his footman not to answer the bell. This I only surmise, from his remarking to me in an undertone afterwards, that Ward gave more trouble than all the rest of the party put together, and he was delighted that the footman did not attend his summons.
Mr. Dick handed me down to dinner. Lord Hertford took care of Amy, Alvanly was ever Fanny's most obedient humble servant, and Ward held out his finger to Mrs. Armstrong; because Amy was better provided for Luttrell was, as usual unless some one bored or offended him, the life and spirit of the whole party, when Ward would let him alone; but he was often interrupted by that learned gentleman's bawling from the top to the bottom of a large table, his Latin bon mots, at which he himself, solus, laughed always most vociferously. He frequently addressed himself to our favourite Luttrell, not being so sure of any other man's Greek and Latin.
"What a misfortune for you," said I to Luttrell, "that the little figure at the top of the table has faith in your classical knowledge," and then, addressing myself to Ward, "Friend," said I, "we, at this end of the table, have all forgotten our Latin."
"Dick!" said Ward, whom I had put out of humour, "there would be no harm in ordering a few coals. I'm starved."
"Why, really," answered Dick, "the fire cannot be better, nor will that grate hold any more coals."
"That's your opinion, not mine;" and Ward affected to laugh, as though he had said something witty.
I praised the very unaffected character of Lord Robert Manners to Nugent, who sat next to me.
"Ah!" squeaked out the reptile Ward, "stand up for Bob Manners, for I know he stands up for you."
"Is that meant for a joke, or a matter of fact?" asked I.
"Fact! Fact! Bob, as your friend no doubt, stands up for you, whom he must so often hear abused."
"What! a mighty member of the senate fighting me, a silly woman, with my own weapons, seriously, and in sober anger, as though I were one of the lords of the creation and a commoner? Then, indeed, I must ask pardon of the honourable member, whom I must have sorely aggrieved. You say my little spitfire, that Lord Robert often hears me abused. All I answer is, look you at the breadth of his shoulders, before you presume to join the hue-and-cry against me in his presence. You would not like a horsepond: n'est-ce pas?"
"Keep them to it, keep up the war between them; it is so amusing. Harriette is the only match for Ward I ever met with," whispered Luttrell to my neighbour, his half-brother, Nugent.
"Does anybody mean to go to Elliston's masquerade?" asked Dick.
"Certainly," said Mrs. Armstrong. "It is to be a most brilliant thing, and the stage will exhibit all the decorations of Aladdin's Lamp, and I know not what besides; no dominoes, and a most comfortable, excellent supper."
"I dare not go," said Alvanly. "I am always afraid of getting into a row, at these sort of places and having to fight."
"Apropos of fighting," said I. "Your lordship, if I remember, was formerly in the Guards, I think? Why did you leave that regiment?"
"Why, I was afraid of being shot," said Alvanly, very quietly.
"But were you not also afraid of being called a coward?" I asked.
"I was in two engagements, and distinguished myself in each," Alvanly replied.
"How, pray?" said the stiff John Mills, of the Guards, whom, though I believe he had served in Spain with Alvanly, I did not think worth a place in my Memoirs.
"I do not mean to say that I ever volunteered anything," said Alvanly, pulling up the collar of his shirt; "but, at the same time, I never ran away, you know. They did not reward me for my services as I expected. However, I am quite contented to have retired on half-pay. God bless your soul," continued his lordship, addressing himself to me, "you have no idea what it is! Come on, my brave fellows. This is fine fun, my lads. You are obliged to find courage for yourself and your men too! I mentioned to two or three officers at the time of action, that, if it should please God to see me safe out of that, I would give the enemy leave to cut off my head, if I did not sell out of the army or retire on half-pay the moment I arrived in England. The fact is, I have had the same antipathy to the idea of fighting from a child, and I never should have gone into the Guards at all, if I had imagined they would have left London."
"Alvanly, shall I have the pleasure of drinking wine with you?" asked Lord Hertford, from the top of the table.
Alvanly assented of course.
"Madeira?" asked Dick, handing Alvanly the bottle.
"No; champagne, if you please. I can get madeira at home," said Alvanly.
We women then entered the drawing-room, to which Mr. Dick conducted us himself.
Poor Julia scarcely spoke a single word the whole evening; indeed we had the greatest difficulty in persuading her to be of our party. She declared she could not endure to meet Amy, who had been making love to Mildmay merely because Julia adored him. Mildmay had paid due attention to Amy's ogling, had basked in the sunshine of her smiles for nearly a fortnight, and then, just as she was growing tender, had cut her dead. Amy, seized with an unusual fit of frankness, showed me Sir Henry's last letter, in which he begged to be excused coming to her pour le moment: he was particularly engaged for the whole of next week.
"Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!" said I, after reading this very impertinent letter, addressed to a fine woman who had done him too much honour. "How can you all encourage this cold-blooded heartless creature? Do pray let me write your answer directly, and you shall copy it. It will set poor Julia's mind at rest, and keep up, more or less, the dignity of the sex!"
"I wish you would," answered Amy, "for I hate him; but, as to Julia, it's nonsense her sticking up for Mildmay, he only laughs at the idea."
Julia began to shed tears at Amy's coarse remarks, and I wrote as follows, which Amy copied, and delivered into my hands to be forwarded to the gay baronet the next morning.
"MY DEAR SIR HARRY,--I have ten thousand apologies to make to you, for being the most careless creature on earth! Your letter of this morning was brought to me just as I was writing to that angel Ponsonby; and, before I could read the first line of your effusion, my servant brought me two more notes; so, in my bustle and confusion, I am afraid yours must have been the piece of paper I took up to light my taper with; for, though I desired my maid to make strict search after it before I went out, she informed me in the evening that it was not to be found. No matter, I give you credit for having said an infinity of soft things, and wish it were in my power de vous rendre les pareilles. Not that but I entertain a severe esteem for you; to prove which, were I not about to leave town for Brighton, I should entreat you to continue your visits; but I am so unlucky as to have my time taken up entirely just now. On my return, I hope to be more fortunate, and if so, I shall certainly do myself the pleasure of sending you a card. In the meantime Sir Harry will, I hope, believe me, like all the rest of my sex, deeply impressed with his merits,
"and most truly and faithfully his servant, "AMY SYDENHAM."
Julia recovered her spirits as soon as this letter was in my possession, signed and sealed, for she knew Mildmay too well to imagine he would forgive any one who wounded his self-love.
"You will be surprised to hear that I have left your sister Sophia at home," said Julia.
We asked Julia about Lord Deerhurst; and she told us that Sophia felt herself so neglected and uncomfortable, and disgusted with her lodging, that she had entreated Julia to take her as a boarder, and to which she had that morning consented.
Amy asked Julia why she did not bring Sophia with her.
"In the first place," answered Julia, "I have passed my word to your mother that Sophia shall not go out except to walk with my own children; and, in the second she was not invited."
The gentlemen joined us soon afterwards.
The first thing Alvanly did was to break one of Mr. Dick's looking-glasses, while playing some trick or other with a stick.
Dick grew sulky and declared that, since the honour of his lordship's company was to be so expensive, he must decline it.
Alvanly said he was really sorry; but could not insult Mr. Dick by buying him another.
Dick assured him he was not touchy.
"Oh, yes," said Alvanly, "you will give yourself a good character of course; but I shall not impose upon your goodness by doing anything half so rude."
As soon as we had taken our tea and coffee, we all went to the King's Theatre; but before Lord Hertford parted with us, he invited the females of this party to dinner.
We declared that we were going to Brighton and had no time.
"Name your own day," said Lord Hertford; "to-morrow if you please; but come you must."
"It shall be to-morrow, then," said Amy, replying for us all.
"What a fine thing it is to be an elder sister," said I. I thought Amy could never have recovered her temper.
Lord Hertford, before he left us, politely offered to send a carriage for my sisters.
I found the Duke of Leinster in my box.
"I am glad you have no men with you," said His Grace, with something like agitation of manner; "for I want to speak to you. Do you know, my friend, of whom I spoke to you, is come up from Oxford on purpose to try to get introduced. I know he must return to college to-night, and I am, I confess, rather anxious that he should be disappointed."
"Nonsense," said Julia. "Who is it pray?"
"The Marquis of Worcester," replied His Grace.
"Is he handsome?" I inquired.
"Not a bit of it," said the duke.
"What is he like?" Fanny asked.
"I do not know anybody he is like, upon my honour, unless it be his father. He is a long, thin, pale fellow, with straight hair."
"You need not be alarmed," said I, "I shall not be presented to your friend if I can help it. I always tell everybody I know, not to bring men here without first coming to ask my permission."
"I know you do," said Leinster; "since this is the answer Lord Worcester has received from several of your friends to whom he applied."
"There he is!" continued Leinster, leaning towards the pit. "Do not you observe a very tall young fellow in silk stockings, looking steadfastly up at this box. Upon my honour he won't wear trousers or curl his hair; because he heard that you dislike it."
"It is very flattering," said I, eagerly looking out for him with my opera-glass, an example which was followed by Julia and Fanny.
The young marquis was at that time too bashful to stand the artillery of three pair of fine eyes at once, and turned away from our eager gaze; but not till I had satisfied myself that he would not do for me one bit better than his uncle, Lord G. L. Gower: and, in the next five minutes, I had forgotten his existence.
Lord Frederick Bentinck now came and asked me when I meant to keep my promise of accompanying him to Vauxhall.
"Oh, we shall never get to Brighton," said Fanny, who doted on donkey-riding. "Harriette will keep us in town all the summer, as she did last year."
"Summer!" interposed George Brummell, entering in a furred great coat. "You do not mistake this for summer, do you? A little more of your summer will just finish me," pulling up his fur collar.
"Upon my honour, I think it very hot," said Leinster. "It must be hot, you know, because it is August."
"I never know the difference, for my part," Fred Bentinck observed. "The only thing that ever makes me cold is putting on a great coat; but then I have always a great deal to do, and that keeps me warm. Once for all madam, will you go to Vauxhall on Monday night? If you will I will put off my sister and accompany you."
I assented, in spite of everything Fanny and Julia could say to prevent me; for Fred Bentinck always made me merry.
"What is Lord Molyneux doing with Mrs. Fitzroy Stanhope?" said I, looking towards that lady's box, where she sat tête-à-tête with his lordship.
"How fond you are of scandal!" observed Fred Bentinck.
"Oh Lord, no," answered I, "on the contrary, I admire her taste. Who would not cut the very best swaggering Stanhope for a Molyneux?"
"Where do you expect to go to, Harriette?" said Bentinck, for at least the twentieth time since I had known him.
"To Amy's to-night, to Lord Hertford's to-morrow, and to Vauxhall on Monday," I replied.
"And then to Brighton, I hope," continued Fanny.
"We must see Elliston's masquerade first," said I.
"A very respectable exhibition, indeed," observed Bentinck.
"Oh! I never unmask, and nobody will find me out; but I've a natural turn for masquerading, and go I must."
King Allen put his long nose into the box, and his nose only. "Is Amy at home to-night?"
Fanny answered in the affirmative; adding, "But she is in her own box. Why do not you go to her to inquire?"
"Lord Lowther and some nasty Russians are with her," answered Allen.
"A ce soir, then," I said, kissing my hand to him, which was as much as to say, do not come in. He was kind enough to understand my hint.
Lord Molyneux shortly took his seat by my side, and I rated him about Mrs. Fitzroy.
"Remember Monday," said Fred Bentinck, as he left the box to make room for Mr. Napier and Colonel Parker, followed by the young Lord William Russell.
Lord Molyneux seemed to take pleasure in chatting with me, without desiring a nearer intimacy; and I was always very glad to see and laugh with his lordship. When he left me, Lord William began to whisper and stammer out something about the folly he was guilty of in coming to me as he did, and encouraging hopes which he knew would end in disappointment.
"You do not know any such thing," returned I.
"What have I," continued Lord William, "to recommend myself to your notice? A poor little wretch without either fortune or wit."
I told him that he was well-looking, high-bred, and high-born. I felt really desirous to encourage the most humble, little gentleman-like being I ever met with.
Just as Parker and Napier had left the box, Lord Deerhurst entered it, accompanied by a tall young man, and Lord William then took his leave, from the mere dread of intruding. "I do not often introduce gentlemen to ladies," said his lordship, "and perhaps I am taking a liberty now; yet I hope you can have no objection to my making you known to the Marquis of Worcester."
I bowed rather formally; because I had before desired Deerhurst not to bring people to me without my permission. However the young marquis blushed so deeply, and looked so humble, that it was impossible to treat him with incivility; but, having taken one good look at my conquest, and thus convinced myself that I should never love him, I conversed indifferently on common subjects, as people do who happen to meet in a stage-coach, where time present is all they have to care about. Deerhurst was lively and pleasant, the marquis scarcely spoke; but the little he did find courage to utter, was certainly said with good taste and in a gentlemanly manner.
Leinster was infinitely bored and annoyed, though he tried to conceal it.
"What do you think of him?" asked Leinster, whispering in my ear.
"I will tell you to-morrow," I replied; and, the better to enable myself to do this, I examined the person of the young marquis for the second time. It promised to be very good, and his air and manners were distinguished; but he was extremely pale and rather thin; nevertheless, there was something fine and good about his countenance, though he was certainly not handsome.
Deerhurst invited the Duke of Leinster to go into the pit with him.
Leinster hesitated.
I understood him. "Do not be afraid," said I, in his ear. "Of course, having already engaged you to take me to my carriage, I shall neither change my mind nor break my word."
Leinster gratefully grasped my hand, but fixed his eyes on Worcester, still hesitating. Not that it was His Grace's nature to break his ducal heart for any woman, and still less perhaps for me; but a man's schoolfellow pushing himself forwards, and trying to cut him out where he had formed high expectations, is always a bore, even to the coldest man alive.
"Of course my sister Amy will be happy to see Lord Worcester to-night," said I aloud, in answer to what I read in Leinster's countenance.
Lord Worcester bowed, and looked rather confused than pleased.
"Do come, my lord," said Fanny, who liked what she had seen of his lordship extremely.
To Leinster's joy and our astonishment, Lord Worcester said he must really decline my very polite offer, grateful as he felt for it.
"Nonsense!" exclaimed Deerhurst. "What a very odd fellow you are! I really cannot make you out. I give you my honour, Harriette," continued his lordship, "that, not an hour ago, he declared he would give half his existence to sit near you and talk to you for an hour, and now you invite him to pass the evening in your society, he appears to be frightened to death at the idea!"
"You are all alike; a set of cruel wicked deceivers," said I, carelessly, being really indifferent as to the impression it made on Lord Worcester, who, in his eagerness to exculpate himself from this charge of caprice, blushed deeply and evinced considerable agitation.
"No indeed, I beg, I do entreat that you will not, you must not imagine this. I have a particular reason for not going to your sister's; but it would be impertinent in a stranger like me to take up your time by an explanation: only pray acquit me. Do not send me away so very unhappy; for you must know, I am sure you must, that the indifference of which you accuse me would be impossible, quite impossible, to any man."
"What is the matter with you, young gentleman?" said I, looking at him with much curiosity, "and why do you lay such a stress on trifles light as air?"
"To you, perhaps," observed Worcester, trying to laugh, from a fear of seeming ridiculous.
"There is a pretty race-horse little head for you!" said Deerhurst, touching my hair.
"I never saw such beautiful hair," Worcester remarked timidly.
"Put your fingers into it," said Deerhurst. "Harriette does not mind how you tumble her hair about."
"I should richly deserve to be turned out of the box were I to do anything so very impertinent," interrupted his lordship.
"Oh, no," said I, leaning the back of my little head towards Worcester, "anybody may pull my hair about. I like it, and I am no prude."
Worcester ventured to touch my hair in fear and trembling, and the touch seemed to affect him like electricity. Without vanity, and in very truth, let him deny it if he can, I never saw a boy or a man more madly, wildly, and romantically in love with any daughter of Eve in my whole life.
"Come with me," said Deerhurst to Leinster.
"Remember your promise," Leinster whispered to me, as he unwillingly followed his lordship.
"May I," said Lord Worcester eagerly, as though he dreaded an interruption, "may I, on my return to town, venture to pay my respects?"
"Certainly," answered I, "if I am in town; but we are going to Brighton."
True love is ever thus respectful, and fearful to offend. Worcester, with much modesty, conversed on subjects unconnected with himself or his desires, apparently taking deep interest in my health, which, I assured him, had long been very delicate.
Just before the curtain dropped, Worcester seemed again eager to say something on his refusal to accompany me to Amy's.
"Leinster is coming to take you to your carriage, I know," said he, "and I wish----"
"What do you wish?"
"That you would permit me to explain something to you, and promise not to call me a conceited coxcomb."
"Yes! I'll answer for her," said Fanny, "so out with it, my lord. Why be afraid of that great black-eyed sister of mine, as if she were of so much consequence?"
"Well then," continued Worcester, blushing deeply, "Lord Deerhurst told me that your sister treated you unkindly, and that you never allowed your favourites to visit her. Upon my honour, I would rather never see you again, than pay my court to anybody who has behaved ill to you."
Before I could reply Leinster came hurrying and bustling into the box as the curtain dropped.
"You return to Oxford to-night, I believe?" said His Grace to Worcester, who replied that he must start at six in the morning.
I advised him to take a few hours rest first.
"That will be quite impossible," Worcester answered in a low voice.
The young marquis's pale face certainly did grow paler, as he looked wistfully after Leinster, whose arm I had taken.
First love is all powerful in the head and heart of such an ardent character as Worcester's; and there really was an air of truth about him, which not a little affected me for the moment; therefore, turning back to address him, after I had drawn my arm away from Leinster,--"Perhaps," said I, in a low, laughing voice, "perhaps, Lord Worcester, it may be vain and silly in me to believe that you are disposed to like me; but, as I do almost fancy so, I am come to wish you a good night, and to assure you that I shall remember your taking up my quarrels against my unkind sister, with the gratitude I always feel towards those who are charitable enough to think favourably of me."
Worcester began to look too happy.
"But do not mistake me," I continued, "for I am not one bit in love with you."
Worcester looked humble again.
"In fact," said I, laughing, "my love-days are over. I have loved nothing lately."
"Not the Duke of Leinster?" inquired his lordship, whose anxiety to ascertain this had overcome his fears of seeming impertinent.
"No, indeed," I rejoined, and Worcester's countenance brightened, till he became almost handsome.
Leinster approached us with a look of extreme impatience.
"Good night, my lord," said I, waving my hand, as I joined His Grace. Worcester bowed low and hastened out of sight.
"If Leinster were not my friend," said Worcester to a gentleman who afterwards repeated it to me, pointing to Leinster and myself, as we stood in the round room waiting for His Grace's carriage; "if that young man were not my friend, I would make him walk over my dead body before he should take Harriette out of this house."
Oh, this love! this love!
Amy's rooms were not full. It was her last party for that season. There was nobody in town, so, faute de mieux, since Mildmay had cut her, she was making up to a Mr. Boultby, a black, little, ugly dragoon, whom she declared was exactly to her taste.
"Come to Brighton," said Amy to her hero.
He assured her that, if his regiment had not been stationed there, he would have joined her, since he felt that he could not live out of her smiles.
"How can you strive to make fools of people?" said I.
"What do you mean?" inquired Amy fiercely.
"Why, seriously, Mr. Boultby," continued I, "take my word, she has no fancy for you."
Mr. Boultby's vanity would not permit him to take my word, so I left him to the enjoyment of it.
Parker and Fanny appeared to be very happy together, and sincerely attached to each other. No husband could show more respect towards any wife.
Leinster was very dull, though too proud to complain.
"Confess," said I to His Grace, as soon as I could get him into one corner of the room, "confess that you are annoyed and unhappy about Lord Worcester."
"I do think," said Leinster, "though I do not pretend to have any claim on you whatever, that Worcester, as my friend, had no right to intrude himself into your society to-night."
"Never mind, don't bore me with your jealousy; I abhor it," said I, "I must and will be free, as free as the air, to do whatever I like. I always told you so, and never professed to be in love with you. However, I still like you as well as I like anybody else, and, as to Lord Worcester, what shall I see of him, while he is at Oxford, and I at Brighton, to which place I did not invite him."
"I do not see why Worcester thought proper to blush as he did to-night, and pretend to be so over modest, while he was doing such a cool, impudent thing," muttered Leinster.
"Dear me, how tiresome," said I, yawning. "I should almost have forgotten all about Lord Worcester by this time, if you had made yourself agreeable."
The evening finished heavily for me. I was bored with Leinster, who never had anything on earth to recommend him to my notice, save that excellent temper, which I now saw ruffled for the first time since I had known him: and Amy, who, it must be acknowledged was in the habit of saying droll things, was this night wholly taken up and amused with that stupid, ugly Boultby! I therefore returned early, and Leinster put me down at my own door.
Chapter XV
The next day I proposed to my new dame de compagnie, Miss Eliza Higgins, to dress herself quickly, in order to accompany me into the park.
"How do you do? how do you do?" said Lord Fife, as he joined us near Cumberland Gate. "Who is your friend?" he continued, appearing to eye Miss Higgins with looks of admiration, much to my astonishment. "Am I not to be introduced to your friend?"
"Et pourquoi pas?" said I, naming Miss Higgins, with whom he conversed, as though her acquaintance had been the thing on earth most devoutly to be wished.
"What a funny little bonnet you have got on!" said his lordship to my companion, interrupting himself in the middle of a long story from the North.
After Lord Fife had left us, Miss Eliza Higgins could speak of nothing else.
"Charming man, ma'am, the Earl of Fife! I have heard much of him; but never had the honour to be presented to him before. That is a man now, a poor weak female would find it very difficult to resist. His Lordship is so condescending! so polite!"
When we were tired of walking in the park, I drove to the house of a married sister of mine, whose name we will call Paragon, since she was the very paragon of mothers, having drawn up a new, patent system of education for her children, better than Jean Jacques Rousseau's, and unlike everybody's else.
Her family consists of two boys and two girls. The eldest daughter was then nearly seven years of age: her son and heir had scarcely attained his fifth year. "They shall never go to school," said my sister Paragon, "nor will I suffer them to be left one instant to the care of nurses or servants, to learn bad grammar and worse morals. Neither shall they be told of such things as thieves or murderers; much less shall they hear anything about falsehood and deceit. They shall never obtain what they want by tears nor rudeness after the age of two; and it shall depend on the politeness and humility of their deportment, whether they have any dinner or not; and nothing shall be called indecent which is natural, either in words or deeds. So much for the minds of my children; and, with regard to their bodily health, I shall make them swallow one of Anderson's Scot's Aperient Pills every night of their blessed lives! et il n'y aura rien à craindre!"
Sister Paragon was very pretty. She had the sweetest, most lovely eyes I ever beheld: and not because they were large, or of the finest hazel colour; I allude to their character and expression; now flashing with indignation, now soft, and yet so bright that one might almost see one's own reflected in them. Paragon's little nose too was very pretty, even when red and frost-bitten; and she had a beautiful mole on her clear brown cheek. She did not at all resemble either a paragon or a prude; and yet I am the only one of all our family who am not afraid of her wit or her virtue. She married a gentleman of good family and connections, though poor; and, when she did this, she almost broke the tender heart of the reverend Orange patriot, Sir Harcourt Lees, baronet, of Irish notoriety, who had often proposed to her on his knees, and on his--seat, and with his whole heart! "He was a good little fellow," Paragon would often say, "but his face was so like a knocker!"
C'est bien dommage!
Paragon's husband was not in London when I called on her. She was sitting with four of the most lovely children I ever beheld at one time. Her eldest daughter was almost as beautiful as our mother, whose equal I never saw nor shall see on earth. She had her mother's eye, her grandmother's nose, and her nice little aunt Harriette's curly brown hair. Then she was so graceful, and spoke such good French!
"Mary!" said Paragon to her daughter, as soon as she had shaken hands with me, and inquired after my health, "Mary, come away from the window directly. Fie! for shame! Do not you see those two men at the corner of the street are tipsy? Is that a proper sight to attract a young's lady's attention?"
Little Mary was in high spirits. She talked of love! and said she knew, very well, that everybody fell in love, and that she was in love, too, herself.
"With whom, pray?" asked Paragon.
"With my brother John," answered little Mary; and next she asked her mother, when she might marry him, declaring that she could not wait much longer.
"To bed! to bed!" said mamma. "You must all go to bed directly."
"Already?" I asked. "Why it is not six o'clock yet."
"No matter. I am tired to death of them, and they are always asleep before seven."
In less than five minutes the children were all running about stark naked as they were born, laughing, romping, and playing with each other. Little Sophia, who was not yet two years of age, did nothing but run after her beautiful brother Henry, a dear, little, laughing boy, who was about to celebrate his fourth birthday. Little Sophia, bred in the school of nature, handled her brother rather oddly, I thought.
Paragon then put them to bed, gave them a Scotchman, in the shape of a pill, and all was still as the grave!
"Good night, my dear Paragon," said I. "Lord Hertford dines at eight, and I shall not be ready."
"I saw you at the opera, last night," Paragon remarked, "and truly it was an unfair monopoly, to keep two such fine young men as Lord Worcester and the Duke of Leinster to yourself. I admire the latter of all things; so you may send Leinster to me, if you prefer Lord Worcester."
"How wicked!" said I. "If ever you, with such a beautiful young family, were to go astray, you must despair of forgiveness."
"Very fine talking," answered Paragon. "So you would score off your own sins, by a little cut-and-dried advice which costs you nothing."
Her son and heir interrupted her at this moment, by such hard breathing as almost amounted to a snore.
"That boy has caught cold!" observed mamma, and she awoke him to administer an extra Scotchman.
"Good-bye, good-bye," said I, running downstairs; and when I got home, I had only ten minutes left pour faire ma toilette. As to Miss Eliza Higgins, Lord Fife's compliments had so subdued her, that she could not afford me the least assistance.
"A charming man, the Earl of Fife!" she was repeating, for at least the fiftieth time, when a note was put into my hand bearing the noble earl's arms, and my footman at that moment informed me that my carriage was at the door.
"Any answer for Lord Fife, ma'am?" asked my servant.
I hastily read the note, which contained his lordship's request to pass the evening with me and my lovely companion. I did not show this to Miss Higgins on that occasion, because it seemed so very outré and unhoped for that I feared it might from the mere surprise have caused sudden death.
"My compliments only," said I; "tell his lordship I am very sorry, but I cannot write, because I am this instant getting into my carriage to dine with Lord Hertford:" and so saying I followed my servant downstairs.
Lord Hertford had not invited one person to meet us; but his excellent dinner, good wine, and very intelligent conversation, kept us alive till a very late hour. I mean no compliment to Lord Hertford, for he has acted very rudely to me of late; but he is a man possessing more general knowledge than any one I know. His lordship appears to be au fait on every subject one can possibly imagine. Talk to him of drawing or horse-riding, painting or cock-fighting; rhyming, cooking or fencing; profligacy or morals; religion of whatever creed; languages living or dead; claret or burgundy; champagne or black-strap; furnishing houses or riding hobbies; the flavour of venison or breeding poll-parrots; and you might swear that he had served his apprenticeship to every one of them.
After dinner he showed us miniatures by the most celebrated artists, of at least half a hundred lovely women, black, brown, fair, and even carroty, for the amateur's sympathetic bonne bouche. These were all beautifully executed: and no one with any knowledge of painting could hear him expatiate on their various merits, without feeling that he was qualified to preside at the Royal Academy itself! The light, the shade, the harmony of colours, the vice of English painters, the striking characters of Dutch artists--Ma foi! No such thing as foisting sham Vandykes, or copies from Rubens, on Lord Hertford, as I believe is done, or as I am sure might be done, on the Duke of Devonshire: and yet His Grace, I rather fancy, must be in the habit of sending advertisements to the newspapers relative to his taste in vertu and love of the arts. If not, how comes it that everybody hears of Devonshire pictures of his own choosing, while Lord Hertford's most correct judgment never graces those diurnal columns. His lordship does not buy them, either by so much a hundred or so much a foot; but if the town did not talk about Devonshire's pictures, Devonshire's fortune, and Devonshire's parties, he would be a blank in the creation. Once indeed he was slandered with bastardy; but that passed off quietly, as it ought to do; for who would have made it their pastime to beget such a lump of unintelligible matter. Though surely that's enough for a duke, were it even a Wellington. Not that a man is to blame for being stupid, be he duke or tinker; but then Devonshire is so incorrigibly affected and stingy withal! I remember his calling on me and pretending to make love to me; and, with an air of condescension and protection, asking me in what way he could serve me. For my part I am always inclined to judge of others by my own heart; I therefore took him at his word, believing that a man of such princely fortune would not, unasked, proffer his services to anybody to whom he was not disposed to send a few hundreds when they should require it. Being some time afterwards in such a predicament, and having promised to apply to him, I sent to him for a hundred guineas. His Grace begged to be excused sending so large a sum, at the same time assuring me that a part of it was at my service.
Oh, what a fine thing is the patronage of mighty dukes!
Apropos. I must not be ungrateful. The most noble, I ought to say the most gracious, the Duke of Devonshire once sent me two presents! The one, in a parcel, wrapped up in fine paper and sealed with the Devonshire arms.
"A parcel, madam!" said my footman, "and the Duke of Devonshire's servant waits while you acknowledge the receipt of it."
The parcel contained a very ugly, old, red pocket-handkerchief! His Grace, in the note which accompanied this most magnificent donation, acknowledged that it was hideous; but then, he assured me, it was the self-same which he had worn on his breast when he made it serve for an under-waistcoat, on the occasion of his visit to me the day before. This however was not all. In the warmth of his heart he sent me a ring too! I think it must have been bought at Lord Deerhurst's jewellers, and yet perhaps it was gold, instead of brass; but such a mere wire, that it could not weigh a shilling's-worth. Still, had it been of brass, and the gift of a friend who loved me, I should have worn it as long as it had lasted; but, being that of the Duke of Devonshire, who cared nothing about me, I sent it him back, to punish his vanity, in supposing that trifles light as air could be prized by me, because they came from him. As to his ugly, old, red pocket-handkerchief, I gave it to my footman, and told the donor that I had done so.
But, to proceed.
Lord Hertford showed us a vast collection of gold and silver coins, portraits, drawings, curious snuff-boxes and watches. He had long been desirous that Amy, Fanny, and myself should sit to Lawrence, for a large family-picture, to be placed in his collection.
Though the tea and coffee, like our dinner, were exquisite, Hertford made a good-natured complaint to his French commander-in-chief about the cream.
"Really," said his lordship, addressing us in English, "for a man who keeps a cow, it is a great shame to be served with such bad cream!"
"I knew not," said I, "that you were the man who kept a cow. Pray where is she?"
"In Hyde Park," he replied, "just opposite my windows."
Lord Hertford then proposed to show us a small detached building, which he had taken pains to fit up in a very luxurious style of elegance. A small, low gate, of which he always kept the key, opened into Park Lane, and a little, narrow flight of stairs, covered with crimson cloth, conducted to this retirement. It consisted of a dressing-room, a small sitting-room, and a bed-chamber. Over the elegant French bed was a fine picture of a sleeping Venus. There were a great many other pictures, and their subjects, though certainly warm and voluptuous, were yet too classical and graceful to merit the appellation of indecent. He directed our attention to the convenience of opening the door himself to any fair lady who would honour him with a visit incognita, after his servants should have prepared a most delicious supper and retired to rest. He told us many curious anecdotes of the advantage he derived from his character for discretion.
"I never tell of any woman. No power on earth should induce me to name a single female, worthy to be called woman, by whom I have been favoured. In the first place; because I am not tired of variety and wish to succeed again: in the second, I think it dishonourable."
He told us a story of a lady of family, well known in the fashionable world, whose intrigue with a young dragoon he had discovered by the merest and most unlooked-for accident. "I accused her of the fact," continued his lordship, "and refused to promise secrecy till she had made me as happy as she had made the young dragoon."
"Was this honourable?" I asked.
"Perhaps not," answered Hertford; "but I could not help it."
We did not leave Lord Hertford till near two o'clock, when he kindly set us all down himself in his own carriage.
The next morning, before I had finished my breakfast, a great, big, stupid Irishman was announced, by name Dominick Brown, with whom I had a slight acquaintance. He brought with him, for the purpose of being presented to me, the Marquis of Sligo. They sat talking on indifferent subjects for about an hour, and then drove off in his lordship's curricle. Next came a note from Lord Fife, requesting permission to drink tea with me and my charming friend. "Who would have thought it?" said I to myself, laughing. "Here am I playing second fiddle to Miss Eliza Higgins for the amusement of her most charming man, the Earl of Fife!" I wrote on the back of his note:
"Going to Vauxhall; but you may come to-morrow evening at nine."
I thought that Miss Eliza Higgins would have fainted when I told her that Lord Fife was coming to us.
"Oh dear, ma'am, what would you advise me to wear? If you would not think it a liberty, and would lend me the pattern of your sweet blue cap, I would sit up all night to complete one like it."
"All this energy about drinking tea with a rake of a Scotchman,--whom you know would not marry an angel,--and pretend to tell me that you are une grande vertu?" said I.
"Certainly," answered Miss Eliza Higgins, reddening.
"Fiddlestick!" was my sublime ejaculation.
Miss Eliza Higgins burst into tears.
"Nay," I continued, "this fit of heroics to me is ridiculous. I ask nothing of you but plain dealing. The fact is this, I am not curious but frank. Lord Fife wants to make your acquaintance, and it is not my wish to spoil any woman's preferment in whatever line of life, whether good or bad: so, guessing from all the raptures you have expressed at the idea of this rake's attachment, that the governess of the young countess Palmella is no better than she should be, I have agreed to receive his lordship; but, since these tears of virtuous indignation have convinced me of the injustice I did you, heaven forbid that I should be the means of bringing Lord Fife and a vestal together, for fear of consequences!" I then quietly opened my writing-desk and began framing an excuse lordship.
"Surely you are not putting off the Earl of Fife?" said Miss Eliza Higgins, in breathless agitation.
"I think it wrong to introduce such a gay man to an innocent woman," was my answer.
Miss Higgins entreated and begged in vain.
"Well then," said Miss Higgins, "I confess that I once----"
"Once what?" I asked.
"I had a slip--a--yes--a slip!" And she held her handkerchief to her eyes.
"What do you call a slip? Do you mean a petticoat or an intrigue!"
"Oh, fie! fie!" said Miss Eliza Higgins. "Intrigue is such a shocking word, and conveys a more determined idea of loose morals than a mere accidental slip."
I still persisted in sending the excuse, declaring that, since hers had been only an accidental slip, she might recover it.
"Oh, dear! Oh, dear!" said Miss Higgins, as my hand was extended to the bell, "what poor weak creatures we are! I quite forgot the General!"
"General who?"
"Why, General--, but you will be secret?"
"As the grave, of course."
"Did you ever hear of General Mackenzie?" said Miss Eliza Higgins, spreading her hand across her forehead.
"He was Fred Lamb's General in Yorkshire?" I answered.
"The same, madam, a fascinating man! and this is my excuse."
"True," said I, "and I remember all the servant maids and Yorkshire milkwomen confessed his power."
"Most true!" said Miss Eliza Higgins, with a deep sigh.
"What then, you have forgotten the Earl of Fife already?"
"Oh, his lordship is quite another thing," said Miss Higgins, brightening.
"And another thing is what you wish for?"
"Oh fie, ma'am! indeed you are too severe. These little accidents do and must happen, from mere inexperience and the weakness of our nature. I know several women, who have made most excellent wives after a slip or two, which I assure you madam often serves to fortify our virtue afterwards."
"Well, then," said I, resuming my pen, "lest the gay Lord Fife should break through the formidable bulwark of virtue which has been already fortified by two intrigues, I shall most positively send him an excuse."
"I entreat, I implore, ma'am, do not refuse my first request. Who knows what may turn up?" In short never was Brougham himself more eloquent! Not even on that memorable day when he was employed by Lord Charles Bentinck to show just cause why Lady Abdy ought to have cuckolded Sir William as she did. She ultimately prevailed; and all-conquering Fife was expected with rapture.
Before dinner I went to call on Julia, by whom I had been sent for. Extreme anxiety had brought on a fausse couche; but Julia, being as well as could be expected, hoped still to be able to join us at Brighton, if not to accompany us there. My sister Sophia was sitting by her bedside, looking very pretty, and much happier than when she was with Lord Deerhurst.
Fanny called on Julia, whose house she had changed for one in Hertford-street, Mayfair, on her acquaintance with Colonel Parker, whose name at his particular request she had now taken.
"My dear Fanny," said I, "what am I to do with your boy George? We shall never make a scholar of him, and he declares that he will not be a sailor."
"Flog him! Flog him!" said Amy, who overheard what I was saying, as she entered the room accompanied by a man in powder. "I flog my boy Campbell every hour in the day."
I never saw such a man in all my life as her powdered swain. "I too am for flogging," said he, "since, such as you see me here before you, I am become by mere dint of birch."
"Dieu nous en preserve!" said I, hurrying into my carriage. Having reached home too early for dinner, I sat down to consider the plan of a book in the style of the Spectator, a kind of picnic, where every wiseacre might contribute his mite of knowledge at so much a head, provided he and she would sign their real names to the paper.
Having imagined myself to be a wild lad, like my young scamp of a nephew, addressing a second Rambler or Spectator, whom I ventured to name Momus, I addressed as follows:
"MR. MOMUS,--I am one of those unfortunate victims whose hard fate was decided before I was born, and bon gré, mal gré, I must become a prodigy of learning. Now, Mr. Momus, I have to inform you that, notwithstanding I love my parents above all the world, yet I abhor and detest everything in the way of study. Floggings, rewards, private tutors and public schools, have all been tried in vain; and, though I am at fifteen becoming somewhat hardened against my father's harsh sarcasms on my stupidity, yet fain would I exert myself to dry up the tears my poor mother often sheds, for the disappointment of her sanguine wishes on my account; but for the strong conviction I feel that it is as impossible to acquire a taste for study, as to benefit by a forced application to books.
"'Learn, oh youth,' says Zimmerman, one of my tutor's favourite authors, 'learn, oh young man! that nothing will so easily subdue your passion for pleasure as an increasing emulation in great and virtuous actions, a hatred to idleness and frivolity, the study of the sciences, and that high and dignified spirit, which looks with disdain, on everything that is vile and contemptible.'
"All very fine old boy, and clear as the nose in your face. A hatred of idleness, Mr. Zimmerman, is a love of industry; but how is this love and this hatred to be acquired? 'Voilà,' said a French matron to Monsieur le Duc de ----, at Paris, throwing open the doors of an elegant apartment, 'Voilà la chambre où l'on' ... 'Mais, où est la chambre où l'on--?' said the duke.
"'Try solitude,' says Zimmerman--
"My father has tried that too, and it failed--but then, Zimmerman continues, 'for solitude to produce these happy effects it is not sufficient to be continually gazing out of a window with a vacant mind, nor gravely walking up and down your study, in a ragged robe de chambre and worn-out slippers. The soul must feel an eager desire to roam at large.'
"Now, Mr. Zimmerman, as far as regards a new pair of slippers and a clean dressing-gown, your advice has been duly attended to; but my mind is not the less vacant, whether I gaze out of window, walk, or sit down; therefore, Mr. Momus, I now entreat you to favour me with your candid opinion, whether a fool can be teased into a genius, or a genius into a fool? It strikes me, on the contrary, that, under every imaginable disadvantage, a man will contrive to improve himself where the taste for study be genuine, and, where it does not exist, compulsion will but add disgust to what was before only indifference.
"My tutor read to me this morning, an anecdote of Petrarch, the celebrated Italian poet. One of Petrarch's friends, the Bishop of Cavaillon, being alarmed lest the intense application with which he studied might totally ruin a constitution already much impaired, requested of him one day the key of his library. Petrarch immediately gave it him, and the good bishop instantly locking up his books and writings, said, 'Petrarch, I hereby interdict you from the use of pen, ink, and paper, for the space of ten days.' The sentence was severe; but the offender suppressed his feelings and submitted to his fate. The first day of his exile from his favourite pursuits was tedious, the second accompanied with incessant headache, and the third brought on symptoms of an approaching fever,--'Sir,' said I, interrupting my tutor, 'my symptoms of fever are also coming on: everybody to their vocation,--you must allow me to take a ride.' Farewell, Mr. Momus, I wait impatiently for your good advice, which I do not feel much afraid of; because you are neither a grey-beard nor a scholar.
"I remain, your obedient servant, "HARRY HAIRBRAIN."
ANSWER
"Though I am neither a grey-beard nor a scholar, my young correspondent will not be a jot the better pleased with me when I inform him that I would recommend his being deprived both of his horse and his liberty, and throw him altogether on the resources of his own active mind for his whole and sole amusement, amongst books and grey-beards, where he might either study or look on, as he pleased; at the same time, I quite agree with my correspondent as to the folly of labouring to extract blood from a stone, although this, judging from the spirit of his letter, is very far from a case in point."
It was now dinner-time, so I resolved to dress for Vauxhall after that was over.
"I wonder," said Miss Eliza Higgins, as she assisted at my toilette, "I wonder if the Earl of Fife will be at Vauxhall? What a bore this little green satin gipsy-hat is, and what a magnificent plume of feathers! How divinely they fall over your shoulders! What a heavenly taste Madame le Brun has!"
Miss Eliza Higgins, as it will be perceived, doted on superlatives.
Lord Frederick Bentinck came for me before I was half ready.
"It's quite a bore! you always keep me waiting," said his lordship, when I came downstairs. "I cannot amuse myself in the least in this room, for I dare not open any one of your books, being always afraid of hitting upon something indecent or immoral."
"Come," said I, "we shall be late, if you stand prosing there."
"I am thinking," said Frederick Bentinck, without stirring.
"You can think," I interrupted him, "as we go along." I took hold of his hand, and pulled him towards the door.
"Stop a minute," continued his lordship, "and attend to what I say. I risk a great deal, in going out with a woman like you."
"What do you mean by a woman like me?"
"Why--a woman--a woman--in short, and to speak plainly, of your loose morals!"
"You blockhead!" said I, running downstairs, and having determined in my own mind to be even with him.
The gardens were crowded to excess.
The late Marquess of Londonderry flattered my vanity, and made me prouder than ever my conquest of Lord Worcester could do, by merely looking at me. He certainly looked a great deal more than perhaps his lady might have thought civil. He struck me, particularly on that evening, as one of the most interesting looking men I had ever seen. At first Lord Frederick seemed rather timid, in regard to my loose morals and my striking elegant dress; but, observing that I excited some little admiration and that his sister, as he told me, looked at me as if she had been much surprised and pleased with me, he now grew proud of having me on his arm and pressed forward into the crowd; but I constantly tugged at his arm till I got into the most retired walks.
"What are you afraid of?" said Lord Frederick.
"Why, not of your loose morals: but the fact is, I, who am accustomed to go about with the chosen Apollos of the age, shall get terribly laughed at for being at Vauxhall with such a quiz as you. Not that I doubt your being a very excellent sort of man."
Fred Bentinck laughed with perfect good-humour. He had no vanity, and was so fond of me that I was welcome to laugh at him, and, provided he saw me amused, he was happy.
"I could listen while Harriette talked, though it were for a year together," said Lord Frederick one day to Julia, when I was not present. Indeed he made it a point never to say anything civil to me; but all his actions proved his friendship and regard for me.
At four o'clock in the morning I found Miss Eliza Higgins busy about the new cap which was to kill the Thane.
"Was the Earl of Fife in the gardens?" she inquired, the moment I entered my dressing-room.
The next evening, behold myself and Miss Higgins seated on the sofa before our tea-table, in expectation of Lord Fife. Miss Higgins's new cap would have improved her beauty, had she not diminished its lustre by sitting up all night to finish it; but her fine hair, which was her solitary charm, was suffered to flow over her neck and shoulders in graceful, childish negligence. As for me, the part of second fiddle being altogether new to me, I took the liberty of appearing in my morning dress. Nine was the hour named by Lord Fife, and Miss Higgins had taken out her old-fashioned French watch at least twenty times since she entered the drawing-room, when the house-clock struck that wished-for and lagging hour.
"Is his lordship punctual generally speaking, pray, ma'am?"
"Quite the reverse, I believe," said I, half asleep.
"You have a good heart, I know, ma'am, and we females ought naturally to assist each other in all our little peccadillos," remarked my companion.
"Well?"
"Why, ma'am, I am going to ask your advice, who are better acquainted with his lordship's tastes than I am. I was thinking now, that this little netting-box is pretty and lady-like! Shall I be netting a purse, or will it have a better effect to put on my gloves and be doing nothing?"
Before I could answer this deep question my footman entered the room with a letter, sealed with a large coronet, and told me that a servant waited below for an answer.
"I will ring when it is ready, James," said I, opening the letter.
"It is an excuse from the Earl of Fife!" said Miss Eliza Higgins, growing whiter than her pearl powder.
Indignation kept me silent after reading the following impertinent letter from the Marquis of Sligo, to whom I had only been presented the day before.
"MY DEAR MISS WILSON,--Will you be so condescending as to allow me to pass this evening alone with you after Lord Lansdowne's party?
"SLIGO."
I had not been so enraged for several years! I rang my bell with such violence that I frightened Miss Eliza Higgins out of the very little wit she possessed.
"Who waits?" said I to James.
"A servant in livery," was the answer.
"Send him up to me."
A well-bred servant, in a cocked hat and dashing livery entered my room, with many bows.
"Here is some mistake," said I, presenting him the unsealed and unfolded letter of Lord Sligo. "This letter could not be meant for me, to whom his lordship was only presented yesterday. Take it back, young man, and say from me, that I request he will be careful how he misdirects his letters in future; an accident which is no doubt caused by his writing after dinner."
The man bowed low, and took away the open communication with him.
"The earl may yet arrive then?" observed Miss Eliza Higgins, recovered herself.
A loud knock at the door now put the matter almost beyond a doubt, and, in another minute, in walked the redoubtable Earl of Fife, in a curious black and tan broad striped satin waistcoat, which was ornamented with a large gold chain. His watch was very gay, as were his numerous seals, at least twenty in number. "Surely," thought I, as I threw a hasty glance at Miss Eliza Higgins's long, narrow, ill-shaped forehead, brilliant with agitation and pearl-powder, "surely the man must be purblind or it may be his eyes were filled with dust on Sunday, when we met him in the park." However, to my astonishment, his lordship was all rapture, and did nothing but ogle my fair dame de compagnie, as though she had been really fair.
As to Miss Eliza Higgins, it had been previously settled and agreed on between us that modesty was to be the order of the day.
"I am not so vain as to fancy myself altogether handsomer than you are, madame," said the humble Miss Eliza to me, "and yet it is clear that the Earl of Fife prefers me; I therefore conceive that I may have appeared to him more timid and modest; therefore it will be better to keep up that character: do not you agree with me, ma'am?"
"Certainly," said I.
Miss Eliza Higgins kept up the farce to excess; scarcely venturing to raise her eyes from the ground, or utter a single syllable, beyond--"yes," or "no, my lord,"--and, that in a low whisper. She did indeed once venture to speak pathetically about her grandmamma and her dear grandpapa. Lord Fife declared to me she was an amiable creature, and he presumed to place a ring of some value on her finger, on which occasion Miss Eliza Higgins appeared to be growing rather nervous. He did not take his leave until he had obtained her permission to write to her.
"Miss Eliza Higgins," said I, as soon as we were left alone again, which was not till after midnight, "my good Miss Eliza Higgins, this atmosphere, as you expected, has proved favourable to your wishes. It has done more than your six seasons at Bath. It has, in short, brought a noble earl to your feet. Je vous en fait mes compliments. We will now if you please say adieu. Make any use you please of your conquest, and accept my thanks for having been so truly ridiculous."
Miss Eliza bridled, muttered something about our sex's envy, and declared that she had proposed leaving me herself.
"Agreed then," said I, extending my hand to shake hands. "I promise never to say anything but good of you to Lord Fife; at least not till he is quite tired of you."
Miss Eliza Higgins appeared satisfied and wished me a good night.
"You will forward any letters that may arrive from the Earl of Fife?" said she, returning.
"Certainly,"
"Why then, I propose going to my grandmamma's to-morrow."
"De tout mon coeur," I replied, and we parted.
Chapter XVI
Half the world was at Elliston's masquerade, given at his place, as he calls the Theatre Royal, Drury-lane; therefore all I shall say about it is, that I never saw anything of the kind better conducted and I wish he would give another in honour of my arrival the moment I go to London.
During supper, somebody recognised Elliston as he passed through the room, and he was immediately hailed with three cheers.
"Ladies and gentlemen," said Elliston, who was as tipsy as usual, or rather more so perhaps,--"Ladies and gentlemen, I did not expect to have been observed in passing through the crowd. I am very grateful, gentlemen,--very happy, gentlemen,--quite overjoyed, gentlemen,--that any efforts of mine to please and amuse you have been crowned with success----"
At this critical moment, somebody broke some dishes and upset a bottle of champagne.
"Easy! easy! quiet--quiet there--pray! pray!" said Elliston, addressing them by way of parenthesis.
He then continued his speech,--"Yes, gentlemen, you shall have more masquerades! And what's more, ladies and gentlemen----"
Elliston's lame speech by this time had excited some laughter.
"I never knew him quite so bad as this," said a gentleman on my left.
"As I was saying, gentlemen," Elliston proceeded, "I mean, my kind friends, it has ever been my ambition to give you pleasure, and, gentlemen, masquerades are pleasant, merry, spirited things, particularly when the occasion is, like this, to celebrate the birthday of our august--oh! gentlemen and ladies, apropos, I had forgotten,--but I now, though last not least, beg to propose a toast, in which every one of you will join me in your heart of hearts!"
Elliston filled a bumper, and drank--"His Majesty!"
We were all stunned with the loud cheers, three times three repeated, which followed. He then passed round the tables, and stopped to speak to several of his friends, one of whom drank off one bottle of champagne with him, and then called for another.
"No more--no more," said Elliston.
"Why man, one would think you were Cardinal Wolsey."
In about a fortnight after the Opera had closed we all arrived at Brighton.
Leinster gave way to his feelings, on the day I left town, by putting more wine into his glass than usual.
"Only say you like me better than Worcester," said His Grace, "and I shall go to Ireland in some comfort."
"I have forgotten Lord Worcester," said I.
"And you will be glad to see me on my return then?" asked Leinster.
"Certainly," I answered, "and particularly if you will leave off playing the hundred and fourth psalm on the big fiddle. I really am tired of it."
Leinster proposed giving me Rule Britannia on my arrival, and promised everything I could wish.
Fred Bentinck rode by the side of my carriage for the first ten miles. He offered to drive me down all the way with his own horses; but on certain conditions, which I declined.
"Well!" said Frederick, in his loud, odd voice, as he took leave of me, at The Cock at Sutton, "well, I really do hope you will soon come back. I don't, as you know, make speeches or pretend to be in love with you. I might have been perhaps; but, the fact is, you are a loose woman rather, and you know I hate anything immoral. However, you may believe me when I say, that I am sorry you are leaving London."
"And what becomes of you?" I asked. "Do you mean to remain all your life in town?"
"Oh! I have too a great deal to do, and my business, you know, is at the Horse Guards."
"God bless you, Frederick Bentinck," said I, as my carriage was driving off. "Portez vous bien, although you certainly are enough to make me die of laughter."
"And do," said his lordship, with his half laughing, half cross, but very odd countenance, "pray do conduct yourself with some small degree of propriety at Brighton: and take care of your health. I have, by this day's post, written to my friend Doctor Bankhead about you. I think him clever; and I know he will do what he can to be of service to any favourite of mine."
We had already hired a good house on the Marine Parade. Amy's admirer, Boultby, was one of our first visitors, and then Lords Hertford and Lowther, who were both on a visit at the pavilion. For three whole days Amy sickened us by the tenderness of her flirtation with Boultby, who sat lounging on her sofa as though he had been a first-rate man. At last Amy grew tired of him all at once.
"Get up," said she, rudely pushing her inamorato off the sofa.
Boultby refused like a spoiled child, and insisted on another kiss.
"Good heavens, get up then," said Amy, "and don't tumble my ruff. I came down to Brighton for the fresh air, and for three days I have inhaled none of it; and I am not sure that I shall like you. Here put your head on this pillow," added Amy, putting down his head, and rolling a thick table-napkin about it. "So let me fancy you my husband, and in your night-cap. There," said Amy, holding her head first on one side, then on the other, in order to take a full view of his little, black, ugly face, which examination was not favourable to her lover.
"Get up this instant!" said she, with such fierceness as immediately set him on his legs.
"I told you so," said I, "but you would not believe me."
Boultby hoped his sweet Amy was joking; and he did well to make the most and best he could of the evening: for he was never admitted afterwards.
Lord Robert Manners, whose regiment was stationed in that neighbourhood, was very attentive to me. His lordship is one of the most amiable young men I ever met with. His finely turned head might be copied for that of the Apollo Belvidere, and yet he has no vanity. In short a more manly, honourable, unaffected being does not exist; and much I regret the ill-health under which he has always suffered. His lordship was kind enough to give me my first lesson in riding; often accompanied by the French Duc de Guiche, who was in the Prince Regent's Regiment, and Colonel Palmer. The latter invited me to accompany Lord Robert to the mess-dinner at Lewes. It must more resemble a small select private party than a mess-room, as they seldom mustered more than seven or eight persons together at table.
Bob Manners, as Lord Robert is universally called, was remarkably absent, and spoke but little, yet he possessed a certain degree of quaint, odd humour.
"Those leaders are not bad: who made them?" asked George Brummell, one day of his lordship.
"Why, the breeches-maker," said Bob Manners, speaking very slow.
I accidentally had some conversation with an old infantry officer, belonging to a regiment which had fought some very hard battles, I think it was the 50th, and nick-named the Dirty Half-hundred; but I know their courage was in high repute, although the officers were not polished men by any means.
Speaking of Lord Robert, my new acquaintance remarked that he was a fine, high-bred looking fellow.
"The Tenth are a very fine looking regiment, take them altogether," continued he, "and they wear very fine laced jackets; but what service have they seen? And yet they hold us poor fellows very cheap, I dare say. The anniversary dinner, by which we are to celebrate the battle where our officers are allowed to have particularly distinguished themselves, happens next Monday: but I suppose your dandies of the Tenth will not condescend to join our humble mess!"
I afterwards repeated this conversation to Lord Robert in the presence of Colonel Palmer.
"Indeed," said his lordship, "the regiment do us great injustice in saying we hold them cheap: on the contrary, while answering for myself, who hold their courage in the highest respect and estimation, I think I may, at the same time, answer for the whole of my regiment."
Colonel Palmer readily joined Lord Robert in his unequivocal expressions of approbation.
"For my part," continued Lord Robert, "I shall not only be happy in such an opportunity of becoming personally acquainted with the brave officers of the 50th regiment; but I shall feel hurt and astonished if a single officer of the Tenth, now at Lewes, who may be favoured with an invitation to their dinner, should fail to attend to it. At the same time, I wish you would tell your new acquaintance that while, perhaps, we envy the laurels they have been allowed to gather, they are bound to believe in our readiness to lose our best blood in the service of our country, whenever we are permitted so to prove our courage; but it would be illiberal to blame us for the freshness of our jackets."
Every officer in the Tenth Hussars who happened to be quartered at Lewes, made it a point, stimulated perhaps by what Lord Robert had said on the subject, to hold himself disengaged for the day, on which they all fully expected to receive an invitation from the officers of the 50th regiment, when, lo!--not one of them was asked!
* * * * *
Lords Hertford and Lowther were our constant visitors at Brighton.
One evening, when His Majesty had a party of ladies and gentlemen at the pavilion, we concluded that Lord Hertford would not be able to leave it. However, at nine his lordship arrived, accompanied by a hamper of claret.
"Much as I respect His Majesty," said Lord Hertford, "I cannot stand the old women at Brighton."
We received letters from Julia and Sophia, declaring they had changed their minds and would not join us.
I saw a great deal of the Duc de Guiche, who used to be called, while in the Tenth Hussars, the Count de Grammont, during my short stay at Brighton. He was very handsome, possessed a quick sense of honour, and ever avoided even the shadow of an obligation: I need not add that he, through strict economy, kept himself at all times out of debt. As an officer he was severe and ill-tempered, but well versed in military business: as a Frenchman he was fonder of flirting than loving; and, with regard to his being a fop, what could a handsome young Frenchman do less?
I refused to see Dr. Bankhead, who had left his card by Lord Frederick Bentinck's desire; because the world said he was a terrible fellow. However, being afterwards afflicted with an attack of inflammation in my chest, I ventured to send for this Herculean Beauty! "He cannot," thought I, "be so very impudent as he has been represented to me by many, and particularly by Mr. Hoare the banker, who declared that maids, wives, and widows were often obliged to pull their bells for protection. Then Lord Castlereagh has too much good taste to encourage and patronise him as he does, and has done for years, if he were so very bad."
Dr. Bankhead came into my bedroom with the air and freedom of a very old acquaintance.
"What is the matter, my sweet young lady?" said he, "and what can I do for you?"
"I see! I hear!" said he, interrupting me, observing that I spoke with difficulty. "Fever? Yes," feeling my pulse. "Oppression? ah! Cough? hey? Do not speak, my sweet creature. Do not speak! You have been exposing that sweet bosom!" endeavouring to lay his hand upon it, which I resisted with all my strength of hand.
"Nay! nay! nay! stop! stop! stop! hush! hush! You'll increase your fever, my charming young lady; and then what will your friend Fred Bentinck say? quiet! There, don't speak, can you swallow a saline draught? and I'm thinking too of James's powders; but it is absolutely necessary for me to press my hand on that part of your chest or side which is most painful to you."
"Doctor Bankhead, excuse me. This is by no means my first attack of the kind, and I know pretty well how to treat it."
"There! there! then! be quiet my dear young lady. I give you my honour you have already increased your fever. Hush! you will take your draught to-night?"
"Doctor Bankhead, I must----"
"Nay! nay! there! keep yourself quiet, I entreat. Quietness is everything in these inflammatory fevers, you know, my sweet."
"Doctor Bankhead, I must ring the bell."
"Hush! there! there then! I would not frighten you for the world: and I am apt to frighten ladies, I am indeed! hush! Be quiet! there then! hush! I am indeed, as you may have heard, a most terrible fellow! Be quiet, my sweet lady! Swallow this glass of lemonade! There! now lie very still. In short, so terrible am I, that I frighten every woman on earth, except Mrs. Bankhead and my Lady Heathcote! hush!"
"Doctor Bankhead! this is an unmanly advantage of----"
"Oh, you naughty creature, to flurry yourself! I would not frighten you for the world! And, since I am so terrifying, take me altogether----"
"Doctor Bankhead, I'll ring the bell," and I tried to reach it.
"You shall have just as much or as little of me as you please. Be still, pray! pray! and this is an offer I never before made to any woman, not even to my dear friend Lady Heathcote."
Dr. Bankhead laid his giant hand on my bosom to demonstrate one of his former feats. My passions were now roused in a peculiar manner, and, catching hold of my bell, I never ceased ringing it till my maid appeared.
I desired her to show Dr. Bankhead out of my house, "And, above all things, do not leave my room without him."
"Good morning, to you, my sweet, comical lady," said Bankhead, and left the house.
In about two months we all grew tired of Brighton, except Fanny, who had never been happier than while galloping over the Downs with the first man she had really loved; perhaps the first who had treated her with the respect and kindness her very excellent and benevolent qualities so well deserved.
I often heard from Fred Bentinck, as well as from His Grace of Leinster. The latter joined me in London towards the end of November. I had only been settled there a few days, when I was surprised by a visit from the young Marquis of Worcester, whose very existence I had almost forgotten.
He expressed his gratitude for being admitted and sat with me for two hours, when our tête-à-tête was interrupted by Leinster. He then took his leave, having conversed only on indifferent subjects, without once touching on the passion Lord Deerhurst and several others had assured me that he entertained for me.
Leinster appeared much annoyed at the reappearance of Worcester and talked of going to Spain.
"I am a great fool," said His Grace, "and travelling may make me wiser."
I shook my head.
"At all events," continued His Grace, "I shall be out of the way of seeing Worcester make love to you. I am no match for him, being of a colder and less romantic turn. Worcester would go to the devil for you, and will make you love him, sooner or later. I cannot contend with him, and therefore I have almost decided to go with my brother, Lord Henry, and young FitzGibbon to the Continent."
"In the meantime," said I, "you really are wrong to tease yourself about Lord Worcester, who never makes love to me: and this morning he talked of nothing but riding and Lord Byron's poetry and music. He did not even offer to shake hands with me, and, when I held out my hand for that purpose, he seemed to shake and tremble, as though it had been something quite unnatural."
"When are you to see him again?"
I assured His Grace that nothing like an appointment had been made; and all Lord Worcester had said on the subject, was a request to be allowed to call sometimes to pay his respects and make his bow.
I went to call on Fanny, after His Grace left me. Lord Alvanly and Amy were with her, and her eternal admirer, Baron Tuille, who told us that Lord Worcester did nothing but inquire of every man he met, whether they had heard anything relative to the departure of Leinster for Spain.
"That's a very fine young man, that Marquis of Worcester," said Amy. "I should like to be introduced to him, only I suppose Harriette, with her usual jealousy, will prevent me."
"On the contrary," said I, "Fanny heard me invite him to your party after the Opera, the very evening he was presented to me, and he refused to go."
"What a rude way of putting it," said Baron Tuille. "Why not say he was obliged to return to Oxford, and was en désespoir!"
"De tout mon coeur! Put it how you please," said I.
"I've some news for you," said Fanny. "Sophia has made a new conquest of an elderly gentleman in a curricle, with a coronet on it. He does nothing on earth from morning till night but drive up and down before Julia's door. Julia is quite in a passion about it, and says it looks so very odd."
"Talk of the devil," said Alvanly, as Julia and Sophia entered the room.
"Of fair Hebe rather," Baron Tuille observed.
"Well Miss Sophia, so you've made a new conquest?" said Fanny.
"Yes," answered Sophia: "but it is of a very dowdy, dry-looking man."
"But then his curricle!" I interrupted.
"Yes, to be sure, I should like to drive out in his curricle, of all things."
"It is very odious of the fright to beset my door as he does," Julia said.
"So it is, quite abominable; and, for my part, I hate him, and his curricle too," good-natured Sophia replied.
"But answer me," said Baron Tuille, addressing himself to me, "does the Duke of Leinster go to the continent this year?"
"What is that to you?" I asked.
"Only to satisfy poor Worcester, who is so miserable about him. For my part, I asked him why he did not run away with you by force. But he said, that force was good for nothing; and that while you permitted Leinster to visit you he was perfectly wretched. Suspense was the devil, and he could not think why Leinster bothered at all about going to Spain unless he really had some such intention."
"I believe you are all laughing at me," said I, "and I don't deserve it; for no one can say I am vain: but if I were, no vanity, not even that of the Honourable John William Ward, could construe Lord Worcester's prim conversation into love for me. True, he blushes and trembles, which, in a lad of such mature worldly manners, who has already been so much in society, does look a little like love; but this is the only sign I have witnessed."
"Depend upon it, he is in a desperate, bad way," lisped out Alvanly.
"Were you ever seriously in love, my lord?" I asked.
"Oh, tremendously, last year," answered his lordship; "but then I fancied it was with a woman of fashion. God bless your soul, a fine carriage, on a perch, with scarlet blinds! Could you have imagined she would ever have asked me for money?"
"And what answer did you make?"
"Answer! Why I told her I would have preferred death to even the risk of insulting her; but, since she had destroyed all my illusion, I now was disposed to look upon her in a different light, and pay her accordingly, at the rate of five hundred a year; which was handsome for the time I should continue in her company, which, by the bye, would not have been longer than five minutes! However she refused to have anything more to do with me; and I have now, thank God, entirely recovered my peace of mind."
* * * * *
Worcester was riding near my door as I drove up to it. I stopped to ask him if he liked to join me at Astley's, where I proposed going with the Duke of Leinster. He hesitated, and seemed really annoyed at the idea of Leinster being of the party.
"If you really wish it," said his lordship, reddening.
"Oh, I shall not break my heart," I answered, "only it has struck me, and has struck others, that you liked me, therefore I conceived the proposal might be agreeable."
"I am afraid," said Lord Worcester, "that I shall be thought very intrusive and impertinent; but I am most anxious and desirous to be allowed to say one word to you before you go to Astley's to-night."
"Leinster comes for me at half-past seven," I replied, "so call at seven."
Worcester rode off, all gratitude.
I was surprised to find Leinster sitting at my pianoforte, in my drawing-room, when I got upstairs. "What again at your hundred and fourth psalm?" said I, "after all the promises you have made to become less righteous?"
"I have a favour to ask," said Leinster, and the boy's usual open smile was fled, and he looked infinitely more interesting; because he was paler, and there was an air of sensibility about him, which was seldom the case.
"My dear little Harry," said he, passing his hand across his curly locks, "I am annoyed and bothered to death with Worcester's perseverance. I am going to Spain. I shall stay perhaps several years, and you and I may never meet again. I know you are going to remind me that you never professed any particular love for me and that you never deceived me as to your love of liberty; but I am not asking anything of you as a right: I am only making an appeal to your good-nature, when I entreat you not to receive Worcester's visits till I am gone, which will be, I hope, in less than six weeks. It should be sooner, but that I have many things to arrange relative to my coming of age."
The simplicity and feeling manner in which Leinster delivered his little speech affected me a good deal. No one, not even Fred Bentinck, could ever attach himself to me, without inspiring me with such friendship as results from a grateful heart. I believe all who know me will admit, what I certainly can affirm to be true, namely, that no success of mine ever once led me to fancy a single heart had been mine by right, or à cause de mon propre mérite, nor was I coquette enough to desire general admiration. On the contrary, I thought it hard, and often a bore, that my gratitude should so frequently be taxed, for what gave me no pleasure.
"Do not go, Leinster," said I, kissing his eye, where a tear was glistening; "and, as long as you will stay, I will tell Worcester I must decline receiving his visits."
"When?" said Leinster, with a bright smile which was very pretty.
"His lordship is coming here at seven, and I will then give him his congé tout de bon," said I.
Leinster hurried off in high spirits, that he might get back in time to take me to Astley's.
Lord Worcester came to me before I had finished my dinner. He assured me that he now proposed to accompany me, if I still would permit him, to Astley's. "But," said Lord Worcester, after some hesitation, "you are, I am sure you must be, aware that my being present to see the Duke of Leinster, or indeed any man on earth, conduct you home, is very hard upon me."
"I hope not," said I, "and certainly I am not aware of any such thing. You are neither my husband, nor my lover, and you never made any professions of love to me; I hope you felt none; because--" and I hesitated in my turn.
"Because what?" said Lord Worcester, in almost breathless anxiety.
"Because my old friend, the Duke of Leinster, feels much annoyed at your visits, and----"
"And you assured me he was indifferent to you," interrupted Worcester.
"I said I was not in love with him, neither am I; but I cannot bear teasing him; so, to be frank with you, and one must be frank when one is in such a hurry," continued I, laughing, "I have promised to beg of you as a favour not to come here any more."
Lord Worcester's face was scarlet first and then pale as death: he took up his hat, half in indignation, and then put it down in despair! Had I been more humble than I really am, I could not, with common sense, have doubted the deep impression I had made on Worcester.
"Ecoutez, mon ami," said I, holding out my hand to him. "I cannot account for the prejudice which runs high in my favour among you young men of rank. I am inclined rather to attribute it to fashion or some odd accident, than to any peculiar merit on my part: still, flattered as I ought to be, and deeply grateful as I always am, it will yet be paying very dear for the impression which is excited in my favour, if, while my own heart happens to be free as air and my fancy ever laughter-loving, I am to condole all the morning with one fool, and sympathise the blessed long evening with another; neither can I be tender and true to a dozen of you at a time."
"I did not," said Worcester, half indignantly, "I did not know that I was quite a fool; and at all events, I shall not intrude my folly on you if I am."
In vain he tried to pull his hat completely over his eyes. The tears did not glisten there, as they did in Leinster's; but they fell in torrents as he attempted to take leave of me.
"Oh dear me!" said I, as I sighed an inward good-bye to the self-same harlequin-farces, at which I had laughed so heartily many years before, when I accompanied poor Tom Sheridan to Astley's.
"What am I to do, Lord Worcester?" I asked. "Upon my word I would rather suffer anything myself, than cause unhappiness to those that love me. I don't care a bit about myself. Only tell me what I can do for you and Leinster and my sister Fanny? For all who love me in short; for I would make all happy if I could, provided they don't grow too pathetic."
"My dear, dearest Harriette," said Lord Worcester, "no man on earth, feeling as I have done, could have been less pathetic, as you call it, than I have been, for more than six months, that all my prayers, my hopes, and my wishes, have been for you, and your love and happiness. I have seldom visited you, and never, at least till to-day, done any one thing that could possibly bore or offend you."
I could not but acknowledge this to be true.
"Well then," continued Worcester, "I will throw myself on my knees----"
"No, pray don't," I exclaimed, "I really must go to Astley's, I have not a moment to lose. My word is pledged to Leinster: but I believe that you love me better than he is capable of loving anything, and, since you are good enough to value my friendship, I will not cut you, indeed I will not," and I gave him my hand, which he covered with warm kisses and warmer tears.
"You must go now," I added; "I never break my word, and Leinster will be here directly; but, when he goes to Spain,----"
"Does he go?" interrupted Worcester eagerly.
"Everything is settled," answered I, "and, in less than six weeks Leinster can torment you no more."
Worcester appeared to be overjoyed.
"And, when he is gone, there will be no man you care about left in England?"
"None: except indeed a sort of tenderness, not amounting to anything like passion, for Lord Robert Manners: and then I have a great respect for Lord Frederick's morals, and that is all! So now, my lord, you must set off, and do be merry. You shall hear from me often, and as soon as Leinster is gone you are welcome to try to make me in love with you. If you fail, so much the worse for us both; since I hold everything which is not love, to be mere dull intervals in life."
"I may not call on you then?" asked Worcester.
"I will write, and tell you all about it."
There was now a loud rap at the door.
"I am off," said Worcester. "I cannot bear to sit here a single instant with Leinster. En grace je te prie, mon ange, ayez pitié de moi et ne m'oubliez pas."
He dropped on one knee to kiss my hand, like a knight of old, and the next instant he was out of sight.
"Was that the Marquis of Worcester who ran out of your home in such a hurry, as I was getting out of my carriage?" asked Leinster, as he entered the room, full dressed, his handsome leg, en gros, set off to the best advantage by a fine silk stocking.
"Yes," said I, "but I have desired him not to come again; so pray don't be sentimental. I have had enough of that, this day, to last me my life."
"You are very cold and heartless, which is what, from the expression of your eyes, I had never suspected," remarked Leinster.
"I was in love enough once," I rejoined, "God knows, and what good did it do me?"
After all, I arrived at Astley's just in time for my favourite harlequinade. The house was well attended. I thought that I observed the Marquis of Worcester, slyly glancing at us through the trelliswork of a stage-box; but I was not quite certain. After the piece was finished, I wanted to set Leinster down at his own door; but he declared himself so hungry, that he could not get further than Westminster-bridge without a slice of bread and butter, quite as thick as those his tutor Mr. Smith used to provide him with. This luxury his footman procured, together with a tankard of ale from a pothouse in the immediate vicinity of the theatre.
The next morning Fanny came to take leave of me. Colonel Parker could no longer be absent from his regiment, which was stationed at Portsmouth, therefore they proposed leaving London for that place on the following day.
"Remember me kindly to Lord Worcester, when you see him," said Fanny. "There is something in that young man's countenance I like so much, and his manners are so excessively high bred and gentlemanlike, that I cannot think how you can resist him and treat him so very coldly as you do. As to Amy, she is going stark mad to be introduced to him."
"With all my heart," said I.
We were now interrupted by the Prince Esterhazy, who entered all over mud, saying, "Comment ça va?" without taking off his hat.
"We are discussing the merits of the young Marquis of Worcester, Prince," Fanny observed to him.
"A very fine young man to be sure, certainly," said Esterhazy; "but good mine God, can you not take him one to yourself, instead of all these young fellows running, toujours, after you. I could not come near you for a mile the other night, you have so many people round about you."
"That was because you did not take off your hat," I said.
"It is my way," answered the prince; "and I do the same to the queen."
"Ca se peut," said I, "mais, moi, je prétends que vous ne le ferez pas ici: ainsi votre seigneurie aura la bonté, ou, d'oter votre chapeau, ou de vous en aller toute suite."
"Je prendrai la dernière partie," answered the prince, putting on his great coat and retiring.
"You have been too severe, Harriette," said Fanny, after Prince Esterhazy had taken his departure.
"I would not have been so to a poor man; but really, I have no idea of having one's house mistaken for a cabaret by a nasty coarse German, who, with all his impudence, is, as I am informed, the meanest man alive; besides he always stands with his back to the fire, without paying the least attention when the ladies shiver and shake and vow and declare they are dying with cold!"
Fanny told me, calling another subject, that Julia had not only surmounted her reluctance to Napier, but had become almost as fond of him as she had been of Sir Harry Mildmay; and that was the reason why she refused to join us at Brighton.
I inquired whether he seemed disposed to behave well to Julia and her family.
"Oh, he is horribly stingy," answered Fanny, "and Julia is obliged to affect coldness and refuse him the slightest favour, till he brings her money; otherwise she would get nothing out of him. Yet he seems to be passionately fond of her, and writes sonnets on her beauty, styling her, at forty, although the mother of nine children, 'his beautiful maid.'"
Fanny having her carriage at the door I proposed our calling on Julia.
"I am going to take my leave of her," Fanny replied, and we drove immediately to her residence.
Julia, whose health had been very delicate since her last premature confinement, was gracefully reclining on her chaise longue, in a most elegant morning-dress. She expected Napier to dine with her. Sophia was hammering at a little country dance on the pianoforte.
To our inquiry how her curricle-beau went on, she answered, "Oh! he is always driving about this neighbourhood, and I think I have discovered who he is. I believe it to be Lord Berwick; but I am not quite certain. However we are to be introduced to him to-morrow by Lord William Somerset, who has been here this morning, to ask Julia's permission to present a friend. He did not name him, but assured us he was a nobleman of fortune and of great respectability."
We wished her joy and kissed her, and took our leave of Julia, as I afterwards did of Fanny, whose departure made me very melancholy. She was the only sister who cared about me, and we had very seldom, in the course of our lives, been separated from each other. We promised to correspond regularly, and I assured her that when she should be settled at Portsmouth, if she acquainted me that she had a spare bed for me, I would certainly pay her a visit.
"Tell me all about Lord Worcester," said Fanny, "and you may say to him that it is lucky for Colonel Parker his lordship never turned an eye of love on me."
I came home very dull indeed, and was informed that Leinster, who had been waiting for me more than an hour, had just left the house; but a genteel young Frenchwoman was still in my dressing-room. She came to offer herself in the place of my late dame de compagnie, Miss Eliza Higgins.
"Je vous salue, mademoiselle," said I, as I entered my little boudoir. "D'où venez vous?"
She informed me that she had been living with Lady Caroline Lamb.
I liked her appearance very much: it was modest, quiet, and unaffected. What a contrast to that Miss Eliza Higgins! She did not look as if she was twenty; but she assured me, sur son honneur, she was in her twenty-sixth year. I engaged her at once, declined to inquire her character of Lady Caroline, and requested her to come to me the next day.
I never talk much to servants or companions when they come to be hired. If I dislike their faces I tell them I am engaged: if the contrary is the case I desire them to come to me on trial. Wherefore should one ask them, "Can you dress hair?" "Are you quick, good-tempered, honest, handy," &c. &c, when one can as well answer all these questions in their name, oneself, with a single yes?
I passed a restless night. No woman ever felt le besoin d'aimer with greater ardour than I. What could I not have been, what could I not have undertaken for the friend, the companion, the husband of my choice? En attendant, methought, Lord Worcester knew how to love: that was something; but then, where was the power of thought, the magic of the mind, which alone could ensure my respect and veneration?
The next morning my new French maid, who had just arrived, brought me not a letter but a volume, from Lord Worcester: it was not a bad letter. No letter is uninteresting which is written naturally and feelingly.
"Does this young man love me?" I asked of Luttrell, who called on me before I had finished my breakfast, as I presented to him the young marquis's effusion.
"With all his soul, his heart, and his strength," answered Luttrell.
Leinster was my next visitor, and then Lord Robert Manners, dressed in a red waistcoat, corduroy breeches, worsted stockings, and thick shoes, which, I think, had nails in them; yet, in spite of all this, he looked very handsome. The Duke of Wellington came next.
"Why the devil did not your servant tell me that all these people were here?" whispered the merely mortal hero, as he bolted downstairs, and ran foul of Lord William Russell in the passage.
"When do you mean to come and pass a month at Lewes?" asked Lord Robert Manners.
"Your application comes too late, Master Bob," said George Brummell, who had just entered the room. "Harriette is about to bestow her fair hand on the young Marquis of Worcester. But your fingers are covered with ink, man! How happened that?" continued the beau, eyeing his lordship's hands with a look of undisguised horror.
"Franking a letter for some fool or another: such a nuisance!" answered Bob Manners, looking at his fingers pettishly.
These men talked a great deal more nonsense, only I have forgotten it. After they were gone, I made my young Frenchwoman bring her work into my dressing-room for an hour.
"How did you like Lady Caroline Lamb?" I asked her, and, when she had answered all my questions, I sat down to scribble the following letter to my sister Fanny at Portsmouth.
"MY DEAREST FANNY,--The frank Lord William has left for you must not be lost, although I really have as yet nothing new or lively to communicate. Your favourite, Lord Worcester, has not been admitted since you were in town, notwithstanding he writes me such letters! but I will enclose one of them to save trouble, for one grows tired of all this nonsense. Poor Leinster is infinitely more attentive and amiable, since this powerful rival has put him upon his mettle. For my part, since the hope of mutual mind is over, I try and make the best of this life, by laughing at it and all its cares.
"My new French maid has just been telling me a great deal about her late mistress, Lady Caroline Lamb. Her ladyship's only son is, I understand, in a very bad state of health. Lady Caroline has therefore hired a stout young doctor to attend on him: and the servants at Melbourne House have the impudence to call him Bergami! He does not dine or breakfast with Lady Caroline or her husband, who, you know, is Fred Lamb's brother, the Honourable William Lamb; but he is served in his own room, and her ladyship pays great attention to the nature and quality of his repasts. The poor child, being subject to violent attacks in the night, Lady Caroline is often to be found after midnight in the doctor's bedchamber, consulting him about her son. I do not mean you to understand this ironically, as the young Frenchwoman says herself there very likely is nothing in it, although the servants tell a story about a little silk stocking, very like her ladyship's, having been found one morning quite at the bottom of the Doctor's bed. This doctor, as Thérèse tells me, is a coarse, stupid-looking, ugly fellow; but then Lady Caroline declares to her, que monsieur le docteur a du fond!
"She is always trying to persuade her servants that sleep is unnecessary, being une affaire d'habitude seulement. She often called up Thérèse in the middle of the night, and made her listen while she touched the organ in a very masterly style.
"Her ladyship's poetry," says Thérèse, "is equally good, in French, in English, or in Italian; and I have seen some excellent specimens of her talents for caricatures. She sometimes hires a servant, and sends him off the next day for the most absurd reasons: such as, 'Thomas! you look as if you required a dose of salts; and altogether you do not suit me,' &c. She is the meanest woman on earth, and the greatest tyrant generally speaking, quoiqu'elle a ses moments de bonté; but as to her husband, he is at all times proud, severe, and altogether disagreeable."
"Lady Caroline ate and drank enough for a porter, and, when the doctor forbade wine, she was in the habit of running into her dressing-room to dédommager herself, with a glass or two of eau de vie vieille, de cognac!! One day, Thérèse, whose bed-chamber adjoined that of William Lamb, overheard the following conversation between them.
"LADY C. 'I must and will come into your room. I am your lawful wife. Why am I to sleep alone?'
"WILLIAM. 'I'll be hang'd if you come into my room, Caroline; so you may as well go quietly into your own.'
"Lady Caroline persevered.
"'Get along you little drunken----,' said William Lamb.
"The gentle Caroline wept at this outrage.
"'Mais où est, donc, ce petit coquin de docteur?' said William, in a conciliatory tone.
"'Ah! il a du fond, ce docteur là,' answered Caroline, with a sigh.
"Mind I don't give you all this nonsense for truth; I merely repeat the stories of my young Frenchwoman: and Lady Caroline has assured her housekeeper that Thérèse abhors a lie. Take her ladyship altogether, this comical woman must be excellent company. I only wish I had the honour of being of her acquaintance. Not that I think much of her first novel, Glenarvon; and she is really not quite mad enough to excuse her writing in her husband's lifetime, while under his roof, the history of her love and intrigue with Lord Byron! The letters are really his lordship's, for he told me so himself. I once asked Luttrell, who was a particular acquaintance of William Lamb, why that gentleman permitted his wife to publish such a work.
"'I have already put the very same question to William, myself,' answered Luttrell, 'and this was his reply: "I give you my word and honour, Luttrell, that I never heard one single word about Glenarvon until Caroline put her book into my own hands herself on the day it was published."'
"Lady Caroline, I am told, always speaks of her husband with much respect, and describes her anxiety about his maiden speech in the House of Commons, to witness which she had in the disguise of a boy contrived to pass into the gallery. But enough of her ladyship, of whose nonsense the world is tired. I admire her talents, and wish she would make a better use of them.
"Poor Alvanly's carriage-horses have, I fancy, been taken in execution. However, he said last night at Amy's, that he had a carriage at the ladies' service, only he had got no horses; so we set him down.
"'I cannot find any knocker, my lord,' said the footman, at our carriage-door, after fumbling about for some time.
"'Knock with your stick,' said Alvanly, and then continued his conversation to us, 'my d--n duns made such a noise every morning, I could not get a moment's rest, till I ordered the knocker to be taken off my street-door.'
"Lord Worcester has been making up to Julia, who has promised to be his friend with me, I mean to a certain extent; but, when he teases her to tell him whether he has any chance of ever having me under his protection, she declares she knows nothing about me or my plans, except that I am always the most determined, obstinate woman in Europe. Brummell they say is entirely ruined. In short, everybody is astonished, and puzzled to guess how he has gone on so long! God bless you, my dearest Fanny. I meant only to write three lines, and here is a volume for you. Remember me kindly to Colonel Parker, and believe me ever,
"Your affectionate sister, "HARRIETTE.
"P.S.--Do pray, keep yourself warm: particularly your chest. Dr. Bain says your little cough is chiefly nervous; but I am anxious to hear how the air of Portsmouth agrees with you; therefore write soon all about it."
Chapter XVII
Viscount Berwick was a nervous, selfish, odd man, and afraid to drive his own horses. Lord William Somerset was an excellent whip; but he had no horses to whip. Lord Berwick, like Lord Barrymore, wanted a tiger; while Somerset required a man whose curricle he could drive and whose money he could borrow. The bargain was struck; and Tiger-Somerset had driven Lord Berwick some years, when his lordship, after having, for more than a fortnight, been looking at my sister Sophia at her window, one day addressed the tiger as follows.
"I have at last found a woman I should like to marry, Somerset, and you know I have been more than twenty years upon the look-out."
"Who is she?" said Somerset, in some alarm.
Berwick told him all he knew and all he had seen of Sophia.
"I think I know whom you mean," said Tiger, "since you mention the house; because it belongs to Miss Storer, Lord Carysfort's niece, who has, I know, a fine young girl staying with her, whom Lord Deerhurst seduced."
"Seduced already! you do not say so?"
"Most true, my lord," said Tiger-Somerset; "besides, I've often seen her, when Deerhurst used to take her out last year. She has no eyebrows, and----"
"I don't care for that, I love the girl, and will have her," was his lordship's knock-down argument; and Lord William Somerset, having obtained permission from Julia, presented Lord Berwick to Sophia on the following morning,
Sophia would not hear of such a very nasty, poking, old, dry man, on his first visit; but the second day she was induced to drive out in his barouche. On the third she declared his lordship's equipage the easiest she ever rode in; but then, he wore such a large hat! In short, she could not endure him even to shake hands with her. I never knew Sophia evince so much decided character since she was born, as in her dislike of Lord Berwick; though she condescended to enter his barouche and dine with him, accompanied by Julia or myself, yet no persuasion of Lord Berwick, no prayers that his lordship had wit to make, could prevail on her to trust herself for an instant in his society. Things went on this way for several weeks, Berwick made very pleasant parties to Richmond, and did everything with princely magnificence. Worcester's good uncle, Lord Berwick's tiger, wanted Worcester to join their parties, and Worcester would not go anywhere without me.
My time being so gaily taken up, I had to reproach myself with neglect towards my sister Fanny. "Give me my writing-desk," said I to my maid, Thérèse, at past four in the morning, "for I have made a vow not to sleep till I have fully answered Fanny's last two letters," which I did as follows;
"MY DEAREST SISTER,--It is past four o'clock in the morning, and yet my conscience still keeps me awake till I have answered your two letters. Believe me, my neglect does not in the least proceed from want of affection. One is sometimes teased into going out, till one acquires a sort of habit of society, which it becomes difficult to throw off. Sophia's new lover, Lord Berwick, did not let me enjoy a single day in quiet; and not at all out of regard or respect for my superior merit; but merely because Sophia refuses to stir without me.
"The Duke of Leinster's departure for Spain is at last absolutely fixed for next Monday. Lord Worcester heard this at White's club-house, and was so overjoyed that everybody in the room laughed at him. For my part I can scarcely understand why I feel so melancholy at the thought of losing a young man whom I really never cared about; but I am always thus, at parting with anybody to whose face I have become accustomed. Not only am I sorry to lose the Duke of Leinster, but I feel angry and disgusted with Worcester, for desiring his departure.
"We were all at the play last night: that is to say Julia, Sophia, Lord W. Somerset, Lord Berwick and Lord Worcester, with your humble servant, in two private boxes adjoining each other. Lord Berwick teases Julia and me from morning till night. He wants us to persuade Sophia to receive a settlement from him of five hundred a year, and to place herself under his protection. We do not like to advise at all on such subjects; and whenever he ventures to touch on them to Sophia herself, she begins to sob and cry as if she were threatened with sudden death! I asked her last night why she accepted so many magnificent presents from his lordship, and suffered him to put himself to such immense expense, if she disliked him so violently.
"'Oh, I never said I disliked his carriages, or his jewels, or his nice dinners,' answered Sophia.
"Lord Worcester is quite as indefatigable as Lord Berwick, in his endeavours to persuade me to accompany him to Brighton, his lordship having just entered the Tenth Hussars. Lord Berwick proposes taking a fine house at Brighton for Sophia and Julia, and sending down his plate, man-cook, &c., but Sophia says he may hire his fine house if he likes, but for her part she will live with Julia in a smaller one, though at the same time, she shall have no sort of objection to become one at his dinner-parties, if Worcester and myself are present. Thus Sophia has set Lord Berwick to work to plead Worcester's cause for him. I got into a passion one day last week, and declared I would not be teased out of my liberty, which I valued more than my life.
"In the evening, Lord Worcester found me seriously ill, with an oppression on my chest, to which I am become rather subject. I could not have imagined that any young man in any class of life could have made such a good nurse! He ran up and down from the kitchen to the drawing-room twenty times, and poured out my water gruel and my tea, as though this had been his natural vocation. Seriously, I was very grateful. Nothing attaches a woman, in my weak, nervous state of health, like these kind of attentions; and I must do justice to the excellent taste of Worcester in never intruding his passion on me.
"'Let Harriette please herself, or rather, Harriette must do as God pleases about loving me, but my affection for her cannot change. I live in her happiness, whoever may contribute to it. I may be miserable; but I shall never cease to love her;' and then he winds up his letters thus: 'may my God forsake me, if ever I love another woman! and may I be eternally wretched, if ever, in word or deed, I am unfaithful to you, to the latest hour of my life!'
"I, who am, as you know, anything but cold-hearted, of course feel touched by Lord Worcester's apparent devotion to me; but I am not a bit touched with love. The tenderness of a sister is all I feel. Good heavens! what can he expect from one who has loved as I have loved, and gone through what I have gone through!
"I don't think I shall go to Brighton or to Worcester. I am tired of flattery: it makes me sick; for I know that I am nothing particular, or Ponsonby would have died rather than have left me to such despair as he did. I am now beginning to dislike society and, when I cannot enjoy that of very clever, intelligent people, I would rather read Shakespeare's plays, Gil Blas or The Vicar of Wakefield.
"Poor Leinster! that man is only about three degrees and a half above a good-tempered Newfoundland dog, and yet I am sorry he is leaving me, perhaps for ever.
"I often think what I might have been, and then I wonder much that I am what I am! I love home, I am somewhat domestic, I love, dearly love my parents, and wish to improve the little talents God has given me. I am very affectionate, and naturally honourable; because I abhor a lie! and yet behold me!--Harriette Wilson.
"If you were to die, who would stand my friend when the world tramples on me? I put this question to Worcester the other day, after I had been frightening myself about your health; and Worcester shed a great many tears, as though the idea of my ever being left friendless affected him deeply. Yet, no doubt, the time will come, and you and I, if we live, shall witness it, when Worcester, having forgotten my very existence, will, while the lady of his heart or his wife is hanging on his arm, pass me by as a perfect stranger! This too, I said to Worcester, and, unasked, almost unattended to by me, he solemnly pledged himself to have no wife on earth or in heaven but myself, and wrote down the oath.
"Enough of the sublime and the pathetic, and now a word or two about yourself; but, let me remind you first, that it is at your own particular request I have been such an egotist.
"I am glad to hear that Parker looks forward with so much delight to the idea of becoming a father. It is a strong proof of a good heart, generally speaking. With regard to the repugnance you say you feel, in availing yourself of the invitations from ladies, who believe you to be Parker's wife, I certainly in your place would never seek them; neither are you bound to say anything of yourself which can prejudice society against you. You tell me that some of the ladies in your neighbourhood will take no excuses. Well then visit them, whenever you are in the humour, and if they have good taste they will be delighted with your society.
"I cannot express to you how glad I was to learn, from your last letter, that you are more comfortable and happy than you have ever been in your life before. Did you get a letter from our dear mother yesterday? Napier is at Melton Mowbray. To-morrow we all dine with Lord Berwick again, at his house in Grosvenor Square.
"I meet Worcester at everybody's house but my own, where, out of respect for Leinster, I seldom admit him; since, by the powers and upon his honour, it bothers him to death.
"Amy has, at this present writing, a great deal of work on her hands, owing to our general change or projected change of administration. Worcester, Berwick, Parker and Napier; all to win and seduce away at once!
"Parker she has already made an attempt on: this you with all your good-natured charity have confessed: and the other night at the play, we observed her sitting in a private box on the opposite side of the house with Baron Tuille. Her glass was pointedly turned towards Worcester all the evening. After the play, while we were waiting for our carriage, Amy, with an affection of childish wildness, made loud remarks on the elegance of Worcester's person, as we passed her. Our party stood on the opposite side of the room from that where the Baron and Amy were waiting. Worcester however was obliged to pass close to them, to inquire for Lord Berwick's servants, and Tuille at the express desire of Amy probably, tapped him on the arm as he was hurrying along, and requested to have the pleasure of introducing Mrs. Sydenham to him. Worcester in much confusion bowed low, very low; but passed on immediately afterwards without uttering a single syllable.
"What a bore for Amy! and yet it serves her right!
"'I could not possibly avoid being presented to your sister,' said Lord Worcester on his return; and he spoke with such agitation and confusion that it was impossible to help laughing at him.
"'You were not very attentive to her, as I think I could observe,' Julia remarked.
"'I would not have spoken a single word to her for the world, and I only wish, as a gentleman, it had been possible to have avoided bowing. Mrs. Sydenham has, by her perseverance, made herself so very odious to me,' was Worcester's reply.
"Lord Berwick laughed heartily at his extreme delicacy; so did Lord William; but Worcester is steady as a rock to me and my interests. Not even ridicule, that sharpest weapon which malice can turn against the feelings and prejudices of youth, ever changes him one jot, even when it wounds him most severely.
"'Any unimpassioned, unprejudiced observer of Harriette's mind and character,' says Worcester, 'must agree with me, that it is much undervalued by that part of the world to whom her eccentricities and careless observance of many established forms only are known; but Harriette's goodness and singleness of heart approximate her nearer to my idea of perfection, than any human being I have yet met with, and her face and person, to me, convey all I can imagine most desirable.'
"I repeat this to you, my dear Fanny, merely to show the force and power of ardent passion in youth. Dieu! comme cela nous embellit!
"O, la belle passion! que l'amour! not that I have known much good resulting from it. I might almost say, with Candide, 'Helas! je l'ai connu, cet amour, ce souverain des coeurs! cette âme de notre âme! cependant, il ne m'a jamais valu qu'un baiser, et vingt coups de pied! puisse il vous être plus propice!'
"You shall hear what becomes of me next Tuesday, after Leinster will have left London. In the meantime, I need not say how truly I am yours, &c.
"HARRIETTE."
Fanny's answer:--
"MY DEAR HARRIETTE,--It is very lucky you wrote when you did, because I was getting in such a very great passion! Lord Worcester, from what you tell me, and from all I have seen, is, without any exception, the most interesting young man I ever knew; and I am surprised you do not think him handsome. Do remember me to him very tenderly: as to your stupid Duke of Leinster he never deserved you.
"I am just returned from the Isle of Wight. The weather was rather rough, and, at best, I cannot say I like sailing half as well as riding; nevertheless, we have been very merry; Parker is so kind and affectionate, and the officers of his regiment are so very attentive and polite to me.
"Whom do you think I met at Cowes? No less a personage than your friend and kind creditor Mr. Smith of Oxford-street. I recognised him by his voice, as he was addressing a little fat friend of his. We were sitting on a bench near enough to hear every word they said.
"'Mr. Smith,' said the little fat man, holding out his hand, 'mercy on me! Smith! Is it really you? What, in the name of wonder can have brought you to Cowes?'
"'Vy, lord,' answered Smith, 'vat but the vinds and the vaves could bring me here, hey? I've been down to Margate since I seed you. Bless your life, I'm on a tower.'
"'What might that be pray?'
"'Vy, a tower, man. Don't you know vat a tower is?'
"'Not I, indeed!'
"'Vy, you stupid! a tower is a kind of a circular journey, gallivanting from this here place to that are place, for a month or two merely, to pleasure it like.'
"'And pray what might you call pleasure, Mr. Smith?'
"'Pleasure?' answered Smith, 'vy I calls pleasure gitting up at six in a morning, and taking a dip into the sea, and then a hearty good breakfast of hot rolls and butter, and coffee and eggs.'
"'And what then?' said the little fat man.
"'Vat then? you ere a bachelor too, and ask vat then? And all these ere beautiful nice, plump, dear lasses about? Bless their dear souls! I'm going to take one on 'em to the play to night.'
"'Oh! you rogue and a half,' said the little fat man, giving Smith a punch on the breast.
"Apropos! talking of vulgarity, I have had a proposal of marriage since I saw you, from Mr. Blore the stone-mason, who keeps a shop in Piccadilly. Parker says it is all my fault, for being so very humble and civil to everybody; but, you must recollect, this man was our near neighbour when we were all children together, and I cannot think I had any right to refuse answering his first civil inquiry after my health, by which he no doubt thought as a man of good property and better expectations, he did me honour. Since then, he has often joined me in my little rural walks early in the morning. When first his conversation began to wax tender I scarcely believed my ears. However, those soft speeches were speedily succeeded by a proposal of marriage! You know my foolish way of laughing at everything of this kind, which was what encouraged him to argue the point, after I had begged to decline his polite offer. 'Look ye here, my dear lady,' said he, 'these here officers cut a splash! And it's all very fine being called Mrs. Parker, and the like a that; but then it's nothing compared to a rale husband. Now, I means onorable, remember that.' I was interrupting him. 'Come, I don't ax you, my dear, to make up your mind this morning. Marriage is a serious kind of a thing, and I wants no woman for to marry me till she has determined to make an industrious, good wife. Not as I should have any objection to your taking a bit of pleasure of a Sunday, and wearing the best of everything; but, at the same time, we must stick to the main chance for a few years longer, if ever we wishes for to keep our willa, and be raley genteel and respectable. Not but what I've got now as good a shay an oss as any man need to wish for, and an ouse over my head, full of handsome furniture, and plenty of statters (statues), still I looks forwards to better things.'
"Though it is morally and physically impossible for a woman, be she what or whom she may, to attach herself to anything so low and vulgar as this poor Mr. Blore, after she has acquired the taste, by the habit of good society, still I certainly have a right to feel obliged to any honest man who yet considers me worthy to become his partner for life; and I could not have said anything cross or harsh to him for the world. You have no idea what difficulty I found in making him believe that I would not marry him.
"'There my dear,' said he, after I had assured him, over and over again, that I must really decline his offer. 'There my dear! I will leave you now. I don't want you to decide all at once; but, remember, you must not let what I a been a-saying about our minding the main chance, frighten you; because you'll find me a very reasonable, good-natured fellow: and, as for going to the play, if you are fond of that, I can get orders for the pit, whenever I like.'
"I presume you have now had quite enough of my intended, and I know you will want to hear something of my health, about which you so kindly interest yourself. I was alarmed about ten days ago by the rupture of a small blood-vessel, which caused an expectoration of blood for two days. Being unwilling you or my dear mother should be at all alarmed about me, I would not mention this, till all these bad symptoms were removed completely, which is now the case. My physician tells me such small vessels are of little consequence, and, by avoiding over-fatigue and taking care of myself, he has no doubt I shall get perfectly well. Indeed there is now nothing at all the matter with me, unless I attempt to walk fast; and then I feel a something like stagnation and fulness about my heart, and my lips turn blueish. However, I both eat and sleep well, and I am told that when patients ask Dr. Baillie to prescribe for them for any pain or ache, while enjoying these two advantages, the doctor loses patience and refuses to listen to them: et tant mieux! I do not want to die, and go we know not whither, and lose sight of the bright sun for ever. I am not even ambitious of a show-death, to have my fortitude, or my sweet smile, or my calm courage, or my last prayers extolled. You know I am not in the least romantic; but I am attached to life for my dear children's sake, and, in a word, though it may be cowardly, yet I hope and pray that God will spare my life many years longer: but, if he has willed it otherwise, I will try not to murmur at his decree: and I tell you frankly that my sins do not sit at all heavy on my conscience; because I never doubt the goodness of God. This is all very grave; but I am so seldom grave that you will forgive me.
"I shall write to you, my dear sister, again very soon; but I will conclude now; because I am a little too serious: so believe me ever,
"Most truly and affectionately yours, "FANNY PARKER."
When Lord Worcester had ascertained that Leinster was really safe on his journey to the continent, half wild with joy he went and consulted Julia as to what she really believed was his chance of inducing me to go to Brighton. I had obtained his promise not to call on me, nor write to me, for at least three days after Leinster's departure.
"We shall only quarrel," said I to his lordship, "if you come to me rejoicing, as I knew you will, at a circumstance which no doubt will affect me pour le moment."
I passed a melancholy evening after Leinster had taken leave of me. He was to sail from Portsmouth. Should he be detained by foul winds, even for a single hour, he promised to write to me. The first day I refused to admit any visitor, and on the second after his departure I received a letter from him, to acquaint me that the unfavourable state of the weather might possibly detain him a week or more at Portsmouth. My resolution was taken in an instant: which wise resolution may be learned from the following letter addressed to my sister.
"MY DEAREST FANNY,--Leinster is at Portsmouth, waiting for a fair wind to convey him to Spain. I am too melancholy to keep my promise of receiving Worcester's visits; and, besides, being desirous of shaking hands once more with the poor duke, you will believe me really and in truth very anxious to hear and see how you are, after the accident you have so long concealed from us. Therefore expect me almost as soon as my letter; and do pray be glad to see me.
"I propose leaving London at eight o'clock to-morrow morning, till then believe me,
"Most truly yours, "HARRIETTE."
After despatching this, and a letter full of excuses to Lord Worcester, I began to assist my maid Thérèse to prepare for my journey to Portsmouth on the following morning. We arrived in time for dinner. Fanny was looking better than usual. Colonel Parker was absent, and she was kind enough to invite the Duke of Leinster to dine with us. His Grace was very glad to see me, in his dry way; but it was impossible to avoid making such comparisons between my two young lovers as were most favourable to Worcester.
The marquis wrote me immensely long letters every day; and though I expected Sunday would have been a day of rest, I was presented with a large packet which Worcester had sent by the stage coach. He trembled lest I should be induced to accompany Leinster to Spain, and described the anguish and misery he had experienced, in learning from my servant that I had left London: for it was only on his return from my house, that he had received my letter acquainting him with my departure.
Fanny lived in a delightful cottage, surrounded with a large garden. There were two very pleasant women staying with her on a visit; it made me truly happy to see her so comfortable and in such good spirits.
Fanny did not like Leinster, and I felt rather cooled and disgusted, when she forced on my attention his extreme selfishness in leaving England without inquiring at all about the state of my finances. Then, poor Worcester was, or seemed to be, so very unhappy about me; and I saw no chance of these boobies, Leinster, his brother, and FitzGibbon, sailing, as the wind had not shifted the least in the world during the ten days I passed at Portsmouth.
Leinster, much as he professed to esteem, respect and love me, went out in a sailing-boat every morning, instead of walking about with me. My pride took the alarm and, one fine morning, having previously arranged everything for my return to town, and taken leave of my sister, I coolly wished him un bon voyage and, to his utter astonishment, jumped into the carriage which was to convey me to London.
I found a great many cards and letters on my table in town: a very kind one from Lord Robert Manners, another from Lord Frederick Bentinck, and, what was better still, another blank cover, directed to me, containing two bank-notes for one hundred pounds each!
Julia called on me the morning after my arrival.
"Do go to Brighton," said she. "You will never find anybody to like you as I am sure Lord Worcester does. I really would not advise you, but that I think he deserves you."
"I will consider about it," said I, "in the meantime pray tell me some news. How does Lord Berwick go on?"
Julia told me that he was quite as much in love with Sophia as ever.
"And Sophia?"
"Oh, Sophia hates his lordship, if possible, more than ever, and declares she will not go to Brighton unless you decide to accompany Worcester there."
We were now interrupted by a visit from Lord Worcester. I will not attempt to describe his rapture, or how violently he was agitated at meeting with me. My readers, besides accusing me of vanity, would not believe such exaggerated feeling as he evinced, to be in human nature. In short, since there is nothing so uninteresting as descriptions of love-scenes, be it known that I was pressed by Julia, entreated by Worcester, and inclined by gratitude, being moreover in a state of health which required nursing; therefore, without being in love, I agreed to place myself under his protection. It was a grievous sin, and every one of this kind counts no doubt; and, indeed, I almost fear the recording angel, as he mounted up to heaven with mine, so far from dropping a tear on it to blot it out for ever, doubled this one, and so cried quits with my uncle Toby.
There certainly was much aggravation of sin in my projected intercourse with the Marquis of Worcester. Many women, very hard pressed par la belle nature, intrigue, because they see no prospect, nor hopes, of getting husbands; but I, who might, as everybody told me and were incessantly reminding me, have, at this period, smuggled myself into the Beaufort family, by merely declaring to Lord Worcester, with my finger pointed towards the North--"that way leads to Harriette Wilson's room"; yet so perverse was my conscience, so hardened by what Fred Bentinck calls my perseverance in loose morality, that I scorned the idea of taking such an advantage of the passion I had inspired in, what I believed to be, a generous breast, as might hereafter cause unhappiness to himself, while it would embitter the peace of his parents.