THE 
 
 SKETCH BOOK OF FASHION, 
 
 BY THE AUTHOR OF 
 MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS." 
 
 Invest me in my motley ; give me leave 
 
 To speak mj- mind, and I will through and through 
 
 Cleanse the foul body of th' infected world. 
 
 AS YOU LIKE r 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 THE PAVILION. 
 
 MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY, 
 
 THE SECOND MARRIAGE. 
 
 LONDON: 
 RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET 
 
 (SUCCESSOR TO HENRY COLBURN.) 
 
 1833. 
 
SfCo 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 The following Tales form the last of a series 
 of Novels, of a class created by the peculiar 
 spirit of the last reign, and manifestly at vari- 
 ance with that of the present times. These 
 sketchy performances, although favoured with 
 critical praise far beyond their pretensions or 
 deserts, have in some instances been blamed for 
 pungency of satire, and in some for a character 
 of levity. To both charges the writer is willing 
 to plead guilty. The only apology admissible 
 for a fashionable novel, is the successful exposure 
 of vices and follies daily and hourly generated 
 by the corruptions of society, — 
 
 Safe from the bar, the pulpit, and the throne. 
 And touch'd and shamed by ridicule alone : — 
 
 by ridicule^ — which, if no longer admitted as 
 a2 
 
IV PREFACE. 
 
 the test of Truth, may be assayed in its turn 
 by that only sterling standard. The sketches 
 contained in " Mothers and Daughters" are 
 sanctioned as correct, by the very class most 
 interested in their refutation. 
 
 Nor is a plea of extenuation wanting for the 
 tone of frivolity pervading their pages. — The 
 first object of even the severest moralist is to 
 command attention for his lessons ; and modern 
 society, " which refuses to hear the voice of the 
 charmer, charm he ever so wisely^^^ is well 
 known to lend ready attention to the charmings 
 of the light and gay. — If a single absurdity, — a 
 single error, — have given way before the ex- 
 tended finger of these "laughing satires," the 
 object of the writer is fully accomplished. 
 
THE PAVILION, 
 
 I would, if possible, represent the errors of life in 
 such a manner as that people of pleasure may read me. 
 In this case, I must not be rough to ladies and gentle- 
 men ; but speak of sin as a gentleman. 
 
 Steele. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive 
 in 2009 witii funding from 
 Duke University Libraries 
 
 Iittp://www.arcliive.org/details/sl<etclibool<offasli001gore 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 No person, who possesses either piety, grace, or good 
 manners, will use such jests as are bitter, poisoned, in- 
 jurious, or which in any way leave a sting behind them. 
 
 BURTOX. 
 
 A VICE has been gaining ground of late 
 years among tlie higher orders of Enghsh so- 
 ciety, which, although it may not strictly fall 
 under the interdiction of the Decalogue, is un- 
 questionably at variance with the spirit of every 
 Christian principle, and every moral law. It 
 seems admitted that, couched in a tone of irony, 
 the grossest insults may be oifered ; that, under 
 the palliative name of quizzing, any species of im- 
 pertinence may be inflicted ; and that, provided .1 
 sneer be unaccompanied by a menace or a blow, 
 it must be received with good humour. Man}^ 
 B 2 
 
4 THE PAVILION. 
 
 a person welcomes, as an evidence of wit, the 
 reputation of being " very satirical," who would 
 shrink from the imputation of that "scorn of 
 the scorner," pointed out in Holy Writ as one 
 of the most abundant fountains of human bit- 
 terness. 
 
 In one of those admirable letters in the 
 " Heart of Mid Lothian," whereby Scott prac- 
 tically demonstrates the progress of corruption 
 which has transformed the selfish Effie Deans 
 into the heartless Lady Staunton, she is made 
 to allude to the hollow tone of fashionable irony, 
 as " the drolling style of conversation now in 
 vogue." But from the bantering of the reign of 
 George H., to the mockery of that of William 
 IV., how gigantic and lamentable the progress ! 
 — Irony, is now the favourite and universal 
 figure of speech ! The bar, the senate, the 
 drawing-room, nay even the social fire side, is 
 embittered by the caustic personalities of sneer- 
 ing wit ; and of all contemporary writers, Sir 
 Walter alone has disdained to enliven his pages 
 with its flippancy, or adorn them with its false 
 glitter. Even in their intercourse with each 
 
THE PAVILION. 5 
 
 Other, — " I pray thee do not mock me, fellow 
 student," — is a prayer that falls as naturally 
 from the lips of the modern " men of wit and 
 fashion about town," as from those of the Prince 
 of Denmark himself. 
 
 But it is chiefly in fashionable society that 
 the art of quizzing forms so important an ac- 
 complishment ; and a total want of bonne foi^ 
 such as the practice necessarily produces, is a 
 characteristic of the great world of London pe- 
 culiarly striking to foreigners. They are amaz- 
 ed to observe that a fact narrated at some distin- 
 guished dinner- table, is received with a wonder- 
 ful allowance for "errors excepted ;" that Lord 
 
 A listens to his friend Lord B , with a 
 
 smile of polite incredulity ; and that, ever on the 
 watch against being quizzed by an ironical com- 
 pliment or rendered ridiculous as the subject of 
 a hoax, the belle of St. James's receives as ai) 
 injury, the same courteous salutations which 
 a belle of the Chauss^e d'Antin claims as a 
 right ! It is now, in short, admitted, that John 
 Bull, our national impersonator, heretofore re- 
 presented as endowed with the moral swallow 
 
6 THE PAVILION. 
 
 of a whale and digestion of an ostrich, — as a 
 speaker of matter of fact, and a hearer of matter 
 of fact, — has become a mere strainer at gnats, — a 
 doctrinaire in creed and cant, — a scandal-monger 
 pre-eminently addicted to frivolous and vexa- 
 tious bantering and backbiting ! — Under the 
 influence of the smiles and blandishments of the 
 Exclusives, honest John has even been betrayed 
 in his dotage into sneering at those who will 
 not join with him in abjuring the simplicity of 
 life and manners which he has recently learned to 
 reprobate as an evidence of national barbarism. 
 
 " Who or what is this new Prussiati ambas- 
 sadress ? " inquired Lady Mary Milford of the 
 Honourable Frederick Fitzgerald, as they stood 
 together in the tea-room at Almack's, at the 
 close of the last ball of the season, waiting for 
 the announcement of her carriage. 
 
 " Is it possible that you do not know ? — The 
 original of Goethe's Charlotte ! Old Reppen- 
 heim fell in love with her as she was cutting 
 bread-and-butter for her little brothers and sis- 
 ters, at some presbytery in Lithuania ; and, in- 
 stead of renouncing the charming simplicity of 
 
THE PAVILION. 7 
 
 character which she considers the origin of her 
 promotion, she still slicks a moss-rose in her 
 flaxen wig, — quotes Hermann and Dorothea; 
 and Clanhenry protests that she actually ap- 
 peared at Court, last winter at Berlin, leading a 
 lamb, en lisiere, with a blue riband." 
 
 " Nonsense ! There is no believing a word 
 you say. I have not forgotten your persuad- 
 ing me that Lady Charlemore was the authoress 
 of the Waverley novels. But really this Coun- 
 tess Reppenheim promises to be impayahle, 
 Sophia tells me that she went out fishing with 
 the king on the \'irginia Water, after her au- 
 dience of reception at Windsor, and inquired 
 of his Majesty, in a tender whisper, whether 
 he ever bestowed a tear on the memory of 
 * Cette belle lidbinson^ si interessante par ses 
 graces et par ses malheurs T " 
 
 " And by way of illustrating the adage, * iVe 
 faut point parler de corde dans la tnaisoJi d'un 
 pendu^'' passed a whole hour to-night in tortur- 
 ing our friend. Lady Grasmere, with a disser- 
 tation on the pleasures of a rustic life ; forget- 
 ting that our English Viscountess is the daugh- 
 
8 THE PAVILION. 
 
 ter of an Irish farmer, reared upon bite-and- 
 sup, and highly accomphshed in the manufac- 
 ture of Eddish cheese ! " 
 
 " A most unsophisticated individual, indeed ! 
 Well, well ; a season in London will scarcely 
 fail to endow her with the right use of her eyes, 
 ears, and understanding. I can almost forgive 
 her hevue^ however, in the Grasmere affair. 
 How is it possible for foreigners to be fore- 
 warned against the extraordinary instances of 
 mtsalliance which betray them, in this country, 
 into the society of parvenues of every descrip- 
 tion ; actresses, opera dancers, farmer's daugh- 
 ters, — all sorts and conditions of women. Far 
 be it from me to blame the system which keeps 
 our brothers and uncles (the cadets of the fa- 
 mily) out of bedlam or the workhouse. But it 
 is not surprising that a person like the Countess 
 Reppenheim, qualified by her sixteen quarter- 
 ings to enter any Chapter of the empire, should 
 find it impossible to give credit to the existence 
 of such degradation." 
 
 " Ay, ay ! we'll teach her to ' think deep ere 
 she depart,' We must improve her morals by 
 
THE PAVILION. 9 
 
 familiarising her with the majesty of the people, 
 and the equality of the human race." 
 
 " O est pour rire ! You, who are the greatest 
 aristocrat unguillotined ! " 
 
 " Am I ?— Only during the lifetime of my 
 old aunt, the Duchess of Keswycke, whose acres, 
 thank Heaven, are as loose as her principles are 
 fixed. I intend her to make me her heir ; and 
 there is no pleasing the doting widow of a Duke 
 of twenty descents, without pinning a little faith 
 upon the legends of Domesday Book. She has 
 fifteen other needy nephews on the watch for 
 her inheritance ; and I am obliged to put my 
 best leg forward — " 
 
 " To convince her how well it would become 
 the Garter ?— Well !— we must get Countess Rep- 
 penheim presented to her Grace ; to prove to the 
 wife of this Silesian magnifico, that we really 
 have a peeress or two whose grandfathers kept 
 no chandler's shop ; and whose prejudices are as 
 chivalrous and feudal as her own." 
 
 Such was "the drolHng style" in which one 
 of the gendest, purest, and most amiable of hu- 
 man beings was discussed among the fashion- 
 B 5 
 
10 THE PAVILION. 
 
 ables of the metropolis in which her lord was 
 appointed to fill the honourable post of ambas- 
 sador. Countess Reppenheim was scarcely 
 thirty years of age ; but the delicacy of her 
 health had invested her with the tone and as- 
 pect of a somewhat more advanced epoch. She 
 w^as secured, however, from that besetting sin of 
 coquetry which usually characterizes a foreign 
 fashionable in the wane of her charms, by strong 
 attachment to her husband, no less than by per- 
 sonal indolence and constitutional infirmity. 
 She seemed to have been, or to be on the 
 point of becoming a beauty. But some- 
 thing was deficient : either vivacity, or vigour, 
 or intelligence ; or some one among the name- 
 less nothings indispensable to female fascina- 
 tion. The women called her faded, — the men, 
 languid; — but all were of opinion that she need 
 only exert herself, — devote a little more care to 
 her dress, and a little more animation to her 
 manner, to be as captivating as the most capti- 
 vating of her sex. 
 
 The Countess had, in fact, been reared 
 in a school which, instead of initiating her 
 
THE PAVILION. 11 
 
 into the arcana of that hateful science call- 
 ed "knowledge of the world," had involved 
 her in scenes of such stirring and unpre- 
 cedented anxiety and excitement as could not 
 fail to produce a lasting injury to her na- 
 turally frail constitution; as well as to impart 
 to her character a tone of sentiment and ro- 
 mance, flital to her success on that hollow stage 
 of irony, the supreme bon ton of London. At 
 a very early age the Baroness Helene von 
 Edelstein was nominated Maid of Honour to 
 the beautiful and unfortunate Louisa Queen of 
 Prussia; had witnessed her bitter trials, her 
 patient resignation, her untimely death. One 
 of the last actions of the royal sufferer had been 
 to bestow the hand of her favourite on Count 
 Reppenheim ; and instead of the origin as- 
 signed by the fashionable and sneering Clan- 
 henry for the alliance, it had been the favourite 
 project of a dying queen. Scarcely, however, 
 had the tears of the young Countess ceased to 
 flow for the loss of her beloved mistress, when 
 Reppenheim's appointment to a high command 
 in that army of the Elbe to which the name of 
 
12 THE PAVILION. 
 
 the queen afforded a rallying cry of vengeance, 
 filled her with consternation. Instantly re- 
 tiring from court, she made it at once a plea- 
 sure and a duty to pass the period of his at^ 
 sence in strict seclusion on his family estates; 
 and thus the v^^oman who, from early courtier- 
 ship and late, might have been supposed a fair 
 match for the intrigues of Carlton House or 
 the affectations of Almack's, still retained the 
 primeval simplicity and good faith of childhood. 
 Four years indeed had elapsed since the battle 
 of Waterloo secured the pacification of Europe, 
 and caused the palaces of the continent to ring 
 for joy. But they had been passed by the 
 Count and the Countess in comparative ob- 
 scurity on their Silesian estates; and the new 
 ambassadress now made her appearance in 
 London, having imbibed all her notions of 
 English frankness and English hospitality from 
 the national vaunts circulated in books of the 
 last century ; and prepared to interpret au pied 
 de la lettre all she saw and all she heard in 
 moral London, She would as soon have ex- 
 pected to find a scorpion hidden under the 
 
THE PAVILION. 13 
 
 leaves of a garden rose, as that the languor of 
 her air and the graciousness of her manners 
 could be made a matter of ridicule among those 
 who met her with such eager invitations and 
 overtures of friendship. 
 
 Had it been the commencement instead of 
 the close of the season when the Reppenheims 
 arrived in town, a single week's experience 
 would have sufficed to place the Countess in 
 the current of the vortex. But unfortunately, 
 July and the last lingerers of the beau monde 
 were taking their departure together. The 
 closely-shuttered mansions of Grosvenor-square 
 were already uninhabited ; saving by the ancient 
 porter who sat, spectacles on nose, at the hall 
 window, with one eye on the radiant blossoms 
 of a pot of French marigolds, and the other on 
 a well-thumbed copy of the Court Guide,— the 
 literary vade mecum of his vocation. Not an 
 equipage was to be seen in the streets, but 
 those of a few sallow apothecaries and physi- 
 cians; who, exhausted by the labours of the 
 season, looked like the ghosts of their own 
 patients escaped from the Styx. The gay 
 
14. THE PAVILION. 
 
 haberdashers* shops of Regent-street stood strip- 
 ped of their festoons of ribband, during the an- 
 nual mio^ration of Mr. and Mrs. Taffeta to 
 Margate; long melancholy strings of hackney 
 coaches, like funeral processions of departed 
 business, ruralized certain commercial streets 
 by the litter of their hay and straw ; while in 
 Cumberland-place and the Squares, a luxu- 
 riant crop of after grass was running to seed. 
 The West End " smelt wooingly " — of mellow 
 apples, and sounded hollow as the brazen gates 
 of a giant's portal in a pantomime. 
 
 The moment was doubtless unpropitious for 
 the advent of a foreigner; and right glad was 
 the Countess to take refuge in a damp diplo- 
 matic villa on the banks of the Thames, be- 
 queathed to the tenancy of the ambassador by 
 the excellency his predecessor. 
 
 " I grieve to leave you in this dull place," 
 said Lady Beaulieu, the popular wife of the 
 foreign secretary, (1\4io had become slightly 
 acquainted with Countess Reppenheim during 
 the Aix la Chapelle negociations,) on taking 
 leave of her for the season. " I am, however, 
 
THE PAVILION. 15 
 
 scarcely in a more enviable position than your- 
 self; for Beaulieu and I are going on a con- 
 ciliation pilgrimage to our Irish estates, and I 
 have no hope of seeing you till we meet at 
 Briorhton in the winter." 
 
 o 
 
 Unfortunately it did not occur to Lady 
 Beaulieu that the new ambassadress could re- 
 quire, in the interim, any hints for her guid- 
 ance in the choice or formation of her society. 
 She forgot that, although London is nominally 
 a wilderness during the parliamentary recess, a 
 few stray dandies are always to be found, who 
 would be brought down to dinner by the 
 attaches and secretaries, to quiz the simplicity 
 of their noble hostess, and circulate reports of 
 the rusticity of an ambassadress who actually 
 exerted herself to render her house agreeable ; 
 and who exposed herself to still more poignant 
 ridicule by respectful attention to a husband many 
 years older than herself. Neither was her lady- 
 ship aware that a certain Lady Grasmere, who 
 inhabited a neighbouring villa during the au- 
 tumn months, had been already presented to 
 the Countess ; and would present, in her turn, 
 
16 THE PAVILION. 
 
 Other persons and personages equally ineligible. 
 Nay, even had Lady Beaulieu been forewarned 
 of these impending dangers, it may be doubted 
 whether, with all her tact and good breeding 
 and good humour, her ladyship's own mind was 
 sufficiently schooled in ihe philosophy of fashion 
 to enable her to set forth the worst features of 
 the case. 
 
 But had it been possible for the blue-eyed 
 goddess of the Greecian bard to have arrayed 
 herself (instead of the venerable front and so- 
 lemn tunic of Nestor) in the flowing satin and 
 flowing ringlets of a patroness of Almack's, 
 she would probably have whispered to the fair 
 Prussian who sat contemplating the weeping- 
 willows and aguish lawn of Maple Villa, in the 
 persuasion, like Pope Gregory's of old, that 
 Britain is peopled with angels, " Of all the 
 capitals of Europe London is the place where 
 the forms of society are loosest in definition 
 and strictest in observation. The slightest in- 
 fraction of the arbitrary code of conventional 
 law is fatal to the convicted culprits ; and not 
 the most pitiful little court of ceremonious Ger- 
 
THE PAVILION. 17 
 
 many is half so scrupulous in the exaction of its 
 etiquettes and the infliction of its penalties. In 
 the heau-monde of May-fair, court any infamy 
 rather than that of ridicule. Instead of the 
 lambent flame which, in foreign society, sports 
 alike innocuous round the head of the lance or 
 the point of the fan, you will find the persiflage 
 of the English a scorching and corroding fire, 
 eating into your heart and bequeathing an in- 
 effaceable scar. Be vile, — be prodigal, — be 
 false, — but do not make yourself ridiculous. A 
 butt or bore ranks with the w^orst of crimi- 
 nals. Believe only half you hear ; say only half 
 you think ; do nothing you are asked ; and in 
 process of time you may achieve a tolerable de- 
 gree of credit and popularity in fashionable 
 society." 
 
18 THE PAVILION. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 There are no persons so solicitous about the preserva- 
 tion of rank as those who have no rank at all. 
 
 Shenstone. 
 
 The Dowager Viscountess Grasmere, de- 
 scribed by the two maligners of the Almack's 
 tea room as " an Irish farmer's daughter," was 
 in fact the offspring of a man of decayed for- 
 tune in a remote part of Connaught ; who, offi- 
 ciating as baihff to the late Viscount her hus- 
 band, had ended with becoming his father-in- 
 law. It would be difficult to conceive any thing 
 more dazzling than the beauty which effected 
 this singular transition. Eleanor Cavanagh was 
 tall, finely formed, uniting a countenance of 
 the antique character, with a complexion of that 
 pure poetical paleness which nothing but fine 
 
THE PAVILION. 19 
 
 features can embellish, but which so well be- 
 comes their delicate chiselling. She was un- 
 questionably one of the loveliest women in the 
 kingdom. 
 
 Lord Grasmere, ever on the watch against 
 provoking the sneers of society, had sedulously 
 avoided collision with the London world till a 
 prolonged residence on the continent, and the 
 influence of society at Lausanne, Florence, 
 and Rome, had tamed down his wild Irish girl 
 into the soft, feminine, and dignified woman 
 which his widow at the age of five-and-twenty 
 was universally pronounced to be. A jointure 
 of^ eight thousand per annum was perhi;ps the 
 chief accomplishment that drew to her feet 
 the homage of hosts of lordlings dandylings, 
 and needy honourables ; but it could only be 
 the charms of her manners and the merits of 
 her character which attracted the friendship 
 of so many distinguished individuals of her own 
 spx. Lady Grasmere was not, however, what 
 in London is termed "the fashion." When 
 she entered a ball-room, no knot of impudent 
 loungers gathered round to listen to her hon 
 
20 THE PAVILION. 
 
 rtiots, or amuse themselves with her blushes ; 
 no cortege of dashing vauriens followed her 
 horse as she took her daily airing in Rotten- 
 row ; or planted their kid gloves on the edge of 
 her britschka as she jogged up and down the 
 drive, swallowing the dust and their glaring 
 adulation. She gave her name to no new foot- 
 stool — no fashionable bonnet; — nor was her 
 opera-box a levelling mark for the glasses of the 
 gallant, the gay, and the presuming. But she 
 had achieved something far beyond all this. Her 
 society consisted of young and lovely women, 
 unbreathed on by the venomous lips of scandal; 
 of agreeable and high-bred men, who knew how 
 to unite the spirit and graces of their age, with- 
 out slang, — without finery, — without undue as- 
 sumption of any kind. A few of a still more 
 distinguished order were sprinkled among the 
 group, — a few leading politicans and men of let- 
 ters, but not in sufficient numbers to provoke 
 against her little circle the anathema of being a 
 bureau d' esprit Now and then, indeed, a dandy 
 lord or fashionable libertine would force his way 
 into the coterie, to prefer his suit and receive a 
 
THE PAVILION. 21 
 
 gentle dismissal ; and it was this latter circum- 
 stance alone, which provoked the Exclusives to set 
 forth in loud and angry terms that Lady Gras- 
 mere " was not one of them" They could not, 
 however, succeed in stigmatising her as any thing 
 she ought not to be. By her position in the 
 world. Lady Grasmere was eminently qualified 
 to form a centre of attraction to a social circle ; 
 young, fair, ft-ee, rich, \drtuous, good-tempered^ 
 — she was not sufficiently secure on the pedestal 
 of fashion to admit of trifling with her own dig- 
 nity. Unsupported by high personal connexion, 
 she was aware that pretension, or dulness, or in- 
 discretion, or eccentricity, would suffice to pro- 
 voke inquiry and impute the blame of all her 
 errors to the obscurity of her birth. She saw 
 that she must not venture out of her depth ; — 
 but she also saw that there was ample space 
 within given distance of the shore, for the 
 gratification of her future life, without self- 
 sacrifice or danger. Her house, instead of being 
 extravagantly or gorgeously brilliant, was fur- 
 nished with studied simplicity. Her equipage 
 was plain, — her establishment remarkable only 
 
2» THE PAVILION. 
 
 for its regularity and propriety ; but there was 
 a tone of elegance pervading the whole, that 
 spoke wonders for the taste and tact of the 
 owner; — and Lady Grasmere gratified herself 
 with the certainty that (her Cavanaghship apart) 
 there was nothing the least quizzible in herself 
 or her appertain ments. For three years pre- 
 vious to the arrival of the Countess she had 
 assumed that distinguished part in London life 
 which merit of any kind is sure to command 
 from the unbribable jury of its coteries; — had 
 refused more offers than half the heiresses or 
 beauties of the day ; — and it was a sole draw- 
 back to her satisfaction that there was still a 
 lofty sect which looked down with contempt 
 upon her excellencies, and persisted in waving 
 a flag of triumph above her head. 
 
 Such was the woman assigned by chance to 
 Countess Reppenheim, on her arrival in town, 
 as her " glass of fashion and mould of form." 
 Unsuspicious that the extreme retenu of Lady 
 Grasmere's manners and conduct arose from the 
 constant fear of committing herself by derelic- 
 ticMi from the usages of society, the Ambassadress 
 
THE PAVILION. 23 
 
 could not contemplate without admiration the 
 modest graces of the English neighbour who ex- 
 erted herself so hospitably for her amusement. 
 Accustomed in other countries to find none but 
 the highly born and highly bred established in 
 the circles of the great world, it never occurred 
 to her to suspect roture in a head adorned with a 
 coronet. To Lady Grasmere, accordingly, she 
 addressed herself for information on all doubtful 
 points connected with her new honours or the 
 forms of society; — and nothing could be more 
 injudicious than her choice of a Mentor. Ai- 
 tliough fully adequate to maintain her own sta- 
 tion in life, her ladyship both was, and felt her- 
 self to be, incompetent to the perplexities of 
 courtly etiquette. But she did not possess suffi- 
 cient dignity of mind and strength of character 
 to confess the truth, and admit her own defi- 
 ciencies of birth and education. Preferring 
 Countess Reppenheim to the whole host of 
 her female friends, and aware of the marvellous 
 extent of German prejudices on the chapter of 
 pedigree, there was nothing she more appre- 
 hended than that some of the light, gaudy, but 
 
24 THE PAVILION. 
 
 venomous insects fluttering in society, should 
 buzz into the ear of the ambassadress the secret 
 of her insignificance ; and it was partly in the 
 hope of forestalling the report, that Lady Gras- 
 mere, for the first time, began to affect a certain 
 supercilious fastidiousness respecting men and 
 things, very foreign to the usual amiability of 
 her demeanour. 
 
 There is nothing more vulgar among the sins 
 of social life than what is termed finery. It is, 
 in fact, a distinguishing mark of absence of 
 caste; for what can a person really distin- 
 guished by birth or merit gain by presump- 
 tuous disparagement of the rest of the human 
 race ? It is the policy of the eminent to elevate 
 the claims of those beneath them, in order that 
 by raising the standard of comparison, their 
 own superiority may attain yet higher distinc- 
 tion ; and the moment a man or woman affects 
 to be fine^ — to shrink from contact with any 
 but the elect, and to raise a glass of inquiry to 
 the unknown physiognomies of plebeian life, 
 it is to be inferred that " something is rotten 
 in the state of Denmark ; " that so studious an 
 
THE PAVILION. 25 
 
 arrangement of the folds of the velvet mantle 
 and ermined robe, purports the concealment ot 
 some gash or blemish beneath, known only to 
 the wearer. 
 
 Among the idlers at Lady Grasmere's villa, 
 and pretendants to her favour, from whom, in 
 the course of the autumn, the Countess uncon- 
 sciously and unfortunately imbibed her no- 
 tions of the character of an Endish ffentle- 
 man, were Mr. Fitzgerald, the satirical hero 
 already introduced to the reader, and a certain 
 "fat," dark, and "forty" dandy, named Lord 
 Clanhenry ;— the former a budding, the latter a 
 full-blown exquisite;— the former professing good 
 looks, the latter good manners ; — the former in- 
 sinuating himself to be the idol of the sex, the 
 latter the Coryphaeus of the clubs ; — the former 
 the unresisting victim of the vortex — oppressed 
 with balls, bewildered with dinner invitations, 
 beguiled into water-parties, tormented into pic- 
 nics, and on severe duty as a Park escort and 
 caller of carriages ;--the latter, still more re- 
 chercht (having escaped the impertinence of 
 similar importunities, and outlived the ardour 
 
 VOT.. I. c 
 
26 THE PAVILION. 
 
 of popularity), a veteran of the war of society — 
 medalled, promoted, pensioned — a Field Mar- 
 shal of the fashion-list of his Majesty's dandies ! 
 Both were favoured courtiers at Carlton-house, 
 and reaped in general society the full advantage 
 of that empty distinction. 
 
 The main difference, however, between the two 
 lay deep beneath the surface. Both were poor, 
 both fortune-hunters ; but the handsome Frede- 
 rick was a younger brother, who had never had a 
 shilling in his life ; and the well-bred Clanhenry, 
 a spendthrift, who had not a shilling left. Frede- 
 rick accordingly strove to impress on the mind 
 of the richly-jointured dowager that, although 
 courted by the world, he resigned it all for her ; 
 while his lordship assumed still higher ground, 
 and insinuated that the fervour of his devotion 
 ought to determine her to resign all the world for 
 him. Both were eminently ^we ; Fitzgerald from 
 the consciousness of being deficient in every thing 
 but a tolerable exterior ; Clanhenry, from know- 
 ing that the dilapidated state of his finances 
 had betrayed liim into various acts of meanness, 
 or what, in any but a man of many clubs and 
 
THE PAVILION. 2T 
 
 universal acceptance, would be termed disho- 
 nesty. It required a considerable proportion 
 of that self-possession patricianly denominated 
 " knowledge of the world '' and plebeianly 
 termed " impudence," to carry them in safety 
 through the shallow waters in which they were 
 compelled to navigate. 
 
 Now Lord Clanhenry and Fred. Fitzgerald 
 (for although in some cases youth and good 
 looks impart consideration, it is but just to give 
 precedency to the peer), were equally though 
 secretly of opinion, that it would have been 
 more for their interest had Lady Grasmere's new 
 friend continued to air her little Pomeranian 
 lap-dog unter den Linden of Berlin, instead of 
 among the sooty elms of Hyde Park. Their 
 tactics were disconcerted by the straightforward 
 simplicity of her character. She was in the 
 habit of asking plain questions, which they 
 found it very difficult to answer ; and of giving 
 a literal interpretation to their sayings, such as 
 their doings were ill calculated to justify. There 
 was no knowing how to dispose of such a wo- 
 c2 
 
28 THE PAVILION. 
 
 man. Her rank, fortune, unblemished repu- 
 tation, and official dignity, rendered it impos- 
 sible to decry her in society. The only alter- 
 native was to impugn her authority in the eyes 
 of Lady Grasmere, by betraying her into 
 breaches of etiquette and violations of English 
 notions of propriety, and then quizzing her into 
 disrepute. Each, unavowedly to the other, 
 accordingly commenced his system of opera- 
 tions by insinuating to the idle babblers, their 
 companions (the Lady Grandisons and Lady 
 Mary Milfords), that the simplicity of the 
 new ambassadress was the simplicity of mere 
 folly, and her credulous good nature the fruit of 
 mental imbecility. In a very short time people 
 began to take advantage of these imputed de- 
 fects, by addressing her with exaggerated civi- 
 lities, and filling her mind with groundless 
 notions of English eccentricity. It is true she 
 had not readiness of tact to detect the impos- 
 ture ; but it afforded no evidence of folly that, 
 finding herself suddenly introduced into the 
 society of a foreign nation, she respected its 
 
THE PAVILION. 29 
 
 usages, however absurd; and reflected in re- 
 spectful silence on the peculiarities to which she 
 was required to conform, and which were pointed 
 out to her by persons of seeming respectability 
 and real distinction. 
 
30 THE PAVILION. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Soft creeping, cups on cups, the feast compose ; 
 At every pause they stretch, they yawn, they dose ; 
 And now to this side, now to that they nod. 
 As black or green infuse the drowsy god. 
 
 DUXCIAD. 
 
 The first experience of the Countess in the 
 pleasures and penalties of fashionable life in the 
 most hospitable country in Europe, occurred at 
 Brighton ; v/here, in compliance with the cus- 
 tom introduced by the Prince Regent, the heau 
 inonde of that epoch made it a point of con- 
 science to pass a shivering Christmas. 
 
 " I do not much like travelling at this season 
 of the year," observed the Countess to Lord 
 Clanhenry, a few days previous to her depar- 
 tm*e for the coast. " But it appears that it is 
 no longer the fashion to settle in London for 
 
THE PAVILION. 31 
 
 the winter till April or May ; and I do not wish 
 to make myself particular." 
 
 " Quite right ! — Were it known that the 
 Prussian minister remained in town during the 
 holidays, it would induce a general suspicion that 
 he was on less tl.an the best terms with the 
 court. " 
 
 " Du reste^^ replied the Countess, wrapping 
 herself up still closer in her Cashmere, " it does 
 not much signify. Wherever one goes in Eng- 
 land, comforts of every kind await and attend 
 one. Mr. Fitzgerald assures me that in the 
 poorest hovel they pique themselves on the 
 luxury of carpets and curtains ; and my maitre 
 d^hotel writes me word that he has engaged me 
 one of the best houses in Brighton." 
 
 One of the best lodging-houses in Brighton, 
 in the year 1819, was not perhaps quite equal 
 to the worst of the year 1833; and poor Ma- 
 dame Reppenheim's notions of English " com- 
 fort" w^ere considerably puzzled by creaking- 
 stairs, smoky chimnies, doors that would not 
 close, and windows that would not open ; be- 
 sides a host of minor deficiencies, all of which 
 
32 THE TAVILION. 
 
 were maliciously ascribed by her evil genii, 
 Clanhenry and Fitzgerald, to " les habitudes du 
 pays^ Unwilling to contemn what appeared 
 so satisfactory to the rest of the nation, the 
 Countess accordingly pronounced herself to be 
 extremely well lodged ; politely ascribed a severe 
 cold caught on settling in her "comfortable" 
 house to the influence of the sea air ; and an 
 attack of opthalmia, proceeding from her smoky 
 dressing-room, to the misfortune of having been 
 accustomed to stoves. Lady Grasmere being 
 unable to visit Brighton during the first ten 
 days of her stay, she was more than ever open 
 to the mischievous influence of her two enemies. 
 
 " I have received an invitation from your 
 relation the Duchess of Keswycke," said the 
 Countess to Fitzgerald, a few days after her 
 arrival. " Her card specifies that it is a very 
 small early party. What does that mean ? " 
 
 "That you must go at eight o'clock in a 
 morning costume. Her Grace is a very old- 
 fashioned personage, and hates any thing like 
 ostentation." 
 
 In pursuance of this advice, the ambassadress 
 
THE PAVILION. 33 
 
 in an elegant demie- toilette (to which a bonnet 
 imparted the decided character of a morning 
 dress), made her appearance just half an hour 
 after the guests of the Duchess of Keswycke, in 
 their satin gowns and diamond necklaces, were 
 sitting down to dinner. Vexed and mortified to 
 find herself so thoroughly deplafSe, — for by a 
 mistake of the servants she was ushered into the 
 dining-room,~the Countess noticed that the 
 members of the small early party arrived at ten 
 o'clock; and when, two nights afterwards, she re- 
 ceived a formal card from Lady Grandison to the 
 same effect, she resolved to put in practice the 
 hints he had received from Lord Clanhenry on 
 the subject of English dress and English hours. 
 Mistaking reverse of wrong for right, she made 
 her appearance on this occasion between ten 
 and eleven o'clock, radiant with jewels; and 
 nothing could exceed the contemptuous surprise 
 with which she found herself surveyed by the 
 half dozen old women congregated round a soli- 
 tary whist-table, their chairs and carriages hav- 
 ing been already announced for departure, 
 c 5 
 
S^ THE PAVILION. 
 
 Sir Carmychael Domdaniel, the veteran beau 
 o£ the antiquated coterie, had the satisfaction of 
 enlarging the following morning on the tale of 
 the Countess's ill-timed splendours, at full fifty 
 houses in Brighton, wherein he enacted the 
 part of Court Circular. 
 
 " I fear I shall never understand your ha- 
 bits ! " cried she in a desponding tone to Lady 
 Grasmere, on her arrival from town. " Even 
 your friends Clanhenry and Fitzgerald, well as 
 they are versed in les usages, can give me no 
 infallible information. — I have already com- 
 mitted a thousand blunders. The Duchess of 
 Keswycke looks upon me as a Goth, and Lady 
 Grandison as a fine lady. Your customs, like 
 the pronunciation of your language, appear 
 quite arbitrary." 
 
 " Never mind such persons as the Duchess 
 and Lady Grandison," replied her friend in a 
 pacifying tone. " The great charm of Brighton 
 society consists in little friendly parties, given 
 without form or etiquette. Come with me to 
 night to Lady Mary Milford's, — I see you 
 have an invitation. Nothing can be more 
 
THE PAVILION. 35 
 
 sociable or select than her soirees. It is her 
 rule, both in London and Brighton, never to 
 have large assemblies ; the consequence is that 
 every one is always dying to go to her, and 
 that she commands the best society. Just now, 
 she has her niece the brilliant Lady Sophia 
 Clerimont staying with her; and is giving a 
 series of tea parties by way of opening her house 
 every night at a reasonable rate.'' 
 
 " The best society ! " — " quiet, sociable par- 
 ties ! " — What could be more inviting to the ear 
 of a foreigner, desirous of becoming acquainted 
 with the far-famed, — the intellectual, — the 
 hospitable,— the dignified coteries of English 
 society ; so different, so superior to the selfish, 
 frivolous, impure circles of Paris and Vienna !— 
 
 " I am glad after all, that I came to Brighton," 
 thought the Countess as she arrayed herself to 
 accompany her friend to Lady Mary's, " it will 
 serve to initiate me into the habits of England, 
 before I launch upon the wider sea of London." 
 
 The experience of her own mansion had some- 
 what amended Countess Reppenheim's notions 
 of the sort of <* comfort" to be expected in the 
 
36 THE PAVILION, 
 
 lodging-houses of a bathing place, the chief 
 merit of which seems to consist in. a free admis- 
 sion of the sea breezes ; — nevertheless, she was 
 somewhat surprised to observe that the best 
 society in Brighton was about to assemble in 
 two stuffy drawing-rooms, having scanty cur- 
 tains of yellow cotton and a dingy carpet of 
 green baize. The only sofa in the room was 
 occupied on her entrance, by a group of young 
 ladies who, on the appearance of a stranger, 
 whispered behind their fans ; while several 
 Hussar officers belonging to the regiment quar- 
 tered in the town, lounged over the back of the 
 sofa with the most intimate familiarity. 
 
 At a little distance sat the chaperons ; three or 
 four dull-looking middle-aged women (such as 
 chaperons ought to be), saying, seeing, and even 
 hearing nothing, except the mysterious rumours 
 circulated by Sir Carmychael Domdaniel, a 
 pompous little man with a military air, who went 
 from one to the other whispering courtly no- 
 things under screen and shelter of the enormous 
 nose that served to impart importance to his 
 whole person. Apart from the rest, lounged 
 
THE PAVILION. 37 
 
 one very impudent, very chatty, very much 
 rouged dowager ; who gladly pounced upon so 
 patient a listener as Countess Reppenheim. 
 
 '• You perceive that we receive you a V Ang- 
 laise,'' said Lady Mary to her new guest, point- 
 ing to the tea-table ; and soon afterwards, on the 
 arrival of a few supercilious young gentlemen in 
 stiff cravats, headed by Fitzgerald and Clan- 
 henry, the operation of tea-making commenced. 
 
 " Now then," thought poor Madame de Rep- 
 penheim, " I shall at last participate in this 
 national feast. General conversation will enli- 
 ven the ceremony : — and the colloquial supe- 
 riority I have so often heard described, will 
 render me insensible to the mingled odours 
 of ill-trimmed lamps and an ill-dressed din- 
 ner." 
 
 But no !-— ^there was no attempt at general 
 conversation. The three young ladies whispered 
 on three chairs instead of one sofa. The stiff' 
 necked dandies exchanged monosyllables with 
 the taciturn chaperons ; Domdaniel talked 
 broad with the impudent dowager ; Lord Clan- 
 henry sentimentalized with Lady Grasmere; 
 
38 THE PAVILIOX. 
 
 and Mr. Fitzgerald with herself; a silver urn 
 was brought in ; and, to her great surprise, 
 two full-grown footmen were admitted into the 
 drawing-room to assist the butler in his ope- 
 rations. It was in vain that the handsome 
 Frederick exerted himself for her amusement; 
 she could not withdraw her eyes from the cere- 
 mony of rincing tea-cups, and dispensing the 
 boiling beverage that filled the room with steam. 
 
 " Nothing so pleasant, nothing so sociable as a 
 tea-table! " exclaimed Fred. Fitz. : watching with 
 delight the astonishment depicted on her face. 
 "It is no longer the fashion to serve it ready 
 made. In justice to ourselves, we cannot allow 
 our servants to engross the enjoyments of making 
 our tea as well as our soup ; or washing our cups 
 and saucers as well as our plates and dishes.'' 
 
 " It is indeed a most amusing operation," said 
 Madame de Reppenheim, blaming only her own 
 want of savoir vlvre in being unable to discover 
 its peculiar charm. " I shall take care to have 
 a tea-table at my soirees when I return to town." 
 
 '* Charming creature, Lady Sophia Cleri- 
 mont ! " whispered Mr. Fitzgerald, directing 
 
THE PAVILION. 39 
 
 her attention to one of the slender young ladies, 
 who now presided at the tea-table. " A niece 
 of Lady Mary's ! " 
 
 " Charming indeed ; " echoed the Countess, 
 looking at the bare shoulders and red ringlets of 
 the giggling Hebe ; satisfied that in this instance, 
 as in that of the tea-cooking, she had only to 
 blame her own incompetency of judgment. 
 
 " She is so naive — so unaffected ; — says every 
 thing that comes into her head. Did you hear 
 her tell Lord Brancepeth just now that his nose 
 reminded her of a macaw's beak ? Positively 
 Lady Sophia is the most original creature in the 
 world." 
 
 "Very piquant,— very droll!" replied the 
 ambassadress, trying to force a laugh at an 
 observation which struck her as singularly ill- 
 bred. 
 
 « She does the oddest things ! " resumed 
 Mr. Fitzgerald. " Did you hear of her having 
 poor Clanhenry's favourite spaniel shaved, and 
 sending it back to him painted in stripes hke a 
 zebra ? '* 
 
 "Excellent!" replied Madame de R , 
 
40 THE PAVILION. 
 
 perceiving, from the example of her companion, 
 that she was expected to laugh heartily at the 
 anecdote : — and she bent her eyes with un- 
 feigned curiosity on this very original young 
 lady, round whose chair, four of the hussars 
 and three of the dandies were now clustered, 
 bestowing immoderate applause upon her sallies. 
 
 " No one is so much the fashion as Lady 
 Sophia!" said Fitzgerald. "She is quite a 
 privileged person." 
 
 " Privileged indeed !" thought the wondering 
 ambassadress, as she watched the familiarity 
 with which she addressed and was addressed by 
 the young men who disputed her notice. " And 
 these, then, are fashionable manners ! — How 
 cold — how dull — how formal must all these 
 people think me ! — Since it is the custom to 
 allow such latitudes to an unmarried woman, 
 what must be the proceedings of women of my 
 age and experience ! '' 
 
 " Is it true," inquired she of Lady Gras- 
 mere as soon as she could approach her, and 
 striving to appear as little amazed as possible, 
 " that Lady Sophia Clerimont is one of the 
 most fashionable girls in town ? " 
 
THE PAVILION. 41 
 
 " Oh, yes ! " was her friend's reply ; " she is 
 a charming creature ; full of wit and anima- 
 tion." She did not think it necessary to explain 
 that this wit and animation consisted in the 
 most flippant effrontery; that her popularity 
 with the hussars and dandies arose from her 
 possession of a fortune of ten thousand a year ; 
 and with the ladies (her rival in loquacity the 
 well-rouged dowager included) from the dread 
 of being made the subject of her caricatures 
 or pasquinades. 
 
 There was only one point, meanwhile, among 
 the many which excited her surprise in this her 
 inauguration into the " sociable " parties of 
 Brighton, on which the Countess ventured to 
 express her wonderment to her friend. 
 
 " I thought," said she to Lady Grasmere, as 
 they went out airing together in the snow the 
 following morning, " that all these people w^re 
 passing the winter at Brighton expressly to meet 
 the Prince Regent?'* 
 
 " And so they are." 
 
 " Impossible !— your friend Mr. Fitzgerald 
 announced last night that his Royal Highness 
 
42 THE PAVILION. 
 
 was expected in a day or two, and every one 
 instantly exclaimed that the pleasure of the 
 Brighton season was over; — that the Pavilion 
 spoiled every thing else ! " 
 
 " And so it does/' 
 
 " Comment done f 
 
 " In the first place by completely changing 
 the characters of half one's acquaintance. Per- 
 sons who are only men and women at present, 
 will be converted into mere courtiers the mo- 
 ment the Regent arrives." 
 
 " Only such butterflies as Fitzgerald, surely?" 
 
 " And then it brea'cs up all private par- 
 ties. No one likes to send out cards with the 
 chance of having their best people commanded 
 away at the last minute. The society here is 
 irot extensive enough to admit of sparing fifty 
 or sixty persons once or twice a week." 
 
 " True ! but those whom I heard finding 
 fault with the Pavilion, are precisely the people 
 who form part of the set there." 
 
 " Otherwise they would not have ventured to 
 abuse it. You heard what Lady Edystone 
 
THE PAVILION. 43 
 
 said about the maussaderie of the Prince's 
 soirees?'* — 
 
 '* That chatterinof old dowager ? — I did ! " 
 
 " Should you have suspected from her tone 
 and manner that it has been the object of her 
 life for the last thirty years to be in favour with 
 his Royal Highness?" — 
 
 " You jest!"— 
 
 " When he was young, she made love to him; 
 when he grew older, she made hate, — striving 
 to render herself important in his eyes by 
 espousing an adverse political party ; — and now 
 that he is no longer either an Adonis or a Whig, 
 she affects to engage his attention par rhriinis- 
 cence, by being on excellent terms with all the 
 people he likes best, and by following up all his 
 plans of amusement as if they were her own." 
 
 " How unaccountable ! — Had you but heard 
 the impertinence in which she indulged respect- 
 ing the Carlton House set ! — Did you but know 
 the insinuations she threw out against the Pavi- 
 lion party ! " 
 
 " Of course ! — By those very circumstances 
 
44 THE PAVILION. 
 
 you might have guessed that she moved in no 
 other ; and that the persons she was slandering 
 were her bosom friends." 
 
 " If she talked so of her intimate associates, 
 what will she not say of an unfortunate stranger, 
 like myself?" 
 
 " Nothing ! — unless you should happen to get 
 into favour, and interfere with her own projects. 
 England is a place where people are made to 
 pay dear for distinction of any description." 
 
 " You alarm me ! " — said the poor Countess, 
 sinking into a corner of the carriage. " After all, 
 then, it appears that ingenuousness and cordia- 
 lity are merely Utopian virtues. After all, 
 the English — the frank English — are gi'owing 
 as hollow and interested and artificial as the 
 rest of the world ! " 
 
 " Let us hope there are exceptions," said 
 Lady Grasmere blushing deeply. " I should be 
 sorry to distrust all my friends, or attribute 
 unworthy views to even all my acquainances. 
 Lady Mary Milford is a charming person." 
 
 " I hope so ! — But it strikes me that there 
 is something overstrained in her politeness — 
 
THE PAVILION. 45 
 
 something Jesuitical in her excess of humility 
 and deprecation. Before you have half done 
 speaking, she answers you with a smile and a 
 bow ; and whenever she catches your eyes from 
 a distance, makes a sort of telegraphic signal of 
 sympathy and intelligence. I observed her 
 do it last night to every body in succession. 
 You see, dear Lady Grasmere, how soon I am 
 becoming infected with your national errors. 
 You have already taught me to play the satirist." 
 
 " Do not exercise your genius in the first 
 instance on my friend Lady Mary. Believe me 
 you quite mistake her character. The softness of 
 her manner arises solely from the excessive gen- 
 tleness and philanthropy of her disposition ; and, 
 admitting to her house only those persons for 
 whom she has the highest regard, nothing can 
 be more natural than that she should favour 
 them with tokens of interest." 
 
 " I dare say I am wrong," said Madam de 
 Reppenheim, vexed with herself for having 
 spoken harshly of the friend of her friend — 
 " Besides she was the only one of the party 
 who did not join in inveighing against 
 
46 THE PAVILION. 
 
 the Pavilion ; but frankly admitting to me that 
 nothing could exceed the charm of the royal 
 circle." 
 
 "Did she?" — replied Lady Grasmere, thought- 
 fully. " That is indeed incomprehensible. I 
 have always heard her assert such very different 
 opinions ! Lady Mary is so indolent that she 
 hates representation of any kind. She likes to 
 wrap herself in an old gown and shawl, and sit 
 gossiping in some odd corner with the Sir Car- 
 mychael Domdaniel ; a mani^re detre w^hich 
 does not by any means recommend her to the 
 favour of the Regent. He likes to see people 
 in their best looks, spirits, and costume; and, 
 for some reason or other (one of those caprices 
 to which you will grow accusomed after a 
 season or two in London), has not invited Lady 
 Mary or her charming niece these two years." 
 " Her praise, then, was at least disinterested." 
 " I fear not. There must be something on 
 foot of which I am at present ignorant ; " ob- 
 served Lady Grasmere, falling into a reverie 
 which lasted during the remainder of their drive. 
 She did not think it necessary to degrade her- 
 
THE PAVILION. 47 
 
 self in the estimation of her friend, by admitting 
 that she herself had never yet been included in 
 his Royal Highnesses invitations ; and that one of 
 her chief inducements to visit Brighton, was the 
 hope that her extreme intimacy with the Prus- 
 sian ambassadress, Lady Edystone, and others 
 particularly distinguished by his notice, would 
 assist her in the accomplishment of an honour 
 the more eagerly coveted from the precarious 
 chance of its attainment. The parvenue Vis- 
 countess saw others equally disqualified by birth, 
 and far less recommended by nature, achieve 
 the object of her ambition ; and could conceive 
 no motive, unless her deficiency of political in- 
 terest, herwantof a brother, father, husband, son, 
 to support her claims in society, for the neglect. 
 It did not occur to her indeed, that she was only 
 too well recommended by nature ;— that her at- 
 traction rendered her an object of jealousy to 
 her own sex; — that she was, in short, far too 
 pretty a woman to be admitted with safety into 
 a circle, of which it was evident that she would 
 form the brightest ornament. She had very 
 little suspicion that, in spite of all the wires she 
 
48 THE PAVILION. 
 
 was beginning to set in motion, her ostracism 
 was already pre-determined by the rival jugglers 
 of the Pavilion. Lady Mary Milford and her 
 niece might very easily render themselves eligi- 
 ble ; but the youthful dowager of Grasmere was 
 out of the question. 
 
THE PAVILION. 49 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 A courtier is to bee found only about princes, Hee 
 knowes no man that is not generally knowne. Hee puts 
 more confidence in his words than his meaning, and 
 more in his pronunciation than his words. Hee follows 
 nothing but inconstancee ; admires nothing but beautie ; 
 honours nothing but fortune. The sustenance of his 
 discourse is names. He is not, if he bee out of court ; 
 and, fishlike, breathes destruction when out of his own 
 element. Sir T. Overbury, 
 
 It was about a week after this conversation, 
 just as Countess Reppenheim was beginning to 
 form an opinion that English bathing-places 
 are by no means so amusing as les eaux, and 
 that the society of Brighton was pretty nearly 
 on a par with a fifth-rate provincial town in 
 Germany, that a sudden fermentation became 
 
 VOL. I. D 
 
50 THE PAVILION. 
 
 apparent throughout the town. From the plebeian 
 groups on the Steyne to the patrician one of 
 Lady Mary Mil ford's drawing - room, every 
 body assumed an air of fussy importance. The 
 hussars jangled their spurs, Lady Sophia waved 
 her ringlets, and the Brighton Chronicle an- 
 nounced with a tone of sentiment becoming the 
 occasion, " The Prince Regent is once more 
 amongst us, and this gay little town is itself 
 again. His Royal Highness alighted at the 
 Pavilion yesterday evening at about twenty 
 minutes past six ; having accomplished the 
 journey in five hours and seventeen minutes. 
 We noticed with regret that our august patron 
 looked somewhat thinner than when he quitted 
 us last Easter. He wore a light brown wig, in- 
 clining a shade nearer to auburn than usual ; 
 which perhaps contributed to the change 
 of his appearance. All is now activity at Brigh- 
 ton. — This morning will be devoted by the 
 nobility and gentry, and visitors, to leaving their 
 inquiries at the Pavilion, A select party will 
 have the honour of dining with his Royal High- 
 ness this day ; and invitations are already issued 
 
THE PAVILION. 51 
 
 for a grand ball to celebrate the annual festival 
 of Twelfth Night. The Duke and Duchess of 
 Gloucester are expected in a day or two." 
 
 Such was the tenor of the bulletin announc- 
 ing the event that produced so wonderful a sen- 
 sation ! — With the exception of the issue of in- 
 vitations for a Tw^elfth Night ball, ("a thought" 
 to which the wishes of the good people of Brigh- 
 ton were both " father " and mother) tlie 
 whole was correct ; and whereas the two pre- 
 ceding winters had been overcast by domestic 
 calamities in the royal family, by the deaths of 
 the royal mother and daughter of the Regent, 
 it seemed determined that the present should 
 shine with redoubled splendour. Lady Gras- 
 mere's nets were already spread ; she had paid 
 her court in this quarter, and strengthened an 
 intimacy in the other; had given three dinners 
 a la cordon bleu to a gouty old Earl who was 
 supposed to possess peculiar influence at the 
 Pavilion; and made a sacrifice of a favourite 
 edition of the Florence gallery to a lady of 
 fashion, who was supposed to dictate the predi- 
 lections of a lady of rank, who was believed to 
 d2 
 
B2 THE PAVILION. 
 
 actuate those of the Delhai Lama. All was in 
 excellent train ; and having hinted in a general 
 way to Countess Reppenheim that, in conse- 
 quence of her long residence abroad and the 
 unfortunate domestic circumstances of the 
 Prince Regent since her return to England, she 
 had not yet been personally made known to him, 
 except in a general way at the drawing-room, 
 sne waited the event in patient persuasion of 
 being included in the invitations to the ap- 
 proaching fete. 
 
 Nothing could be more problematical than the 
 state of society among the higher classes at the 
 period in question. For some time it had been 
 difficult to determine which held the greater in- 
 fluence over the circles of the aristocracy : — the 
 nominal court of Queen Charlotte, or the virtual 
 court of the Regent; while the dawning pros- 
 pects of the heiress apparent opened new vistas 
 for the calculations of courtiership. But now 
 all doubt on the subject was over. The good 
 old Queen was no more ;— Claremont, by one of 
 the most cruel bereavements that ever frustrated 
 the hopes of a nation, was closed ; — and there 
 
THE PAVILION. 53 
 
 was nothing left but Carlton House and the 
 Pavilion to invite the intrigues of the courtly- 
 minded. The Regent had already held his 
 first independent drawing-room ; where Lady 
 Grasmere, among a host of other beauties, was 
 for the first time presented to his notice. But 
 what availed the drawing-room ? — Unless distin- 
 guished by invitation either to the fetes of the 
 season or the private circle of the Pavilion, she 
 felt that the one great step of her elevation was 
 still unachieved ; and that jointure, jewels, 
 beauty, popularity, all vvere insufficient for her 
 happiness. 
 
 The weakness of the sex is rendered the 
 scapegoat of so many follies, that it would be 
 easy to ascribe this sole infirmity of a virtuous 
 mind to feminine vanity, and the overweening 
 influence of fashion. But nine times — nay, 
 nine times and three-quarters in ten, every 
 darling folly of womankind may be traced to 
 the artifices of the wiser or more crafty moiety 
 of the human race. It was Lord Clanhenry^s 
 pleasure, or rather he wished to make it his 
 profit, that the lovely widow should find herself 
 
54 THE PAVILION. 
 
 wanting in the only point enabling him to afford 
 her support. During the six months which 
 had elapsed since the amount of his Christmas 
 bills (a collection of antiquities of singularly 
 ancient date) had made it apparent to him that 
 he must either marry or starve,— either possess 
 himself of an heiress or follow his friend Bru- 
 mell to Calais, — he had never ceased throwing 
 out insinuations in Lady Grasmere's presence 
 that a Viscountess by itself Viscountess, v/as a 
 very paltry thing ; that the narrow sphere of a 
 secondary woman of fashion was infinitely less 
 distinguished than sturdy plebeian] sm ; that in 
 England, as in all civilized countries since the 
 reign of Louis le Grand, society was composed 
 of two circles, the court and the nation, — per- 
 sonages and persons, — entities and non-entities ; 
 and that in spite of her charming house, excel- 
 lent establishment, and lovely person, she would 
 be more enviable as wife to an eminent haber- 
 dasher, than as a Peeress unnoticed by the 
 Prince Regent. 
 
 Women in possession of every thing to gratify 
 their reasonable desires, are apt to sigh for 
 
THE PAVILION. 55 
 
 Straws ; and poor Lady Grasmere actually be- 
 gan to fancy herself a slighted and unhappy 
 woman ! — But her morbid sensibility led her to a 
 very different conclusion from that anticipated 
 by Clanhenry. Instead of resolving to give her 
 hand to the man whose favour with the Regent 
 would lead her triumphantly into the centre of 
 •the royal circle (devoting her fortune to a spend- 
 thrift and her person to a libertine), she pre- 
 ferred the safer course of attaching herself to the 
 train of half a dozen old women, such as Lady 
 Edystone, and relying on the bosom friendship 
 of Countess Reppenheim. But Clanhenry was not 
 to be so defeated. He had already succeeded in 
 spreading a thousand ridiculous reports at the 
 expense of the Countess, and producing an un- 
 favourable impression concerning her in the 
 highest quarter; and determined to turn the 
 mischief he had created to his own account. 
 
 " That Countess Reppenheim is a most de- 
 cided bore ! '* sent round by means of the court- 
 speaking-trumpet, Sir Carmychael Domdaniel, in 
 a certain circle, in a certain tone, produced an 
 effect even more certain than had even been an- 
 
56 THE PAVILION. 
 
 ticipated by the man of ton ; and the Count her 
 husband soon observed with surprise, regret, 
 and mortification, that while he himself was 
 especially distinguished by the notice of the Re- 
 gent, and while other women far less remark- 
 able for beauty, grace, or accomplishments, were 
 welcomed at the Pavilion with the most flatter- 
 ing attention, his own beloved Helene was re- 
 ceived with courteous but formal solemnity. 
 
 There was no remedy, no appeal against this 
 silent verdict of royal disapprobation ; and the 
 ambassador was cautious only to conceal from 
 his wife his own opinion that she had uncon- 
 sciously given offence at the English Court; an 
 opinion which he knew would overcome her with 
 vexation. 
 
 But Countess Reppenheim, however simple 
 and confiding, was not so destitute of tact as to 
 be unobservant that, although a frequent guest 
 at the Pavilion, she was never voluntarily ad- 
 dressed by the Regent with more than the sahi- 
 tatlon dhisage, 
 
 " Surely it is very strange," said she, one 
 
THE PAVILION. 5T 
 
 night to Mr. Fitzgerald, (who, unaware of her 
 extreme unpopularity in the circle, caused by 
 Lord Clanhenry's aspersions, had ventured to 
 seat himself by her side during one of the ex- 
 quisite concerts executed by the private band of 
 his Royal Highness), " It is very strange that 
 the Prince Regent should have been sitting op- 
 posite for the last half hour talking to old Lady 
 Molyneux, who is so deaf and tiresome ; and 
 that he has twice passed the vacant chair by my 
 side, to address himself to some other person. 
 Chez nous, it would be considered a breach of 
 etiquette to treat the wife of a foreign minister 
 with such marked neglect." 
 
 " You do not understand the customs of our 
 eccentric country," said Fitzgerald, gladly seiz- 
 ing an occasion for quizzing a person whom it 
 was his interest and pleasure to render ridi- 
 culous. " At other courts, royalty is expected 
 to make the first advances. With us, the case 
 is reversed. The Regent is doubtless surprised 
 that you neglect to enter into conversation 
 with him. All who are ambitious of his Royal 
 d5 
 
58 THE PAVILION. 
 
 Highness's notice, follow up his bow of recep- 
 tion by some friendly inquiry," 
 
 " I could never venture on so extravagant a 
 piece of presumption ! '' cried the courtieress of 
 the Spree, in utter amazement. 
 
 '^ Nevertheless, unless you conform to the 
 Prince's notions you will find yourself al- 
 ways on the black list. The first time he ap- 
 proaches, make some inquiry about his health 
 (he is fond of being condoled with about his 
 health) ; and wounded as he has been in his 
 domestic affections, nothing delights his Royal 
 Highness so much as allusions to the felicity 
 of wedded life. It is a favourite topic." 
 
 And away went Mr. Fitzgerald, to enjoy from 
 a sly post of observation the amusing spectacle 
 caused by his mystification ! A man less 
 practised or less bold in the art of quizzing, 
 would have been almost alarmed at the air of 
 amazement with which the most gracious, but 
 most dignified Prince in Europe, suddenly 
 found himself singled out and interrogated by 
 the timid Prussian ambassadress. The theme 
 so perversely selected was matter of only secon- 
 
THE PAVILION. 59 
 
 dary surprise. His Royal Highness was more 
 astonished at her Excellency's abrupt advances 
 than his high-breeding permitted him to evince ; 
 or than his powers of self-command could wholly 
 disguise. 
 
 The slightest cloud, the most trifling gesture 
 of coolness on the countenance of any illustrious 
 personage is sure to be perceived by one or 
 other of the " small deer" ever on the watch to 
 browze on some tiny leaf of royal favour, and 
 proportionately curious respecting the sweet or 
 bitter herbage cropped by the rest of the herd. 
 
 " What a woman that Countess Reppenheim 
 is!" — yawned Lord Meerschaum, (who had 
 achieved some little distinction at the Pavilion 
 by his fastidious curiosity in tobacco ; who 
 was said to freight an annual ship to the 
 Havannah, and keep a resident agent at Mary- 
 land:) " She is actually boring his Royal High- 
 ness about his health, who has an antipathy to 
 that sort of thing." 
 
 " How ill-judged of Reppenheim to bring 
 his wife down to Brighton," said Theodosius 
 
60 THE PAVILION. 
 
 Bogg, a man of considerable backstairs in- 
 fluence, in the habit of following about the 
 court from place to place as a fetcher and car- 
 rier of nothings ; a trustworthy envoy between 
 my Lord Privy this and Mr. Secretary that. 
 " He must perceive that she is en mauvaise odeur 
 in a certain quarter, and consequently a mere 
 millstone tied round his neck." 
 
 " How I should hate to be that Prussian 
 ambassadress ! " cried the wife of a minister 
 high in the royal favour, to Lord Brancepeth, 
 one of the most distinguished members of the 
 coterie of Carlton House. 
 
 " Every thing she has done and said since 
 her arrival has manqut ! Handsome Fitzgerald 
 calls her, the ' Bergere Chatelaine ;^ and she 
 really boasts a most pastoral simplicity." 
 
 " Reppenheim certainly mistook her vacation 
 when he made her a grande dame" said Lord 
 Clanhenry carelessly. 
 
 " Made her a grande dame ! " cried Lord 
 Brancepeth, disgusted by the party spirit he 
 saw exercised against a lovely and interest- 
 
THE PAVILION. 61 
 
 resting woman, merely because she chanced to 
 " sail in the North " of royal opinion. " Surely 
 you are aware that the Countess is issued of one 
 of the noblest houses in Germany, — that she was 
 a favourite maid of honour to the late Queen of 
 Prussia, — that her father married one of the Saxe 
 Hildburghausen family, — and — " 
 
 " Her mother may have been Field Marshal 
 Suwarrow without improving her capacity for 
 diplomatic representation," said Clanhenry, 
 vexed to find a man of Brancepeth's high stand- 
 ing in society upholding the claims of one it was 
 his pleasure to depreciate. " I say again, as I 
 said before, that she has no vocation for courts or 
 courtiership." 
 
 '' Of late years, so little has been known in 
 England of courts or courtiership," observed 
 Lord Brancepeth drily, " that perhaps the less 
 we set ourselves up as arbiters on such points 
 the better. Countess Reppenheim's manners 
 possess the highest dignity, — the dignity of sim- 
 plicity. She is not perhaps quite sufficiently on 
 her guard against the hollowness of the world ; 
 but all she loses in this respect, as a woman of 
 
62 THE PAVILION. 
 
 fashion, she gains in the regard and veneration 
 of those whom she honours with her friendship." 
 
 " Including of course Lord Brancepeth and 
 the order of the Rationals ! " sneered Clanhenry. 
 
 ** No," rephed her amiable partizan, " I am 
 not, at present, so fortunate. I have hitherto 
 stood on terms of distant acquaintance with 
 Countess Reppenheim. But henceforward I 
 I shall take particular pains to cultivate the in- 
 timacy of one who doubtless boasts peculiar 
 merits and accomplishments, since she has drawn 
 upon herself, during less than half a year's resi- 
 dence in this country, so much envy and so 
 much misrepresentation." 
 
 In a few minutes after this strong declaration 
 in her favour. Lord Brancepeth was seated 
 in earnest conversation by the side of one 
 on the point of being rebutted as a Paria 
 from the high caste by which she was sur- 
 rounded; enjoying the gratification so power- 
 ful with a generous mind, of affording protec- 
 tion to an injured and unoffending person. 
 
 Now of all the persons assembled in those ra- 
 diant apartments, his was the suffrage Clan- 
 
THE PAVILION. 63 
 
 henry was least willing to concede to the object 
 of his animosity. Lord Brancepeth was pre- 
 cisely the sort of person against whom the arrows 
 of ridicule are launched in vain. Straightfor- 
 ward, plain, manly, resolute, he was unassuming 
 in his dress, equipage, and demeanour; and 
 without any fastidious affectation of refinement, 
 was so perfectly gentlemanly in mind and man- 
 ners, that he might have appeared in a coat 
 of the Cheltenham cut on a cabriolet of the 
 Bath build, without the slightest fear of passing 
 for any thing but what he really was — a first 
 rate man of fashion. Leaving it to boys or 
 parvenus to attract notice by the variety of their 
 carriages or the finicality of their costume, he 
 felt that his own place in society was definite ; 
 that it fulfilled all his ambition, and could be 
 forfeited only by a base or unworthy action. 
 Supported by this first great principle, he had been 
 on the turf without a squabble or a duel ; was a 
 whist player to a considerable extent at the 
 fashionable clubs, without risking his fortune, his 
 honour, or his temper; and a first favourite 
 with the Prince Regent, without having courted 
 
64 THE PAVILION. 
 
 the royal smiles by adulation, or turned them 
 to account by solicitation. The favourites vvere 
 not jealous of him, the public did not mis- 
 trust him, even the public journals, whether mi- 
 nisterial or opposition, did not abuse him. 
 Lord Brancepeth was, in fact, an upright and 
 honourable man ; and was estimated accordingly. 
 He might have been as upright as he pleased, 
 however — as honourable, and even as highly es- 
 teemed, — for any thing that Lord Clanhenry 
 cared ; had it not been for the general opinion 
 that he was a pretendant to the flivour of Lady 
 Grasmere, and for his lordship's particular opi- 
 nion that the pretension was not regarded by the 
 lady as either saucy or overbold. Clanhenry 
 w^as well aware that his own suit had little to 
 offer in competition with such rivalship ; that 
 whether in respect to character, rank, fortune, 
 person, or talents, his own endowments were im- 
 measurably below those of Lord Brancepeth ; 
 and his only hope was to prevent a liking from 
 warming into passion, and a passion from pro- 
 ceeding to declaration, which threatened utter 
 ruin to his matrimonial projects. He had fore- 
 
THE PAVILION. 65 
 
 boded evil from the moment of Brancepeth's ar- 
 rival at Brighton; and now that he publicly 
 vouchsafed his protection to Lady Grasmere's 
 friend, a fatal presentiment whispered that he 
 about to vouchsafe the offer of his hand to Lady 
 Grasmere's self. For a moment Clanhenry mis- 
 trusted his own previous line of policy. Perhaps 
 he had acted injudiciously in exposing Countess 
 Reppenheim to ridicule and unpopularity, and 
 leaving to his rival the advantage of redeeming 
 her from ignominy. Perhaps he might have 
 done better by enlisting the sensibility of the 
 fair Prussian in favour of his suit : and assailing 
 the heart of the well-jointured widow, boldly 
 and at once, backed by the influence of a bosom 
 friend, as well as by his own influence with the 
 fountain head of honour. Lord Clanhenry thought 
 of the fatal first of January, and his bale of un- 
 paid bills, and trembled ! He had still a se- 
 cond string to his bow in the lady with the 
 poppy-coloured ringlets. But even to his de- 
 based and vitiated taste there was a considerable 
 difference between selling his coronet to the 
 graceful Lady Grasmere or the giggling Lady 
 Sophia Clerimont. 
 
QQ THE PAVILION. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Courts are too much for such weak wits as mine. 
 Charge them with Heaven's artillery, bold Divine ; 
 From such alone the great rebukes endure. 
 Whose satire 's sacred and whose rage secure. 
 'Tis mine to wash a few light stains ; but theirs 
 To deluge sin, and drown a court in tears. 
 
 Dox.ne's Satires. 
 
 Twelve years ago Brighton did not form, as 
 tiow, a remote but splendid parish of the metro- 
 polis ; whither, dm'ing successive portions of the 
 year, the eastern and western extremities of 
 London transport themselves, with their cha- 
 I'acteristic customs and fashions ; but a small 
 gossiping bathing-place, where, according to the 
 Pythagorean precept. Echo was sedulously wor- 
 shipped. Not a cathedral town in the realm 
 was more addicted to les cancans of morning vi- 
 
THE PAVILION. 67 
 
 siting ; or to those little scandals which are 
 nursed up like lapdogs among elderly ladies and 
 gentlemen who have more leisure than wit or 
 discretion. 
 
 Instead of affording, as at the present mo- 
 ment, an extensive circle of the best society 
 wholly independent of the palace, it presented, 
 during the winter months, a knot of people of 
 fashion, waiting patiently like a crowd of boys 
 on occasion of some public rejoicing, to huzza for 
 every squib that explodes, and ready to throw 
 up their caps at every effort made for their 
 amusement. If it happened that his Royal High- 
 ness was detained in town longer than usual, 
 •they felt aggrieved ; and complained of the dul- 
 ness of Brighton as if they were there only to do 
 him honour. If, on his arrival, it suited his 
 health or convenience to limit the gaieties of the 
 Pavilion to his own immediate circle, they mur- 
 mured yet more loudly. The Prince Regent 
 was regarded as responsible for all that went 
 amiss in the town to the discomfiture of its vi- 
 sitors; and was rendered accountable to them in 
 his turn, for every piece of new furniture, every 
 
68 THE PAVILION. 
 
 Chinese lantern, or enamel miniature, hung up in 
 his private dwelling-house. The gorgeous apart- 
 ments so hospitably thrown open, were subjected 
 to criticisms, public and private, such as would 
 not have been ventured upon the mansion of 
 any other individual in the kingdom; and 
 Brighton, indebted to his royal patronage for 
 the very breath of its existence, was always the 
 first to note and bruit abroad those trivial oc- 
 currences of domestic life which cannot be re- 
 corded without offence to the actors of the 
 drama. 
 
 At that period, however, 
 (In our hot youth, when George the Third was King) 
 
 the place boasted in itself, and exhibited in its ha- 
 bitual visitors a character of originality, such as an 
 increased population tends to diminish. In 
 a crowd of any kind, there is no room for the 
 development of oddity ; and men and women, 
 like horses, are apt to be subdued among multi- 
 tudes of their own species. The Brighton of 
 1833 only too closely resembles the London of 
 1832 ; but the Brighton of 1820, resembled ra- 
 ther the Bath of 1800. There were, at that 
 
THE PAVILION. 69 
 
 period, ambling along the Steyne, no fewer than 
 three professed imitators of its royal patron ; — 
 three Prince Regents, in coat, wig, black stock, 
 and cane ; — who sneezed whenever it was ru- 
 moured that his Royal Highness had a cold, — and 
 kept their beds whenever Sir Henry Halford 
 visited the Pavilion. 
 
 There was the w^eazened beau, whom War- 
 ren's milk of roses, aided by a w^ell-furred 
 roquelaire and cachemere waistcoat, enabled 
 despite his threescore years and fifteen to con- 
 front the Christmas breezes of the Marine Pa- 
 rade ; and who still, among friends and sotto 
 voce, ventured to qualify his royal pupil, as "that 
 wild young dog." — There was the veteran bel 
 esprit who, looking upon Sheridan and Jekyll 
 as modern wits, had no great opinion of them ; 
 but persisted in filling Lady Sophia Clerimont's 
 album with stanzas a la Chesterfield, and macca- 
 ronics in the style of Bishop Marley. There 
 was the lofty Dowager in her moral farthingale of 
 buckram; who, even in her peccadilloes, had 
 erred with such an air of propriety and high- 
 breeding, that nobody had a word of scandal to 
 
70 THE PAVILION. 
 
 breathe against her. There was the worldly- 
 minded dowager Lady Edystone, who openly pro- 
 fessed her faith in the Pa\dlion, as a sanctuary hal- 
 lowing every object within its sphere. There were 
 two or three bilious old K. C. B.s, with Sir Car- 
 mychael Domdaniel at the head of the squadron; 
 who, being occasionally invited to fill a corner 
 of the dinner table at the Pavilion, commanded 
 the respect and admiration of the town, by 
 giving it to be understood that they were secretly 
 employed as chief machinists of its scenery and 
 decorations. There was the wife of the favourite 
 Bishop, expanding and expanding like the frog 
 in the fable, till her friends trembled for her 
 safety ; — there was the wife of the favourite phy- 
 sician, whispering about her little anecdotes of the 
 I'oyal saloon, and comprehending herself and its 
 illustrious master in the " we " which gave force 
 to her narrative ; — there were fifty other tire- 
 some women who retained the privilege of making 
 themselves disagreeable throughout every grada- 
 tion of Brighton society, in consideration of the 
 circumstance that they were occasionally shone 
 upon by a ray from the royal countenance, or 
 
THE PAVILION. 71 
 
 because the shaking mandarins, their husbands, 
 were blest with the invaluable privilege of the 
 royal button ! — 
 
 It was, in fact, an act of heroism to ha- 
 zard a rainy or snowy season in the midst of 
 such a set of empty and incorrigible idlers ; the 
 business of whose lives consisted in discussing 
 things which did not concern them, and person- 
 ages whom they did not concern. In point of 
 scandal and gossiping it was worse than the 
 worst state of the City of the Avon; where 
 a succession of amusements served to divert 
 public attention from private grievances ; 
 while not a single glass of wine was drunk by 
 the Prince Regent, not an airing taken by one 
 of his guests, not a ride in the manege, not a 
 turn on the lawn, but a palaver was held by the 
 elders of the tribes of the East Cliff and the 
 West, to decide upon the eligibility of the 
 proceeding ! The Court did not, however, suf- 
 fice to occupy the energies thus vehemently 
 excited ; and the whole society of the place was 
 successively subjected to the ordeal, by way of 
 keeping in the hand of the inquisitors. 
 
72 THE PAVILION. 
 
 Among these, the mansion of Lady Mary 
 Milford was at once a sanctuary and a temple 
 of adoration. The men crowded thither to do 
 homajre to the heiress- the women to manufac- 
 •ture scandals with the aunt ; and as Lady So- 
 phia, in addition to her bare shoulders and 
 golden tresses, possessed a mean and crafty 
 spirit, her poHcy had suggested the adoption of 
 Lady Grasmere as an ally, in the dread of her 
 attractions as a rival. The coquette could not 
 make up her mind to spare to the beautiful 
 widow even so poor a conquest as Fitzgerald 
 or Clanhenry; far less to leave her in undis- 
 turbed possession of LordBrancepeth, — to whose 
 captivation, for the last two years, her own 
 efforts had been secretly but sedulously di- 
 rected. Frivolous and heartless as she was. 
 Lady Sophia was steady in her preference; and 
 though willing to giggle with lancers, hussars, 
 and dragoons, her main object had never been 
 neglected. 
 
 " News — news — news !" cried Lady Edystone, 
 tripping into their room with affected juve- 
 nility, the day after the concert ; " What 
 
THE PAVILION. T3 
 
 will you give me for being the first to tell you 
 that the prudish Lord Brancepeth has struck up 
 a flirtation with the mouton qui reve ambassa- 
 dress ? " 
 
 " Nothing," said Lady Mary, " unless you 
 can bring us proof to back assertion; — the thing 
 is impossible ! '* 
 
 " By no means even improhahle,'^ added her 
 niece ; her perception on the subject somewhat 
 quickened by jealousy. " Countess Reppen- 
 heim is the confidante of Lady Grasmere ; and 
 Lord Brancepeth 's pretensions in that quarter 
 are sufficiently notorious." 
 
 " Young ladies are always espying symptoms 
 of matrimony," said the dowager maliciously. 
 " For my part, I have no doubt that his incense 
 burns to the goddess on whose shrine it is laid. 
 Lady Grasmere was not there, last night, to be 
 flatterta by his patronage o her friend ; and I 
 am persuaded that nothing but a strong per- 
 sonal fancy would have induced him to act the 
 Quixote as he did, in her behalf." 
 
 " Who were his antagonists ? — " 
 
 " The whole room was laughing at her." 
 
 VOL. I. E 
 
74" THE PAVILION. 
 
 "And why?'' 
 
 " Never was any human being so absurd ! 
 Clanhenry protests that she is bent on making a 
 conquest of the Regent; and last night, she 
 certainly followed him up and down, boring him 
 to death. But here comes Mr. Fitzgerald ! — 
 He will tell you all about it." 
 
 " He seldom sees or hears any thing in which 
 his own vanity is not concerned. I have no 
 doubt he was sauntering past one of the. great 
 mirrors half the evening, observing nothing 
 but the reflection of his own beautiful person ! — 
 Ah ! Fitzgerald ! — How do you do this morning ? 
 — delighted to see you ! — why did not you come 
 earlier? — We expected you at luncheon." 
 
 " Did you ? " muttered the handsome Frede- 
 rick, who, during the stay of the court at Brigh- 
 ton, always grew^ mysterious and important. " I 
 am sorry I was not aware of it, that I might have 
 prevented your disappointment. I had engage- 
 ments this morning to sing with the Trills, be- 
 side my usual lounge at Lady Grandison's ; 
 and instead of fulfilling either, I have been rid- 
 ing in the school." 
 
 « With his Royal Highness ? "— 
 
THE PAVILION. T5 
 
 « With his Royal Highness." 
 
 "Then you can tell us the true state of this 
 mysterious business. What does he intend to 
 do with her ? — 
 
 "With whom?" 
 
 " Countess Reppenheim ! — Lady Edystone 
 assures us she made such bold advances last 
 night, that no one knows what to think of it." 
 
 " Has the thing got wind already ? " said 
 Fitzgerald walking to the fire-place, and leisurely 
 arranging his collar at the glass. 
 
 " How much his Royal Highness must have 
 been disgusted ! " said Lady Sophia in a tone 
 of interrogation. 
 
 " I really cannot advance an opinion ; I have 
 never given it a minute's concern," said Fred, 
 continuing his labours of the toilet, and affecting 
 diplomatic mystery. 
 
 " I should think she would not be invited 
 again?" observed Lady Mary. 
 
 " I cannot form an idea." 
 
 " Probably she will go back to London ? " 
 
 " Certainly, if her stay at Brightonis at an end." 
 
 " What a bore for the Count ? " 
 E 2 
 
76 THE PAVILION. 
 
 " He does not seem a man to be easily 
 bored." 
 
 " But they have always set themselves up for 
 a domestic felicity couple ! '' sneered Lady 
 Edystone. 
 
 "Have they ? "—observed Fitzgerald, deter- 
 mined to know nothing concerning any body. 
 " Who are they ? — I really know nothing about 
 them. Reppenheim is Prussian ambassador or 
 some such thing, is he not? — They asked me to 
 dinner four or five times just before I came 
 down here; but I never went." 
 
 " Yet you seemed intimately acquainted with 
 the Countess, when you met her here the other 
 night with Lady Grasmere," cried Lady Sophia, 
 in a tone of pique. " You were sitting by her 
 half the evening." 
 
 " Was I ?— It is quite a chance where one is 
 seated in large parties." 
 
 " But it was a very small party," said Lady 
 Mary indignantly, "you know I never have 
 large parties ; — and the place w^as of your own 
 selection. The Regent not being then arrived, 
 
THE PAVILION. 77 
 
 you were not quite so superfine and inaccessible 
 as you are just now." 
 
 *^ Me fine ! — what an accusation ! " said the 
 dandy, colouring slightly at her vehemence. 
 " Believe me, my dear Lady Mary, there is no- 
 thing I enjoy so much as your little coteries ; 
 and as to this piece of Pavilion scandal, I know 
 no more of it than yourself. What are you all 
 talking about? — Is his Royal Highness supposed 
 to have afoiblesse for the fair Reppenheim r" — 
 " Exactly the reverse. You know very well 
 that she is his bete noire ; and all we want to 
 learn is the motive of Lord Brancepeth's sud- 
 den declaration in her favour. 
 
 " Lord Brancepeth ? — Encore du nouveau ! — I 
 never heard their names mentioned together." 
 
 "You will get nothing out of him," cried 
 Lady Edystone peevishly. " Half an hour's trot 
 in the royal manage has made him so very great 
 a man, that there is no talking to him this 
 morning." 
 
 " At least, pray tell us," said Lady Sophia, 
 " are the invitations out yet for the ball ? " — 
 " Not that I am aware of." 
 
78 THE PAVILION. 
 
 " But there is to be a ball ? " — 
 
 " So the newspapers assert." 
 
 " But did you hear nothing of it at the 
 Pavilion?"— 
 
 ** Not that I recollect. Why should there be 
 a ball ? — Tt only produces a mob of Brighton 
 people, just such as one meets at the Duchess 
 of Keswycke's or Lady Grandison's ; whereas, so 
 long as his Royal Highness restricts himself to 
 his private circle, he can have exactly whom he 
 pleases, and form the most perfect society in the 
 world." 
 
 This observaticm, — which was intended as a 
 little punishment to Lady Mary for her attack 
 upon himself, by rendering both aunt and niece 
 painfully conscious of their own insignificance, 
 was studiously echoed by Lady Edystone as one of 
 the elect; as well as by the dull old dormouse 
 Sir Carmychael Domdaniel, whose military rank 
 had obtained him a favourable reception at 
 half the courts in Europe, while his tedious ina- 
 nity excluded him from the more independent 
 circles of unfashionable life. 
 
 " If the most perfect society in the world 
 
THE PAVILION. 79 
 
 affords no better amusement to Lord Brancepeth 
 and the rest of you than to flirt with such a 
 quiz as poor Countess Reppenheim, I wish you 
 joy of the pleasure you find at the Pavilion ! " 
 cried Lady Sophia with indignation. "Ah! my 
 dear Lady Grasmere," she continued, affecting 
 to catch a glimpse of the new visitor who had 
 entered the room during her speech, "pray 
 excuse me if you find me abusing your friend. 
 But really all Brighton has found so much to 
 say respecting her barefaced flirtation with 
 Lord Brancepeth, that I scarcely consider it 
 necessary to apologize for adding my voice to 
 the majority." 
 
 " I shall really begin to fancy myself the 
 keeper of Countess Reppenheim's conscience," 
 said Lady Grasmere, returning Lady Mary's 
 salutation, as she seated herself hurriedly in the 
 circle. " Lord Clanhenry stopped my carriage 
 just now on the Parade, to insinuate that she 
 had been making love to the Regent ; and to 
 declare, without circumlocution, that Lord 
 Brancepeth is making love to her. I fancy 
 both reports are equally authentic." 
 
80 THE PAVILION. 
 
 " She make advances to the Prince Regent ! " 
 snorted Domdaniel in his corner. 
 
 "Brancepeth make advances to Aer/" re- 
 iterated Lady Mary, who had long destined him 
 for her niece. 
 
 " He certainly paid her great attention last 
 night," said Fitzgerald, with affected careless- 
 ness. " When he put her into the carriage, I 
 really never witnessed a more pathetic farewell ; 
 and in the face of a whole brigade of royal foot- 
 men, who probably wished his lordship at the 
 bottom of the West Cliff, for keeping them 
 standing at the door of the vestibule, to face the 
 night air." 
 
 "It is very strange," exclaimed Lady Gras- 
 mere, growing more and more uneasy, " that 
 my friend the Countess should be the only 
 woman in Brighton whom it is unlawful to hand 
 to her carriage ! Sir Carmychael ! — Mr. 
 Fitzgerald, — pray deign to inform me whether 
 you put evil constructions upon the conduct of 
 every woman who accepts your own services on 
 similar occasions?" 
 
 " Give me an opportunity of proving the 
 
. THE PAVILION. 81 
 
 fact," whispered Frederick, approaching her, 
 and assuming a loverlike tone, so as to be heard 
 only by herself. " And yet, you well know that 
 I should venture to put no construction on any 
 proceeding of your's but such as your own will 
 might instigate.'' 
 
 But, notwithstanding the crouching attitude 
 glozing smile and earnest look with which these 
 words were uttered, they elicited no reply 
 from the lady, not of his love, but of his court- 
 ship. A possibility had just occurred to her, 
 or rather an assertion had just been made, 
 which absorbed all her interest ; nay, even suf- 
 ficed to create an interest unknown before. 
 Lady Grasmere, in the thoughdessness of wild 
 seventeen and in obedience to her parents, had 
 made an ambitious marriage with a man old 
 enough to be her grandfather r but it w^as only 
 in proportion as her experience of the world 
 increased, that she became conscious of the ex- 
 tent of the sacrifice. " 1 have resigned every 
 thing for ambition," thought she, whenever she 
 contemplated the brighter destinies of other 
 households. "But let me at least be consistent in 
 E 5 
 
o» THE PAVILION. 
 
 my worship to the idol I have adopted for my 
 divinity. Having renounced both the pleasures 
 and penalties of love, I will content myself 
 exclusively with the gratification arising from 
 my brilliant position in society. I have every 
 thing the world can offer. When once I com- 
 mand a favourable reception at court, I shall 
 not have a wish unaccomplished ; nor shall any 
 thing induce me to give myself a second master, 
 and sacrifice the independence I have bought 
 so dear. The homage of Lord Clanhenry and 
 the rest of them does me no harm ; but I trust I 
 know myself and them too well to be deceived 
 by their interested professions." 
 
 Now " the rest of them," although a widely 
 collective, was a very indefinite figure ef speech ; 
 it included all London, and designated no one. 
 But it consequently included many who formed 
 no pretension to the honour, and neglected to 
 except some, whom Lady Grasmere could have 
 no plea for comprehending in the list of her 
 mercenary suitors. Among these was Lord 
 Brancepeth ; a man whom common report had 
 often pointed out as her lover; but who, in 
 
THE PAVILIOK. S3 
 
 his own person, had never given the slightest 
 hint in confirmation of the rumour. As one of 
 the most distinguished members of fashionable 
 society she had received with pleasure his over- 
 tures of acquaintance, when opening her house 
 to the London world at the expiration of her 
 widowhood ; and had occasionally received from 
 him in return, those attentions which a well- 
 bred man is in the habit of paying to every 
 woman in whose house he is a frequent guest. 
 But there his homage ended. He had never 
 breathed a word resembling love ; had never 
 fixed upon her those ardent looks which she was 
 apt to detect in the eyes of others ; or besieged 
 her by those (falsely called) petits soms, which 
 form in a woman's estimation the greatest atten- 
 tions in the world. 
 
 Lady Grasmere was accordingly wise enough 
 to persuade herself that the pleasure she took in 
 his courtesies arose solely from the gratification 
 of her vanity, by proving to certain of the Ex- 
 clusives by whom she w^as tacitly excluded, that 
 their idol, the distinguished Lord Brancepeth, 
 was to be found in her train ; that he, the 
 
84 
 
 THE PAVILION. 
 
 favourite of the Regent and darling of the 
 coteries, was not too proud to call her carriage, 
 or carry her shawl. Her ladyship's vanity must, 
 however, have been indeed enormous, if the feel- 
 ings of eager delight with which she saw him 
 enter her opera box, or found him turn his 
 horse's head to join her in the park — or if the 
 accelerated pulsation of her heart when Brance- 
 peth, in the course of a formal visit, was tempted 
 to bestow some warmer expression of admiration 
 on the embroidery or the drawing with which he 
 found her occupied— arose solely from so con- 
 temptible a source. That it could be love which 
 caused her emotion under such circumstances, 
 was of course out of the question. In the first 
 place, because Lady Grasmere had formally 
 renounced all allegiance to that most capricious 
 of divinities ; and, in the second, because 
 Brancepeth was an Adonis, nearly fifteen years 
 her senior ; and Lady Grasmere, who had begun 
 life at so early an age, fancied even herself, at 
 six or seven and twenty, considerably advanced 
 in years ! She had, however, no leisure for 
 consideration of the business. All her thoughts 
 
THE PAVILION. 85 
 
 for some months past, had been absorbed by 
 the one great object of obtaining admission to 
 the royal circle ; and to this even Lord Brance- 
 peth was of secondary importance. 
 
 But notwithstanding this engrossing project of 
 self-aggrandizement, it certainly had occurred to 
 her, during the three weeks of her residence at 
 Brighton, that even the moderate measure of 
 his lordship's attentions was strangely diminished. 
 Although habitually admitted as a morning 
 visitor at her house in London, he had been 
 satisfied to leave a formal card at her door, 
 without even attempting to profit by the pri- 
 vilege; he had met her at several soirees at 
 the Duchess of Keswycke's, and two or three of 
 Lady Mary Mil ford's sociable tea-cookings,^nd 
 contented himself with a gracious salutation, 
 without attempting to approach her. She had 
 sometimes flattered herself in town, tliat he pre- 
 ferred her sober style of conversation to the 
 flashy flippancy of the satirical Lady Sophia 
 Clerimont, and the coarse double entendre of 
 Lady Edystone ; that a friendly and confidential 
 ease of intercourse was established between 
 
86 THE PAVILION. 
 
 them, as agreeable to him as to herself. But it 
 was plain that she had overrated her influence ; 
 for he now bestowed his attentions on both — or 
 rather on any one and every one rather than 
 herself. 
 
 Now the fair widow who, like all persons 
 whose minds are dominated by a ruling preju- 
 judice, was apt to ascribe every little slight she 
 experienced to the inferiority of her birth, ac- 
 tually lowered her estimation of Lord Brance- 
 peth's character sufficiently to believe that, 
 although in the wide wilderness of London he 
 had no objection to waste a few hours of the sea- 
 son on a young and handsome woman with a 
 good establishment, and tolerable acceptance in 
 society, was not anxious to compromise his own 
 dignity by displaying at Brighton any thing ap- 
 proaching to intimacy with an individual living 
 without the pale of fashionable legitimacy.— 
 Having observed that many silly persons of her 
 acquaintance were no sooner admitted to move 
 in that peculiar sphere, than they ceased to re- 
 member even the existence of a planet unin- 
 cluded in the one great system, — she ventured to 
 
THE PAVILION. 87 
 
 believe that the noble-minded Brancepeth de- 
 spised her for her inferiority to the higher 
 thrones and dominions of exclusive life ! — The 
 mere supposition, indeed, tended to magnify 
 her desire for the notice of royalty far more than 
 the sneers of young Fitzgerald, or the solemn 
 irony of Lord Clanhenry. 
 
 But on the suggestion of Lady Sophia Cleri- 
 mont, a sudden light broke in upon her mind ! 
 Brancepeth had more than once avowed in 
 her hearing, his admiration of the feminine deli- 
 cacy and simplicity of the new ambassadress ; 
 and Countess Reppenheim unhesitatingly cited 
 Lord Brancepeth as the most agreeable and 
 most high bred man she had met in England. 
 But neither of them had expressed more than 
 admiration. How should they ? — It was not to 
 her they would make an avowal of a less lawful 
 sentiment ; — it was not to a woman of blameless 
 life and manners, such as herself, that a confes- 
 sion of illicit passion was likely to be confided. 
 She was now, however, enlightened ! — Her friend 
 had doubtless formed an attachment to the 
 
88 THE PAVILION. 
 
 sedate Brancepeth : which was not only returned, 
 but had been the means of withdrawing his 
 attentions from herself. Perhaps it was a 
 hope of improving her intimacy with the object 
 of her tenderness, which had originally sug- 
 gested the preference testified for her society by 
 the Countess ?— Jealousy is a hasty traveller, 
 and jumps at all conclusions ! In a moment 
 Lady Grasmere overstepped all boundaries of 
 common sense, and succeeded in persuading 
 herself that she was doubly a dupe; — that 
 Countess Reppenheim's assumed virtues, and 
 Lord Brancepeth's pretended moderation of 
 character, were equally frauds practised upon 
 her credulity, and calling for exposure and con- 
 tempt. And although, in Lady Milford's draw- 
 ing-room, under the inquisition of the malignant 
 Lady Sophia, the scandalous Lady Edystone, 
 and that very universal circulating medium 
 Domdaniel the diner-out and morning-visitor, 
 she was careful to let no symptom of her irrita- 
 tion escape, her heart waxed hot within her at 
 the notion that those very Pavilion parties to 
 
THE PAVILION. 89 
 
 which Brancepeth affected indifference and the 
 Countess aversion, had been made the means of 
 cementing their connection secure from her own 
 
 o 
 
 observation. It was but the day preceding that 
 Helene had been protesting her extreme disin- 
 chnation to join that evening's circle ; and had 
 even hinted to the Count her wish to put forth 
 a pretext of indisposition as an apology for her 
 absence.— Hypocrite ! — Lady Grasmere could 
 not pardon herself for having been imposed 
 upon by such shallow artifices ! Helene, who 
 pretended such attachment for her husband — 
 such fondness for her children, — she to prove 
 haggard ! — and with the blush of modesty still 
 pure upon her cheek — the tears of sensibility 
 still glittering in her eyes. — Hypocrite — hypo- 
 crite—hypocrite !— There appeared nothing so 
 unprecented or unaccountable in the existence of 
 an adulterous passion, to a person so experienced 
 in the scandals or wickedness of society as 
 Lady Grasmere, but that she readily gave ear 
 to the imputation. But, alas ! amid all this vir- 
 tuous indignation, all this mental excitement. 
 
90 THE PAVILION. 
 
 all this disgust against both the sin and the sinner, 
 a second discovery, still more appalling than the 
 first, suddenly burst upon her mind ; — she was 
 certainly in love with Lord Brancepeth herself, 
 or she would not have cared half so much about 
 the matter ! 
 
THE PAVILION. 91 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 O hard condition — twin -born with greatness, — 
 Subjected to the breath of every fool 1 
 
 Henry IV. Part IL 
 
 Fitzgerald was but an echo to the general 
 sentiments of the royal circle at the Pavilion, 
 in reprobating those official entertainments to 
 which all persons of a certain rank, having left 
 their names, were invited as a matter of eti- 
 quette, without regard to preference or preju- 
 dice ; — causing a general disaiTangement of the 
 establishment, — considerable fatigue to the illus- 
 trious host, — and no satisfaction to the persons 
 chiefly concerned. A fete of any magnitude 
 was regarded at the Pavilion as a sacrifice to 
 propriety and popularity ; to be postponed as 
 long as possible, and if possible, altogether 
 
^5 THE PAVILION. 
 
 evaded. It either did not occur to, or did not 
 concern the chief movers of tlie pageant, that 
 divers persons (in addition to the Lady Gras- 
 meres and Lady Mary Milfords) had visited 
 Brighton with no other object than the hope 
 of being included in one of those universal 
 gatherings ; that the Duchess of Keswj^cke had 
 brought her diamonds fifty-nine miles, — that 
 Lady Grandison had been at the cost of a 
 velvet dress with trimmings of Brussels' point, — 
 that the Bishop's lady had ordered a new grey 
 satin gown, — and Colonel F. afforded a first 
 rate dancing-master to his two awkward daugh- 
 ters, — solely in anticipation of some such festal 
 solemnity. Had his Royal Highness himself been 
 sufficiently at leisure to conjecture the enormous 
 importance attached by many respectable indi- 
 viduals to an evening passed at the Pavilion, 
 such was his proverbial good-nature that he 
 would not for a moment have lent an ear to 
 those who affected to consult his own health 
 and inclination in persuading him that a ball 
 was superfluous. The court was cautious, how- 
 ever, again«;t letting the result of these nefarious 
 
THE PAVILION. 93 
 
 counsels transpire ; and day after day rumours 
 grew stronger of an approaching issue of invi- 
 tations. Velvet dresses continued to arrive 
 from town, and white satin lo glisten in the 
 hands of the mantua-makers, without the slight- 
 est suspicion that all their splendours would be 
 wasted on the desert air. 
 
 But Lady Grasmere was no longer one of 
 the speculators on this important subject. The 
 beautiful costume she had procured from Paris 
 with a view to the momentous event, was laid 
 aside and forgotten in its packing case. She 
 scarcely recollected that such a superfluity as a 
 diamond necklace existed in the world ;— cared 
 nothing for the notice of King or Kaiser ; — and, 
 if the notion of the illuminated halls of the 
 Pavilion ever entered her mind, it was with a 
 shudder of disgust at the remembrance that it 
 was there her enemies had plotted against her 
 peace. 
 
 Resolved as she was that neither the Coun- 
 tess nor the Countess's lover should detect her 
 profound mortification at the discovery of their 
 baseness, she was cautious that no abrupt rup- 
 
94 THE PAVILION. 
 
 ture with her former friend should induce 
 inquiry, expostulation, or explanation ; and 
 accordingly determined to break off the con- 
 nection as gradually and unconcernedly as pos- 
 sible. With Lord Brancepeth, indeed, she must 
 assume a totally different line of conduct; for 
 whereas since her observation of his coldness 
 towards herself, she had treated him with in- 
 creasing distance and reserve, she now deter- 
 mined to mask the true state of her feelings 
 under an assumption of gay indifference ; — to 
 accost him more familiarly ; — to defy him with 
 all the reckless daring of despair. 
 
 Meanwhile a train of circumstances was ar- 
 rayed against her, over which, independent as 
 she was. Lady Grasmere had no control. At 
 the very moment she was forming these des- 
 perate resolutions, the Countess, her beloved 
 friend — her treacherous enemy — was giving au- 
 dience in her dressing-room to Lady Beaulieu ; 
 who, having arrived from town to pass the re- 
 mainder of the holidays at the Pavilion, was 
 struck with surprise and regret to learn in a 
 mysterious whisper from Sir Carmychael, that 
 
THE PAVILION. 95 
 
 her old acquaintance the Countess was so little 
 in favour with the ruling powers, or their rul- 
 ing powers. 
 
 " I cannot make it out,'' replied she, with her 
 usual frank goodnature. " Countess Reppen- 
 heim is a charming woman, and can have done 
 nothing that ought to give oifence." 
 
 Sir Carmychael Domdaniel was of course 
 ready with the lesson that had been taught him ; 
 and immediately pronounced, under the shadow 
 of his intrusive proboscis, that " she was con- 
 sidered a sad bore." 
 
 " By whom ? " inquired the straightforward 
 Lady Beaulieu. 
 
 " By every body ! " 
 
 " Every body is less than nobody. Besides, 
 my dear Sir Carmychael, were every body who 
 is pronounced a bore to be sneered out of so- 
 ciety, which of us would be safe ? " 
 
 A laugh immediately went round ; but Dom- 
 daniel had not the slightest suspicion at whose 
 expense. " She intrudes herself so officiously 
 upon his Royal Highness," said he, " that it 
 it is quite disgusting. She deserves to be sent to 
 
96 THE PAVILION. 
 
 Coventry." And he twisted his nose with a 
 gigantic expression of contempt. 
 
 " But, my dear Sir Carmychael, supposing 
 all the persons were to be sent to Coventry who 
 intrude themselves officiously into the society of 
 the Prince Regent, think what an increase of 
 population that far-famed city would have to 
 thank us for ! " 
 
 Again a laugh went round, and again the 
 little K.C.B. wondered what could make them 
 all so merry. ' 
 
 " And then she flirts so desperately with Lord 
 Brancepeth,'- said he, impatient of any merri- 
 ment which did not arise from one of his own 
 stale puns. 
 
 " Does she?" cried Lady Beaulieu, to whom 
 his Lordship was nearly related, and who had 
 experienced considerable alarm lest he should 
 degrade himself and his family by an alliance 
 with the roturiere Lady Grasmere. " That is 
 the best thing I have heard of her yet ! I must 
 go instantly and thank her for her patronage of 
 my cousin of Brancepeth," and, without waiting to 
 ascertain what further inuendoes were going on 
 
THE PAVILION. 9t 
 
 under the gnomon of the indignant Sir Carniy- 
 chael, she flew to the residence of the ambas- 
 sadress, and received a cordial welcome. 
 
 " I am so glad you are come at last ; — I have 
 missed you very much," said the Countess. 
 " Either Brighton is very dull, — or — " 
 
 " You have been looking all this time at the 
 reverse of the tapestry. I hear sad histories 
 about you. I am told that you live with a set 
 of people such as never were heard of." 
 
 " Who can have told you so ? " — 
 
 " Authority too high to be either quoted or 
 impugned." 
 
 " High as it may be, I have a right to take 
 up my own defence." 
 
 " Hush, hush, hush ! Can you in the first 
 place deny that you have divers times made 
 your appearance at the Pavilion soirees^ look- 
 ing very handsome, and, with malice afore- 
 thought, striving to make yourself very agree- 
 able?" 
 
 " On the contrary, Mr. Fitzgerald assured 
 me only last night that I did not strive half 
 
 VOL. I. F 
 
98 THE PAVILION. 
 
 enough. And yet when I followed his injunc- 
 tions — " 
 
 " Frederick Fitzgerald then is the traitor ? " 
 — interrupted Lady Beaulieu. " My cross ex- 
 amination has been very soon successful ! 
 Reste a savoir what could be his motive for 
 so malicious a piece of advice. In the next 
 place, my dear Countess, you are further ac- 
 cused of the high crime and misdemeanour of 
 a liaison with Lady Grasmere." 
 
 " There, indeed, I plead guilty ; without 
 admitting the libel implied in your arraign- 
 ment. I cannot perceive the criminality of a 
 friendship with one of the most amiable women 
 at Brighton.'' 
 
 " In the world, if you will ! But she is not 
 one of W5, and therefore does you a serious 
 injury." 
 
 " Not one of whom, — of what? — Surely Lord 
 Grasmere was a man of the highest rank and 
 distinction." 
 
 " Of the highest fashion (which in England 
 you will find a far more lofty distinction), till 
 Ae chose to marry his bailifPs daughter." 
 
THE PAVILION. 99 
 
 " Impossible ! — my friend Lady Grasmcre is 
 accomplisiied, graceful, well informed — " 
 
 "Very likely. — When a woman's education 
 is completed by her husband, instead of her 
 parents and the pastors and masters acting 
 under their authority, I suppose, for the no- 
 velty's sake, he takes care to do justice to his 
 pupil. Au reste, this Lady Grasmere has done 
 wonders in society, and gets on vastly well in 
 her own humdrum way. But she does not 
 even aspire to measure lances with those of 
 the true faith. We know nothing about her, 
 and wish to know nothing; and consequently 
 you must know nothing, if you are anxious to 
 be one of us." 
 
 " I am anxious, it is true, to be on better 
 terms in a certain quarter, for I fear it vexes 
 Reppenheim to observe how very little satis- 
 faction I have given. But neither for the 
 accomplishment of that object nor of any other, 
 will I give up the friendship of one who, from 
 the moment of my arrival has overwhelmed me 
 with kindness." 
 
 " That was very impertinent of her ! — She 
 F 2 
 
100 THE PAVILION. 
 
 was well aware that her standing in society did 
 not entitle her to pay you any such attentions." 
 
 " What a notion ! — Do, pray, my dear Lady 
 Beaulieu, allow me to present her to your 
 acquaintance; and then you will judge more 
 fairly." 
 
 " To my acquaintance ? — Not for worlds ! 
 Lady Grasmere is just the sort of woman I 
 never permit myself to know, unless I have 
 some immediate object in patronising and bring- 
 ing her forward. Your friend has advanced 
 beyond the necessity for that sort of kindness ; 
 and therefore she must remain where she is, in 
 all the infamy of too ostensible obscurity — of 
 ])eing one whom everybody and nobody knows. 
 Take my word for it. Countess, she will never 
 get a step further in the world." 
 
 " In her place, I should be very well satisfied 
 to remain where she is." 
 
 '* She is not exactly of that opinion, I fancy ; 
 or she would now be at her beautiful villa in 
 Surrey, instead of courting contempt from the 
 beau monde at Brighton." 
 
 " She is idolized by Lady Mary Milford and 
 her set.'' 
 
THE PAVILION. 101 
 
 " Shocking, shocking !— where could you pick 
 up such people ? — They are the very superlative 
 of mauvais ton ! " cried Lady Beaulieu, begin- 
 ning to fear that the woman she had undertaken 
 to exonerate and defend was after all an incor- 
 rigible offender. " But tell me," she exclaimed, 
 brightening up with a sudden reminiscence ; 
 " what is all this history about you and my 
 cousin Brancepeth ? " 
 
 " Only that Lord Brancepeth is the most de^ 
 lightful of men," replied the Countess, blushing 
 deeply at the remembrance of his kindness of 
 the preceding night, but without by any means 
 conjecturing the extent or nature of the " his- 
 tory" which had reached Lady Beaulieu's ears. 
 
 " For once I can sympathize with your en- 
 thusiasm," said her ladyship, not a little sur- 
 prised at the naivete of the avowal. " He is in- 
 deed a charming person — very different from 
 the Lady Grasmeres and Lady Marys you seem 
 to have taken under your protection." 
 
 " They are no less under his. It was with 
 them I first became acquainted with Lord 
 Brancepeth." 
 
102 THE PAVILION. 
 
 " Men go every where. It does not commit 
 themr 
 
 " But Brancepeth goes no where so much 
 as to my friend Lady Grasmere's." 
 
 " On your account of course. Quite right. 
 We all understand that sort of thing." 
 
 " What sort of thing ? — My dear Lady Beau- 
 lieu, pray explain yourself. You are so enig- 
 matical this morning that you have puzzled me 
 to death ! " 
 
 " W^eli, do not disturb yourself further ; 
 but come to the Pavilion to-night with a deter- 
 mination to give up this pernicious friend." 
 
 " At least I shall not offend you by the sight 
 of our intimacy. Lady Grasmere has resided 
 so long abroad, that at present she has not the 
 honour to be particularly known to his Royal 
 Highness; and — " 
 
 '•' Yes, yes, yes ! I am perfectly aware of 
 all that ; and the time will shortly come when 
 you will understand it too, or my pains will be 
 very much thrown away. Au revoir, chere 
 Comtesse ; do not forget my injunctions." 
 
 Meanwhile, Fitzgerald having ascertained 
 
THE PAVILION. 103 
 
 that Lord Clanhenry was engaged to pass the 
 morning at the Pavilion for a council of cos- 
 tume touching certain changes to be made in 
 the uniform of the household troops, of which 
 models had been sent down from town, and in 
 which Clanhenry, as a well-dressed man of 
 twenty years experience, was supposed to be a 
 cognoscente^ — resolved to profit by the occasion 
 to address his homage to Lady Grasmere. 
 Having shaken off the importunate arm of Sir 
 Carmychael Domdaniel, w^ho was apt to adhere 
 like a barnacle to every goodly ship sailing to 
 or from the port of the Pavilion, he made his 
 appearance in her ladyship's drawing-room with 
 an air very diflPerent from the tone of courtly 
 apathy he had assumed to dazzle the eyes of 
 Lady Sophia Clerimont. He was now the 
 handsome Fred. Fitzgerald ; — eveilU^ anecdotic ; 
 — almost as eveille and anecdotic as when 
 labouring to attract the notice of his royal 
 patron by piquant narratives of all that was, or 
 was not going on in society, — his mimicries of 
 Domdaniel's mysterious whispers, and prolix 
 manifestos ; his details of a new and wonderful 
 
104 THE PAVILION. 
 
 remedy for the gout; or description of "a mare, 
 the most perfect thing of the kind in England, 
 exactly calculated for his Royal Highnesses 
 weight/' Perceiving that Lady Grasmere was 
 miserably out of spirits, he judged the occasion 
 favourable to a display of his entertaining 
 powei-s, and a manifestation of his desire to 
 devote them for life to her service. 
 
 But all was unavailing. In defiance of his 
 best stories, told in his best manner, — in defi- 
 ance of his admirable style of quizzing Lady 
 Mary and Lady Sophia, — his sneers at her 
 friend Lady Edystone, his Mathews-like imi- 
 tation of his own friend Lord Clanhenry's obese 
 efforts at being graceful, which, as he observed, 
 resembled the frisky play of a walrus,— -the fair 
 Viscountess could not, would not, might not 
 be amused. — He abused all her intimates ; 
 hinted that the whole fair group of Milfordian 
 gigglers were paying their addresses to him; 
 and more than hinted that he was desirous of 
 paying his to herself. 
 
 It would have formed an amusing study for 
 Newton or Leslie, or any other of the delinea- 
 
THE PAVILION. 105 
 
 tors of the lights and shadows of courtly beauty, 
 to see the fine figure of Lady Grasmere thrown 
 listlessly into her high-backed chair; for once 
 careless of effect, and through that very careless- 
 ness producing fifty times more effect than usual. 
 Her exquisitely modelled hand, entangled in the 
 luxuriant tresses of her hair; her large lustrous 
 hazel eyes fixed vacantly on the carpet; her 
 Grecian lips, compressed with the conscious- 
 ness of injury ; while near her sat the grimacing 
 dandy, labouring to throw all Lovelace into his 
 countenance, all Grammont into his persiflage^ 
 all St. Preux into his eloquence ; — now affecting 
 fashionable cynicism ; — now the laissez-aller self- 
 possession of a man of the world; — now the air 
 ptnetre of the tenderest of lovers. No Savoyard's 
 monkey ever went through a greater variety of 
 attitudes" and evolutions ! — But the more he 
 prated, the more evident became Lady Gras- 
 mere's pre-occupation of mind. The more he 
 laughed at his own bon-mots the graver grew 
 her silence. 
 
 " Confound the woman ! " thought the despair- 
 ing wooer. " Will nothing provoke her to 
 F 3 
 
106 THE PAVILION. 
 
 smile — nothing excite her attention?— I must 
 pique her, then, or she will go to sleep before 
 my face." 
 
 " By the way, I am so glad," he now observed 
 in a tone of amiable candour, " that our poor 
 friend the Countess is likely at last to creep out 
 of the shades ! To be sure it must be miserably 
 provoking to a woman entitled to play a certain 
 part in society, to find herself distanced solely 
 by her own manque (Tusage. An ambassadress, 
 — a woman really, I am told, d^assez bonne 
 maison ! and yet, managing to fall back into the 
 mediocracy by the mere weight of her own want 
 of tact. However, Brancepeth has now taken 
 her by the hand, and no doubt she will do very 
 well. At present, you know, Countess Rep- 
 penheim is not at all known in London : fortu- 
 nately she has not had an opportunity of com- 
 mitting herself there ; and she will make her 
 debut, after all, under the happiest auspices." 
 
 " Of course ! " replied Lady Grasmere, some- 
 what roused by the name of her offending 
 friend. " I understand Lady Beaulieu is ar- 
 
THE PAVILION. 107 
 
 rived ; and it is her vocation to do the honours 
 to the ladies of the corps diplomatique." 
 
 " Lady Beaulieu? — Lady Beaulieu has her 
 own affairs to manage ! — No, no ! I alluded to 
 Brancepeth. Brancepeth stands very well in a 
 certain quarter, and will no doubt do away the 
 impression produced by the Countess's homely 
 air and breaches of convenance. Nothing is so 
 important for a nouvelle debarquee as to have 
 some friendly guide to show her a little of the 
 terrein. It is a distinct art to move well in a 
 certain circle ; an art only to be acquired by ex- 
 perience." 
 
 This was intended as a side-wind illustration 
 of his own value and importance to his fair 
 friend. But, alas ! she replied only by a 
 peevish exclamation : " It is an art the accom- 
 plishment of which is dearly paid for by the for- 
 feiture of one's reputation and self-respect." 
 
 " To be sure," persisted the Honourable 
 Frederick, rolling the corner of his cambric 
 handkerchief into the form of an allumette ; " re- 
 putation, and all that sort of thing, is very good 
 as far as it goes. But * I'd rather be a dog and 
 
108 THE PAVILION. 
 
 bay the moon,' or even la tres honor ee Madame 
 VEv^que^s toddling poodle and bay an Argand 
 lamp, than enrol myself at once in the deadly 
 brigade of the humdrums. Now our deaf 
 Countess was born and educated a humdrum ; 
 and entre nous, even Brancepeth (who is a de- 
 vilish good fellow in his way) approaches to 
 the humdrumatic style. One never heard of 
 his doing or saying anything out of the common 
 way." 
 
 " The very criterion of his excellence ! *' cried 
 the Viscountess, piqued out of her self-posses- 
 sion. " Lord Brancepeth does, says, and thinks 
 exactly as he ought; and consequently never 
 renders himself a theme for the discussion of 
 society or the scandal of the newspapers.'* 
 " Content to dwell in decencies for ever/' 
 quoted the dandy with a sneer. 
 
 *' The happiest and safest of all earthly taber- 
 nacles ! " exclaimed Lady Grasmere, her natu- 
 rally pale cheek flushing with a sudden glow. 
 " A man who can afford to restrict himself to 
 his allotted path of life, without any conscious- 
 ness of defect or deficiency rendering it advis- 
 
THE PAVILION. 109 
 
 able to attract or distract public attention by 
 glaring absurdities or pompous displays, proves 
 that he is master of himself and of the world ! " 
 
 " Z)e la philosophie!" sneered Fitzgerald, 
 startled by this burst of enthusiasm from the 
 recumbent statue. " I see I must apply for 
 your ladyship's assistance in — " 
 
 He vfsis prevented concluding his retort by 
 the announcement of Sir Carmychael Domda- 
 niel ; who, with his usual self-assurance of being 
 at all times, in all places, the most welcome of 
 men, placed a chair as close to Lady Grasmere's 
 as possible, and commenced his ordinary disclo- 
 sures of profound secrets stolen from the daily 
 papers, and bon-mots stolen from the jest-books 
 of the eighteenth century. 
 
 " And so, my dear Madam, after all, there is 
 to be no ball at the Pavilion this Christmas ! 
 For my part, I 'm delighted ; — there is nothing 
 in which I luxuriate so much as those little 
 private parties, where every one worth seeing, 
 meets every one he wishes to see ; — eh ! Fitz- 
 gerald." 
 
 But Frederick was sulky and silent. 
 
110 THE PAVILION. 
 
 "You see, my dear Madam, between ourselves, 
 — you won't commit me, — for of course" (with a 
 mysterious smile), of course I am speaking 
 without authority, — you see Brighton enlarges so 
 fearfully from season to season, and just at this 
 present moment there are such a vast number 
 of persons here whose rank makes them fancy 
 themselves entitled to an invitation, — and who, — 
 eh !— Fitzgerald?— But perhaps the less we say 
 about it the better ! I understand Lady Mary 
 Milford is extremely angry ; (a case in point you 
 know !) bat as I was saying last night to Bogg, 
 Meerschaum, and Clanhenry, if the Pavilion 
 parties are to be crammed with all the nobodies 
 in the land entitled to a coronet and supporters, 
 they will be no better than the Duchess of Kes- 
 wycke's or any other congregation of bores ; — 
 eh, Fitzgerald?" — 
 
 " Really, Sir Carmychael, you must excuse 
 my becoming security for your aphorisms. I 
 know nothing of the Pavilion projects, and 
 have the honour to be her Grace's nephew." 
 
 " A thousand pardons, my dear Sir ; but 
 really the Duchess lives so completely out of 
 
THE PAVILION. Ill 
 
 the world that one forgets to whom she belongs, 
 or who belongs to her. And by the way, my 
 dear Lady Grasmere, pray allow me to offer 
 you my congratulations on our friend the 
 Countess's new conquest. Really, Brancepeth 
 is no every-day victory. , A man against whom 
 so many nanoeuvres have been directed — a man 
 who stands so high with our illustrious friend — 
 eh! Fitzgerald ?"~ 
 
 " Really, Sir Carmychael, I must request you 
 to—" 
 
 " I have long perceived," resumed Domda- 
 niel, wholly insensible to the withering look of 
 contempt launched against him by the hand- 
 some dandy, " that Brancepeth had an attach- 
 ment ; but I acknowledge it did not strike me 
 that so very unpopular a person as Countess 
 Reppenheim — a woman so universally pro- 
 nounced to be so very decided a bore — was — " 
 
 He sat confounded ; for the Countess having 
 entered unannounced during his tirade^ now 
 stood opposite to him, waiting its conclusion. 
 
 Sir Carmychael consoled himself, as with a 
 hasty bow he shuffled out of the room, with a 
 
112 THE PAVILION. 
 
 hope that her Excellency was not sufficiently 
 well furnished with his illustrious friend the 
 Prince Regent's English, to be fully conscious 
 of the extent of his own insolence. 
 
THE PAVILION. 113 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Joy to you, Mariana ! love her, Angelo ; 
 I have confessed her, and I know her virtue. 
 So, bring us to our palace ! 
 
 Measure for Measure. 
 
 Christmas was past and over ; — the first week 
 of the new year nearly expired ; — the Steyne half 
 a foot deep in snow , — the Duchess of Keswycke 
 shut up with the lumbago or (as her nephew re- 
 verently defined it) " some hackney coachman's 
 disorder ;" there was no hunting for the hussars ; 
 — there were no balls for the slender young 
 ladies ; — no new novels at the circulating libra- 
 ries ;— no business doing, — no pleasure going on ; 
 — and people began to find out that a country 
 town, although boasting a royal Pavilion among 
 its dwelling houses, can be as dull as the rest of 
 the world during a foggy frost in the month of 
 
114 THE PAVILION. 
 
 January. The Brighton newspapers, mean- 
 while, attributed this general depression to the 
 melancholy fact that his Royal Highness, their 
 illustrious visitor, was suffering from a severe 
 cold; — Sir Carmychael Domdaniel secretly as- 
 cribed it to the arrival of Lady Beau lieu, by 
 whom his honourable office of butt to the Royal 
 circle was rendered somewhat laborious ; — Lady 
 Edystone declared — but her declarations are 
 such as few people venture to repeat; — and, 
 Lady Grasmere, (poor Lady Grasmere !) al- 
 though she declared nothing, was not the less of 
 opinion that she was indebted for all her head- 
 aches and heartaches to the astounding dis- 
 covery of Lord Brancepeth*s passion for her 
 friend the Countess. 
 
 Byron has informed us that the heart of man 
 has its ides and epochs of sensibility ; that March 
 has its hares, and May must have its heroine. 
 But if there be a month peculiarly consecrated 
 to the tender perplexities of the female heart, 
 it is decidedly that of January. Every thing is 
 so cheerless, — so cold, — so desolate ; — there is so 
 little communication between house and house, 
 
THE PAVILION. 
 
 115 
 
 man and man, or man and woman ;— no rides, 
 no drives, no lounging visits, no sunshine, no 
 flowers, no any thing to distract the attention 
 of the fair afflicted from her own emotions. 
 Seated in a well-scorched dress by the fire- 
 side, a book in h:v hand, but her eyes engaged 
 in building castles among the glowing coals, 
 she reviews the past, and speculates concerning 
 the future;— t: Iks o'er again antecedent conver- 
 sations, — recalls to mind every look, — to heart 
 every sigh; — accuses herself of harshness, of 
 want of candour, of blindness to her own hap- 
 piness ;— then, sauntering to the window and 
 easting a wistful gaze upon the sloppy state of 
 the pavement or the slippery condition of the 
 roads, retreats back again to her chimney corner 
 with the mournful certainty that it is " a naughty 
 day to swim in,'' and that she has no chance of 
 the visit she would give so much to secure. 
 
 Never had Lady Grasmere taken so much oc- 
 casion as now to complain of the climate, and 
 sigh for a change of weather ; — never had she 
 derived so little solace from those favourite pur- 
 suits of reading, working, painting, music, which, 
 
116 THE PAVILION. 
 
 in London or at Richmond, caused her time 
 to pass so lightly. She began to fancy she 
 wanted to be at home again ; and, but for 
 the dread of provoking the quizzing of Lady 
 Sophia Clerimont and the malice of the Dom- 
 danielites, would have cut short her visit to 
 Brighton, — making a resolute effort to get rid 
 of her vexations, and commence a new career 
 of happiness and activity. 
 
 But if the first month of the year be unpro- 
 pitious to ladies in love, what may it not be said 
 to be to gentlemen in debt ? — How despondingly 
 do they contemplate the unsatisfactory face of 
 nature, — with all the blue noses, — red eyes, — 
 and muddy boots haunting its surface ; — human 
 beings looking their ugliest, and even the brute 
 creation, rough, shaggy, and forlorn ! — A misty 
 steam obscures the shop windows; — the water- 
 pipes enveloped in wisps of straw and the hall 
 doors sprinkled with sand, impart a vulgar air 
 even to the dwellings of the lordly ; — people 
 elbow their way along the streets to keep their 
 blood from stagnation ; — the most courteous 
 greetings are hastily and sharply bestowed ; — 
 
THE PAVILION. 117 
 
 the carriages roll past with the inmates as care- 
 fully secluded from sight as in so many hearses. — 
 There is no satisfaction to be had in the external 
 atmosphere ; — the lounger's occupation's gone ! 
 The month of January was, in fact, a " lapse 
 of time" which (like Cleopatra in her trou- 
 bles) Lord Clanhenry had for many years past 
 been anxious to " dream away." Whether by 
 his residence at Melton or Brighton at that 
 business-like crisis, he contrived that his afflic- 
 tions should pour in upon him per post; — or 
 whether, boldly facing his persecutors at his 
 lion's den in the Albany, he was compelled 
 to confront them face to face, — was comparatively 
 unimportant. Between the first and fifteenth 
 of January of every consecutive year, he found 
 himself reduced to echo Sir John Falstaffs 
 apophthegm that for consumption of the purse 
 there is no remedy ; — and to sigh that so 
 few simple-hearted Justice Shallows remain 
 in the world. He had not, like Fitzgerald, so 
 much as an infirm old Duchess on whom to 
 build his speculations; like the locust in the 
 wilderness, he had eaten up the last green leaf; 
 
118 THE PAVILION. 
 
 sold every reversion, mortgaged every acre, 
 every contingency, every security, real, per- 
 sonal, or conjectural. There was nothing left 
 for him but a compromise with his creditors, or 
 an heiress ! 
 
 This conviction had brought him to Brigh- 
 ton. It is true he had no objection to dine 
 three or four times a week at the best table in 
 England, — listen three or four evenings to the 
 most exquisite music in the most luxurious /o- 
 cale,— and sun himself in all the pride, pomp, 
 and circumstance of glorious royalty. But fatal 
 experience had taught him, and an extensive 
 correspondence with his solicitors, bill-brokers, 
 and bill-makers, daily reminded him of the les- 
 son, that even his royal patron was not likely to 
 rob the Exchequer on his behoof; and that 
 Lady Beaulieu's smiles, however glorious to 
 bask in, would do nothing for the removal of his 
 embarrassments. He had debts, both of honour 
 and dishonour, to settle, that admitted of no 
 delay ; — and let the town be as gloomy or the 
 Pavilion as brilliant as it might, the main 
 
THE PAVILION. 119 
 
 point was his acceptance by a widow with eight, 
 or an heiress with ten thousand a year. 
 
 To achieve this desirable object, he had 
 spared no pain to Lady Grasmere, no pains 
 to himself: he had sneered away her confidence 
 in the Countess, her satisfaction in her own po- 
 sition in the world ; had quizzed her into odium 
 in the Pavilion circle, — slandered her into 
 contempt with the warm-hearted Brancepeth; 
 and he now hailed with delight the glow of fe- 
 minine jealousy beaming in her restless eyes 
 and transparent complexion, at the insinuations 
 he was enabled to append to his edition of 
 the state of affairs between her excellency of 
 Prussia, and Brancepeth the defender of the 
 faithful. He almost lamented the superfluous 
 trouble he had taken previous to quitting Lon- 
 don, to insinuate to his lordship that he was 
 himself about to visit Brighton, less with any 
 view of paying his court at the Pavilion, than 
 in compliance with the eager request of poor 
 dear Lady Grasmere that he would meet her 
 there, and act as her cavalier of the season ; a 
 statement which, although it strongly provoked 
 
120 THE PAVILION. 
 
 Lord Brancepeth to throw him out of the club 
 window at which they were standing, he felt that 
 he 'had no right to resent. The ignominy of the 
 case rested with the Viscountess herself; who, 
 for the sake of a little fashion — a collateral link 
 with the unapproachable sphere of Exclusives— 
 was induced to degrade herself by bestowing 
 her smiles on a libertine of broken fortunes, 
 approaching her with the undisguised intention 
 of repairing them at her expense. Lord Brance- 
 peth listened, less with indignation than disgust, 
 to Clanhenry's allusions to the evenings he was 
 in the habit of passing tite-a-tete with Lady 
 Grasmere, and the billets with which she was 
 daily, hourly, half-hourly in the habit of favour- 
 ing him. 
 
 Such were the misrepresentations whicli 
 caused that sudden alteration in his sentiments 
 and demeanour, detected by her ladyship on 
 her arrival at Brighton ; and the coolness, with 
 which her own quick sense of dignity induced 
 her to mark the consciousness of the fact, only 
 confirmed him in his belief of her attachment, 
 or entanglement, or engagement with Clan- 
 
THE PAVILION. 121 
 
 henry. Never, indeed, till that persuasion took 
 possession of his mind, had he been fully aware 
 of the admiration with which her beauty, her 
 graces, and her feminine virtues had inspired 
 him. His season for romance had long been 
 over : at the sober age of two-and-forty, love 
 and honeysuckles, and giggling young ladies, 
 lose their attraction. He knew that his post of 
 honour was not in a private station. He 
 had official duties entailed on him by a high 
 appointment in the household of the Regent, 
 which, for some years to come, must render him 
 a denizen of the Court, His anxiety, therefore, 
 in the selection of a wife, was less directed to 
 secure a pretty little doll to sit in his draw- 
 ing-room, embroidering work-bags, or murder- 
 ing Herz's sonatas for his amusement, after 
 the fashionable pattern of domestic life,— than 
 to find a woman worthy to adorn his rank in 
 the eyes of the world, as well as in his own ; — 
 qualified to walk hand in hand with him in the 
 saloons of royalty ; to participate with him in 
 an endless round of festivity and dissipation, 
 without any other object there than his ap- 
 VOL. I. G 
 
122 THE PAVILIOX. 
 
 proval ; and to encounter the perilous ordeal of 
 public admiration, without risk or hazard to her 
 honour or his ovrn. 
 
 On his first intimacy with Lady Grasmere, 
 even before his eye was captivated and his 
 powers of reasoning affected by her exquisite 
 beautVj he hailed her as eminently qualified 
 to fulfil his utmost exactions. He saw that she 
 was graceful and highly accomplished. From 
 all that he knew or could learn respecting her, 
 he believed lier to be as highly principled as 
 she was mild and endearing. She was rich, and 
 therefore above being swayed by interested mo- 
 tives, should she deign to honour him with her 
 hand ; and that she icould deign, he gazed and 
 gazed upon her beautiful face, fine figure, 
 and radiant smiles, till he flattered himself 
 into believing. The Viscountess had herself 
 announced her intention of passing the win- 
 ter at Brighton ; and he had already formed his 
 own of devoting himself there to her society, 
 and tendering his hand, and coronet, and 
 Brancepeth Court, to her acceptance. He 
 felt that an over jealous susceptibility had only 
 too long prolonged his celibacy, and would soon 
 
THE PAVILION. 123 
 
 convert him into an old bachelor. He had hi- 
 therto cherished, with the tenacious egotism of 
 his sex, an apprehension that his rank and for- 
 tune might exert a stronger influence than his 
 personal merits, in aid of his courtship. But 
 all these fears anxieties and misgivings were 
 irrelevant in the case of a lovely Viscountess, 
 in the independent possession of eight thousand 
 
 a 
 
 year 
 
 \ 
 
 Such were the auspicious prospects blighted 
 by the cunning of Clanhenry, and the malice of 
 Fitzgerald ; and such the motives which induced 
 the former to watch with triumphant satisfaction, 
 on the ensuing evening at the Pavilion, the in- 
 creased and increasing intimacy between Brance- 
 peth and Countess Reppenheim. He saw that 
 all was safe ; that the Angelo of the Regent's 
 Court (disappointed in his matrimonial projects 
 on the wealthy widow) was fast falling into a 
 snare of a very different description ; and not 
 even Lady Beaulieu observed with greater satis- 
 faction the flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes of 
 the guilty pair, as they sat apart on the silken 
 divan encircling the saloon. 
 G 2 
 
124 THE PAVILION. 
 
 Very little, indeed, did he suspect that the 
 conversation, exciting so many surmises, had 
 commenced, on the part of the Countess, with a 
 confession of indisposition, arising from her sur- 
 prise at the coldness, strangeness, inconsistency, 
 with which her visit had been received by Lady 
 Grasmere. Foreigners do not cherish that ex_ 
 cessive delicacy on matters connected with the 
 heart, which distinguishes the more reserved na- 
 ture of our countrymen. They talk of Love and 
 Friendship, as they would of the fine arts, and dis- 
 cuss even their lovers and friends, as they would 
 a favourite author or actress. Madame Rep- 
 penheim had no hesitation in acknowledging 
 lierself to be soiiffrante^ — accahlee, — desolee^ by 
 the unaccountable caprice suddenly displayed 
 towards her by a person so gentle, so considerate, 
 and so warm-hearted as her dear Lady Gras- 
 mere ! 
 
 Nothing could be more natural than for the 
 still partial Brancepeth to ascribe this unsatis- 
 factory change of character to the influence of 
 lier ladyship's accepted lover, the worldly- 
 
THE PAVILION. 125 
 
 minded Clanhenry ; nothing more indispensable 
 than for the Countess to vindicate the outraged 
 fame of her friend, by an assertion of Lady 
 Grasmere's personal detestation of the obese 
 dandy, — her abhorrence of his principles, — her 
 contempt of his pretensions, 
 
 " I fear you are mistaken," replied his lordship. 
 " I have good authority for knowing that Clan- 
 henry is in immediate correspondence with your 
 friend ; and that he has visited her on the most 
 familiar footing at Maplewood for some time 
 past." 
 
 " We have scarcely been apart for the last four 
 months," cried the Countess, w^arming in de- 
 fence of her dear Lady Grasmere ; " and it has 
 often given me concern to observe the annoy- 
 ance caused her by Lord Clanhenry's importu- 
 nities. Nothing but the dread of his satirical 
 wit, and the influence he exercises in the great 
 world, has prevented her from forbidding him 
 the house. To be made the subject of one of 
 Lord Clanhenry's caricatures or lampoons, 
 amounts, it appears, to banishment from so- 
 ciety." 
 
126 THE PAVILION. 
 
 " Had not Lady Grasmere originally expe- 
 rienced some degree of predilection for those 
 fashionable accomplishments — " Lord Brance- 
 peth began : but the Countess would not suffer 
 him to proceed. 
 
 "No, no, no!" she exclaimed. "Believe 
 me, Eleanor has better taste. Nothing does she 
 so unexceptionably revile, as the hollo wness, 
 persiflage^ mockery, practised by such men 
 as Clanhenry and Fitzgerald. Nay, I have even 
 heard her adduce, as the noblest trait in your 
 own character (when citing Lord Brancepeth to 
 me as the model of an English gentleman), your 
 perfect frankness and candour." 
 
 In the ardour of defending an absent friend, 
 the Countess did not perceive how far— how 
 much too far — she had ventured ; and Bi'ance- 
 peth, gratified beyond description, w^as careful 
 not to call her attention to her own indiscretion, 
 so as to induce her retraction of the flattering 
 inference. He had just then, indeed, no fur- 
 ther opportunity of persisting in an investiga- 
 tion so interesting to his feelings; for Lady 
 
THE PAVILIOM. 127 
 
 Beaulieu, bent on removing the unhandsome 
 prejudices mahciously excited against the new 
 ambassadress, had seized the opportunity of 
 pointing out to their illustrious host, (with whom 
 she was an old-established friend and favourite, ) 
 the extreme beauty of Countess Reppenheim's 
 countenance, as she sat engaged in animated 
 conversation with his favourite Brancepeth. 
 Touching, with a woman's ready tact, on every 
 point of the Countess's history calculated to in- 
 vest her with interest or importance in the eyes 
 of the Regent, she described her intimacy with 
 the beautiful Louisa of Prussia, (that heroine of 
 royal romance ! ) and the high distinction with 
 which she was still endowed at the court of her 
 native country by the force of that touching re- 
 miniscence. No person was at hand to sneer, — . 
 to quiz, — or to decry ; and Lady Beaulieu had 
 the satisfaction to perceive that her plain tale 
 produced the desirable effect on a mind natu- 
 rally imbued with noble and generous impulses, 
 A few minutes afterwards, she had the grati- 
 fication to perceive that his Royal Highness 
 
128 
 
 THE PAVILION. 
 
 was sharing with Lord Brancepeth the animated 
 smiles of the Countess; who, too much engrossed 
 by the interest of the conversation in which slie 
 had been previously engaged, to remember one 
 word of Clanhenry's malignant lessons or Fitz- 
 gerald's mystifications, now appeared before his 
 discriminating eyes in her natural character 
 of a mild, unassuming, simple, true-hearted 
 woman. When the Prince, pleased by her gentle 
 tones and graceful demeanour, proceeded to 
 lead the discourse to her native court, her native 
 country, her past life, her beloved mistress, — 
 the genuine and unexaggerated tone of deep 
 feeling with which she recurred to that almost 
 sacred subject, interested him still more warmly 
 in her favour. Countess Reppenheim possessed 
 moreover a fund of valuable information con- 
 nected with the late war and the imperial 
 usurper, derived from actual observation ; she 
 had been present at that memorable interview 
 wlien the Queen was sent to intercede, and in- 
 terceded in vain, for the cession of Magdeburg ; 
 and, on a topic upon which she was so fully 
 informed as well as so earnestly interested, was 
 
THE PAVILION. 129 
 
 eloquent and impresssive beyond the ordinary 
 powers of her sex. It was not till he re- 
 tired for the night, that his Royal Highness 
 abandoned the post by her side, so long neg- 
 lected, and now so highly and justly appre- 
 ciated. 
 
 The circle was petrified. Domdaniel having 
 retreated to a corner, was writhing his trunk 
 from side to side in speechless agony. — The 
 bore ! — the mouton qui reve ! — the rejected, con- 
 temned Countess Reppenheim had held the 
 Prince Regent entranced in familiar conversa-- 
 tion for one hour and forty minutes, by the 
 musical pendule that told the golden hours on 
 the chimney piece ! — Lady Beaulieu triumphed ; 
 and nothing was talked of next day but the 
 caprices of fortune, and die caprices of royalty. 
 A more startling scene, however, was still in 
 reserve. Before tlie close of the afternoon, 
 cards were issued for an impromptu ball to be 
 given on that very evening ; and amid the flut- 
 ter of silks and satins occasioned by die sudden- 
 ness of the event, a thousand mysterious rumours 
 became partially audible. 
 G 5 
 
130 THE PAVILION. 
 
 Lord Clanhenry, was perhaps, the only man 
 in Brighton whose ear they did not reach. 
 In addition to his ordinary packet of long 
 wafer-sealed epistles, the mail of that fatal night 
 had brought down from town his man of busi- 
 ness, wearing what the newspapers call a most 
 imposing attitude. An interview was appointed 
 between them that could not be neglected ; and 
 two large tin cases filled with deeds of mortgage, 
 annuity, insurance, assurance, and all the other 
 paper currency of a ruined man, accompanied Mr. 
 Cursitor to his lordship's lodgings. Argument 
 was unavailing, evasion useless, compromise out 
 of the question, procrastination impossible. Mr. 
 Cursitor rendered it as apparent, not only as 
 words, but as deeds could make it, that his 
 lordship was an insolvent debtor, a bankrupt 
 Peer ; and that, unless the matrimonial redemp- 
 tion announced in his recent letters were already 
 secured, all was over with him ! 
 
 On that point, Clanhenry took defensive 
 ground. If not secured, it was secure; and if 
 Mr. Cursitor would do him the honour to dine 
 with him, and remain four-and- twenty hours 
 
THE PAVILION. 131 
 
 at Brighton, all should be satisfactorily ar- 
 rano^ed. He admitted it had cost him some 
 scruples to sacrifice himself for money ; but the 
 call of honour should now be obeyed. He 
 would dispatch his proposals in the course of 
 the afternoon; and Mr. Cursitor might bear 
 back to London, early on the following morn- 
 ings intelligence that Lady Grasmere was at his 
 disposal, and her eight thousand a year at 
 the disposal of his creditors. And while he 
 hastened to pen an episde to the Viscountess, 
 profuse in protestations of disinterested and 
 unlimited attachment, it certainly did impart 
 some little additional triumph to his feelings to 
 reflect on the mortification with which Fitz- 
 gerald, and the pain with which the outwitted 
 Brancepeth would hear of his acceptance. 
 Apprehensive that some latitude of speech 
 might circulate a rumour of the object of Cur- 
 sitor's visit, should he suffer the man of business 
 to become a man of pleasure and escape out of 
 his sight, his lordship renounced for that day 
 his morning lounge and daily visits ; and, hav- 
 ing received with the rest of the court circle an 
 
132 THE PAVILION. 
 
 invitation for the evening, contented himself 
 with the certainty that before it was time for 
 him to dress and go to the ball, it would be 
 time for his solicitor to undress and go to bed. 
 
 The fatal hour arrived ; and, nauseated by 
 the first bad dinner he had eaten for six weeks 
 and the first bottle of port he had tasted for 
 six years, — heated, flushed, indigestive, having 
 vainly waited till the last moment for Lady 
 Grasmere's expected answer, he at length shook 
 hands with Cursitor (who now saw two fat 
 clients before him instead of one) and stepped 
 into his cabriolet. He was very late ! When 
 the great portal of the illuminated hall unclosed 
 to receive him, the exhilarating sound of music 
 instantly greeted his ear; and groups of gay 
 and glancing figures witliin, warned that the fete 
 had already commenced ; he beheld the Bi- 
 shopess pluming herself like a peacock, and 
 the Pliysicianess strutting like a jackdaw. 
 When lo ! just as he entered the ball room at 
 one door, a general stir and subsequent stillness 
 throughout the apartment warned him that the 
 Prince Regent was entering on the other. All 
 
THE PAVILION. 133 
 
 eyes were directed towards the spot. A lady 
 splendidly attired was leaning on his Royal 
 Highness's arm ; a lady, whose exquisite beauty 
 now seemed to strike the beholders for the first 
 time. It is true they had often seen her before ; 
 often radiant as now with diamonds ; often ar- 
 rayed as now in pearly satin. But never before 
 had they beheld her dignified by the graceful 
 homage of the Regent ; never before had they 
 seen her blush so sweetly as when presented by 
 his Royal Highness to Lady Beaulieu and 
 others of his peculiar circle, as " my new and 
 amiable friend, Lady Grasmere." 
 
 " What the devil is the meaning of all this ? '^ 
 inquired Clanhenry (frighted from his pro- 
 priety by port wine and consternation) of the 
 panic-struck Domdaniel by his side. 
 
 " Only that Brancepeth having this morning, 
 announced his approaching marriage to our 
 illustrious friend, our illustrious friend most 
 condescendingly resolved to — *' 
 
 " Ay, ay ! I understand,'^ interrupted Clan- 
 henry, shivering with the shock. " Poor Fitz- 
 gerald, eh ! — One can't help feeling a little for 
 
134 THE PAVILION. 
 
 poor Fitzgerald," he continued; suddenly striv- 
 ing to recover himself, and dissjuise his vexation 
 from the K.C.B. of many echoes. 
 
 " Fitzgerald ? — What can it signify to him ? 
 Have you not heard that Fred.'s engagement 
 with little Clerimont is formally announced by 
 Lady Mary? And the worst of it is, he has 
 sold himself a blind bargain ; for the Duchess of 
 Keswycke died this morning, and has left him 
 universal legatee ! Handsome Fred, by waiting 
 half a day longer, might have escaped a wife 
 with a fiery head and still more fiery temper. 
 But see ; here comes Brancepeth to be con- 
 gratulated. Clanhenry ! where are you ? — Has 
 any one seen Lord Clanhenry ? — God bless my 
 soul ! he must have disappeared while I was 
 talking to him ! '' 
 
 No one had seen, no one did see his lordship 
 again that night. But two days afterwards, 
 when the Morning Post announced an ap- 
 proaching alliance between the Right Hon. 
 Lord Brancepeth and the Dowager Viscountess 
 Grasmere, the solemnization of which was to be 
 honoured with the presence of his Royal High- 
 
THE PAVILION. 135 
 
 ness the Prince Regent, an extract from the 
 Brighton paper furthermore edified the creditors 
 of the luckless Clanhenry with intelligence that 
 his lordship was one of the passengers on board 
 the last packet from Newhaven to Calais ; an 
 incident which caused no little scandal and 
 speculation in the ilkistrious circle of — The 
 Pavilion. 
 
MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 II n'y a rien dont on voit mieux la fin qu'une grande 
 fortuner. 
 
 La Bruyere. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 To secure our own enjoyment is happiness ; — to secure 
 the enjoyment of others, is virtue. Saadi. 
 
 Mr. Martindale was considered a very for- 
 tunate man to return from the Cape of Good 
 Hope with a fortune of ninety thousand pounds, 
 shortly after he had attained the age of forty- 
 four. Ages and their influences are comparative. 
 An individual, who during twenty-two of his four- 
 and-forty years has scarcely missed as many days 
 of being seen on the pave of St. James's Street 
 or in the dust of Hyde Park, — whose visage has 
 been as stationary in the bay window of White's, 
 Arthur's, or the Cocoa Tree, as that of the 
 sreat Saladin over the Saracen's Head coach- 
 
140 MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 office, passes for a middle-aged man, or ra- 
 ther for a man of a certain ^ge; but one 
 who has passed his time in purveying camels 
 for the East India Company in the vicinity 
 of the Himalaya, or planting indigo, or chew- 
 ing betel in any other oriental settlement, is ac- 
 counted a young man, should his final settlement 
 with Leadenhall-street be completed within his 
 first half century. Richard Martindale, thanks 
 to currie, magnesia lozenges, and other bilious 
 preventatives, had been so lucky as to lose sight 
 of Table Mountain without the loss of his 
 liver or the reduplication of his spleen; — his 
 fortune was invested in a very safe house;— and 
 on his arrival at Nerot's Hotel from the Downs, 
 he thought himself, and was thought by the 
 waiters, a very important personage. He was 
 not indeed the inheritor of an aristocratic name, 
 but his lineage w^as respectable and irreproach- 
 able ; his father having been an eminent physician 
 in the town of Hertford, where his elder bro- 
 ther still practised as the leading attorney. One 
 younger brother was a clergyman ; and his two 
 
MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 141 
 
 sisters were married to small squires in the 
 neighbourhood of their hereditary home. 
 
 In such a family, secure from all pretension 
 to fashion or distinction, the sum of ninety thou- 
 sand pounds was as the treasury of the pre- 
 Adamite sultans ! They had been talking for 
 five years past of all Richard would do when he 
 arrived ; and now that he was really come, and 
 really pleaded guilty to the possession of a sum 
 so nearly approaching to one hundred thousand 
 pounds, they hardly knew how to make too 
 much of him^ or too little of themselves. A for- 
 tune recently acquired or still floating, which 
 has not yet been subjected to matter-of-fact 
 calculations respecting interest, investment, 
 and net produce, always assumes double im- 
 portance. To say that a man has an income 
 of four thousand a year, is to say nothing. One 
 set of people regard him as a pauper ; another 
 set observe that, with management, he may 
 live handsomely enough ; a third declare that 
 he must not attempt to launch out in Lon- 
 don society ; and the fashionable world vote him 
 admissible only as a giver of moderate dinners, 
 
142 MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 and a proprietor of moderate equipages. But 
 give him boldly out as recently arrived in Eng- 
 land with a hundred thousand pounds, and the 
 whole world (with the exception of the mer- 
 cantile classes) hail him at once as a wealthy 
 man. What may not a man do with a hun- 
 dred thousand pounds ! — " No stud, — no service 
 of plate , — no French cook, — no opera box ? 
 Shabby fellow ! — If a man with a hundred thou- 
 sand pounds cannot afford to be comfortable, 
 icho can ? " People talk of the earnings of his 
 thirty years' exile, — of the whole provision for his 
 future family, — as of a year's income. 
 
 Such was the case with Richard Martindale. 
 His elder brother the At— — , but no, he called 
 himself " the Solicitor," had long fixed a greedy 
 eye on a small estate of fifty or sixty acres, ad- 
 joining his paddock, in the suburbs of Hertford. 
 " Now i?2c/zar<i is come home," said he, to his 
 smart wife, " I shall get him to manage it for 
 me." The Reverend Jacob, like his namesake, 
 proprietor of twelve blooming children, was no 
 less anxious to build a wing to his parsonage, in 
 order that the fathers of the twelve future tribes 
 
MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 143 
 
 might not sleep above three in a bed. " Now 
 Richard is come home," said he to his dowdy 
 wife, " I shall get him to manage it for me." 
 His elder sister, Mrs. Marriott, had an elder 
 son ripe for college ; and, in his mother's opi- 
 nion, needing only that stepping-stone to ad- 
 vancement to reach the highest dignities of 
 church or state. It had long been her ambition 
 to behold him in trencher cap and gown. " Now 
 Richard is come home," said she to her somno- 
 lent spouse, " I shall get him to manage it for 
 me." His younger sister, Mrs. Millegan, whose 
 husband, in addition to his own farm, managed 
 the large estates of the Earl of Mowbray, and 
 who was accordingly much noticed by the ladies 
 at Mowbray End, had long been desirous of 
 possessing some sort of carriage, even a pony 
 cart, in which she could make her appearance 
 there when company was staying in the house, 
 without dust or mud upon her shoes or traces of 
 plebeian moisture on her brow. " Now Rich- 
 ard \s come home," cried she to her three eager 
 daughters, " I shall get him to manage it for 
 me." 
 
144 MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 For these cogent reasons, the different mem- 
 bers of his family were severally though si- 
 multaneously careful not to grace the exile's 
 welcome home with any demonstration of per- 
 sonal comfort. Both brothers and sisters were 
 really and unaffectedly delighted to see him ; 
 but they were just ninety thousand times as 
 fond of him as when, in his hobble-de-hoyhood, 
 a passage was taken for him in the outward- 
 bound ship fated to convey him to the Hotten- 
 tots and cobra-de-capellas. But instead of re- 
 joicing heartily with him on his safe return, 
 slaying the fatted calf, and listening politely if 
 not attentively to his Eastern romanceSj each 
 had a tale to tell of " moving accidents by flood 
 and fell;" — of the badness of the times; the 
 defaulture of parishioners ; the rise of dry goods 
 and tobaccos ; the fall of stocks ; the unpromis- 
 ing aspect of affairs both public and private; — 
 and instead of their usual hearty joviality, each 
 spoke in a plaintive tone with elevated eye- 
 brows and depressed mouth. Each wanted but 
 a little, however, of being able to face with cheer- 
 fulness the ills of life. Robert, the solicitor, 
 
MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 145 
 
 honestly confessed that he had no doubt of 
 making his way in the world, and bringing up 
 his family respectably, if he were only able to 
 accomplish the purchase of Clammer Mill Farm. 
 Jacob had no fault to find with his condition 
 in life ; but it was a grievous thing to see ten 
 or a dozen fine boys cooped up like quails in a 
 poulterer's cage, or turned out on the village 
 green to play with vagabonds or trampers, be- 
 cause there was no room for them in their poor 
 father's confined and unwholesome house. Maria 
 showed him albums full of her poor dear Dick's 
 " Fugitive poetry;" and appealed to him, whether 
 it would not be a thousand pities that so much 
 genius should blush unseen for lack of the dis- 
 tinctions of the University;— while Nancy hinted 
 that if she could but manage to keep up appear- 
 ances a little better, she had very little doubt of 
 securing one of the young Mowbrays as a hus- 
 band for her daughter Anne ; only when the poor 
 girls made their appearance in the saloon at 
 Mowbray End, panting and puffing after their 
 walk, with the complexion of a cook in the 
 
 VOL. 1. H 
 
146 MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 basting act, it was not to be supposed they could 
 look to advantage. 
 
 Poor Richard was at first mightily distressed 
 to observe the desponding condition of his 
 kinsfolk. There could not apparently be four 
 more uncomfortable families than those which 
 had unceasingly favoured him, during his resi- 
 dence among the Hottentots, with glowing pic- 
 tures of their domestic happiness, and entreaties 
 that he would hasten his return to witness 
 and share it. Their pretensions, however, were 
 far from exorbitant. He was in hopes that five 
 thousand pounds would cover the whole amount 
 of their ambition ; and what was five thousand 
 out of ninety ? — Within a week, therefore, after 
 his arrival at the dapper residence of his brother 
 Robert, he had promised universal happiness to 
 the family; purchased the Clammer Mill estate; 
 presented to Jacob the fifteen hundred pounds 
 necessary to build and furnish the new wing; 
 settled eighty pounds a year on Richard Mar- 
 riot; and bestowed on the astonished Mrs. 
 Millegan a handsome chariot and set of horses. 
 He cursed the whole family in short '' with 
 many a granted prayer ;" and never was a 
 
MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 147 
 
 finer or more glowing specimen of the short- 
 sightedness and ingratitude of the human race 
 exhibited, than by the dynasty of Martin- 
 dale. Having so readily obtained all they asked 
 for, they were now prodigiously vexed they had 
 not asked for more. Bob had little doubt that 
 his dear Richard would have made very little 
 difficulty in adding the Springfield Farm to his 
 purchase ; which would, in fact, have made the 
 whole a most complete thing — a most valuable 
 investment — a most saleable property : — while 
 Jacob thought it a great oversight to expend so 
 large a sum as fifteen hundred pounds on a 
 college living, while four thousand would have 
 purchased the advowson of Bramfield, where the 
 parsonage and gardens were calculated for the 
 reception of a large family (six more sons if he 
 liked), and fit to step into at once, without incur- 
 ing the perplexities of brick and mortar : — Mrs. 
 Marriot woke her unhappy husband three or 
 four times during his after-dinner doze, to lament 
 that while she was about it she had not begged 
 her brother to send Tom to Westminster, as well 
 as Dick to Trinity ; and, as to Mrs. Millegan, 
 H 2 
 
148 MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 she had an attack of the jaundice in honour of 
 her good fortune. She, who had been the most 
 abundantly rewarded of all, — she who had 
 spunged for a pony cart and obtained a yellow 
 chariot with a light blue bullion hammer-cloth, 
 — she was the most disappointed, — the most 
 indignant of the whole family ; — and knew not 
 whether most to blame her own improvidence 
 or the injustice of her brother. He was no 
 longer her *' dear " brother ■ — no longer even 
 Dick— but merely "Richard Martindale." — 
 Nothing could be more unfair than Richard 
 Martindale's partiality in the family ; and to 
 make her the sufferer, — his next, and once his 
 favourite sister ! — she who had been " little 
 Nancy " in his early letters from the Cape ; — 
 and who had sent him out year after year, for 
 fifteen seasons, a case of high-dried hams and 
 tongues of her own curing. It was too bad ! 
 
 Richard Martindale had expended c£2754. 
 Is. Sd. on the purchase of the Clammer Mill 
 estate; — Richard Martindale had paid in hard 
 cash to his brother Jacob, a sum of ofloOO ; 
 — Richard Martindale had settled on Dick Mar* 
 riot the interest of c£2,000 ; while on herself, — 
 
MY PLACE IN THE COUNTR 149 
 
 *on little Nancy, — on poor little Nancy, — he had 
 bestowed a London built chariot, with a pair of 
 harness and iron-grey horses ! — Even allowing 
 for Richard Martindale's absurd ignorance of 
 the value of things, and predisposition to be 
 cheated, the whole gift would not have cost him 
 of 600 ; and, by a prudent purchaser, might have 
 been secured for c£470. And this was to be 
 her portion of his opulence ; this her share of 
 the family bounty amounting in the aggregate 
 to i'6,854. 75. 8d ! ! ! 
 
 While poor Mrs Millegan railed at the cru- 
 elty of her brother, — her husband and daughters 
 railed at her own bad management ; till, in the 
 exuberance of her wrath, she set forth in the 
 town-built chariot aforesaid with its blue ham- 
 mer-cloth, to quarrel with her sister Marriot 
 for having so shamefully overreached poor 
 Richard. Nay, before the month was over, 
 hard words had passed between Robert Mar- 
 tindale and Jacob (in whose parish, the momen- 
 tous farm of Clammer Mill happened to be 
 situated) ; and Richard, on his second arrival 
 in Hertfordshire from Nerot's Hotel, found that 
 
150 MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 those he had left desponding, were grown 
 despairing ; and that their complaints were now 
 no longer of their circumstances, but of each 
 other. No two of the four families could meet 
 without bickering ; and in consequence of this 
 novel disunion, it came out that young Dick of 
 Trinity was privately engaged to his cousin 
 Clotilda Martindale, sole heiress to the solicitor 
 and to Clammer Mill farm ; and that the eldest 
 of Jacob's dozen had been writing verses to 
 Miss Helena Millegan the Mowbray hunter ! 
 War was now openly declared among them; 
 and Richard Martindale, accustomed to the 
 pococurante existence of Africa, and the dreari- 
 ness of oriental lassitude, was amazed that they 
 could all take so much pleasure in talking so 
 loud and so fast; and above everything, was 
 seriously disgusted by the mercenary character 
 betrayed by every member of his family. He 
 had not been in England long enough to know 
 the value of a guinea, the burdensomeness of 
 a numerous progeny, and the mortification of 
 being overreached ! 
 
 At length, growing somewhat irritable, he be- 
 
MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 151 
 
 gan to fancy himself bilious ; and having packed 
 himself and his York-tan coloured serving-man 
 (it is impossible to designate him a valet) into a 
 yellow chariot resembling, with the exception 
 of the hammercloth, his ill-starred present to 
 the wife of Lord Mowbray's agent, he set off' 
 for Cheltenham as fast as four post horses would 
 carry him. If he could not get rid of his indi- 
 gestion, it would be something to get rid of his 
 family. 
 
152 MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 So thistles wear the softest down 
 To hide their prickles, till they 're grown ; 
 And then declare themselves, and tear 
 Whatever ventures to come near. 
 
 HUDIBRAS. 
 
 Poor Martindale felt as if released from the 
 house of bondage as he walked jauntily along 
 the Montpelier Parade, arrayed in a new coat, 
 new boots, new gloves, new every thing; be- 
 traying in every look and movement the luxu- 
 rious nabob, intent on his own rejuvenescence, 
 and enchanted with the stir and cheerfulness of 
 an English watering-place. 
 
 And if his object in visiting Cheltenham 
 were to recruit his health and spirits, the effort 
 was speedily effectual ; for at the close of ten 
 days, he made his way to the spring, not only 
 more spruce and self-complacent than ever, but 
 
MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 153 
 
 having a very pretty woman appended to bis 
 arm. Discouraged in his attempt to diffuse 
 happiness and sow contentment in his own 
 family, he had conceived a determination to be- 
 come the founder of a new family for a renewal 
 of the experiment. 
 
 Although forty-four in years, and fifty in com- 
 plexion (his face having very much the appear- 
 ance of a last year's russeting apple), Richard 
 was by no means an ill-looking man ; and, 
 but for a little excess of showiness in his cos- 
 tume, might have passed for a gentlemanly 
 one. Having tontined his way to a high ap- 
 pointment at the Cape, he had lived there in 
 the best official society ; and was in fact a bet- 
 ter bred man than either Robert or Jacob, his 
 brethren, who, between themselves, affected to 
 look upon him as a Hottentot. But whether 
 ill-looking, ill-dressed, ill-bred, or well, it mat- 
 tered not. A handsome equipage, and the re- 
 ports circulated by his York-tan coloured ser- 
 vant, had induced an opinion that he was a man 
 of millions: and it naturally followed that he 
 soon became an object of universal esteem and 
 H 5 
 
154 MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 admiration. It happened that a Scotch banker, 
 the brother or cousin of his own agent, was so- 
 journing at Cheltenham ; through whose busy 
 intervention, divers loo-playing dowagers and 
 mammas of many daughters, managed to make 
 the acquaintannce of the bachelor-nabob. They 
 found Richard Martindale quite ready to fall 
 in love, and be fallen in love with; and with 
 the natural hankering after a little bit of dignity 
 so remarkable among the wise men and the 
 foolish who visit us from the East, he soon an- 
 chored his affections on Miss Mary-Matilda 
 Grinder well, daughter of a Dorsetshire Baronet; 
 a bewitching creature, with pink cheeks, flaxen 
 hair, a stiff muslin frock and coloured shoes, 
 exactly after the pattern of an angel in a panto- 
 mime, or a doll at a bazaar. Sir John and Lady 
 Grinderwell were enchanted with the prospect 
 of securing such a son-in-law; and though, on 
 examination into his exchequer and treasury 
 estimates, Mr. Martindale proved to have ex- 
 actly four hundred and fifteen thousand pounds 
 less than common fame had led them to expect, 
 he had quite as much as warranted them in 
 
MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 155 
 
 calling him *• a man of four or five thousand a 
 year," (for a Baronet of landed estate knew 
 better than lo talk about eighty-five thousand 
 pounds,) and they had the satisfaction to per- 
 ceive that nothing could be more liberal and 
 docile than his notions about settlements for his 
 dear Mary-Matilda, and her future family. 
 
 As Mr. Martindale was somewhat out of con- 
 ceit of his Hertfordshire relatives, and as Lady 
 Grinderwell was of opinion that it would make 
 room in the family coach if she were able to 
 travel back to Grinderwell House without the 
 addition of her third daughter's company, it 
 was agreed that the marriage ceremony should 
 be performed (without ceremony) at Chelten- 
 ham. Richard Martindale's chariot was as good 
 as new, — his wardrobe quite that of a bride- 
 groom ; and as to his dear Mary-Matilda, the 
 Cheltenham mantua-makers and milliners far 
 exceeded any notions of fashion she had ever 
 been permitted to indulge. A showy flimsy 
 trousseau was therefore speedily gathered together. 
 Martindale made a flying journey to Bath for 
 the purchase of trinkets and wedding presents; 
 
156 MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 and, within two months from the day when his 
 travelling-carriage first drew up under the gate- 
 way of the Plough Hotel, it made its exit 
 in an opposite direction on a bridal tour into 
 Wales. Richard was the happiest of men ; 
 Mrs. Richard, in her bonnet and feathers, 
 the smartest of women; and if the Yoi'k-tan 
 domestic in the rumble did not show his white 
 teeth by grinning quite so broadly as formerly, 
 it was because a very sententious lady's-maid 
 was seated by his side, who affected a taste for 
 the romantic, and sobered him by her allusions 
 to the pleasures of the mind. 
 
 A bridal tour, in fine weather, with an easy 
 carriage and a travelling-desk full of bank-notes, 
 is thought to constitute the height of human 
 felicity. Mr. and Mrs. Richard Martindale 
 travelled hand in hand for nearly seven hundred 
 miles, enlivened by Mary-Matilda's somewhat 
 diffuse reminiscences of Grinderwell House, and 
 the two preceding summers at Weymouth and 
 Hastings, " where Pa had had to fight a duel 
 with a Captain of Hussars about her elder sister, 
 and where Julia, the second, had been very near 
 
MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 157 
 
 marrying a very handsome young man with 
 mustachios, a Lieutenant-Colonel in the service 
 of Don Pedro, who had since been tried for 
 shop-hfting ; " — as well as by Richard Martin- 
 dale's repertory of anecdotes of hair-breadth 
 'scapes from boa constrictors and lion-cubs, — an 
 expedition to the Court of Congo, — the horrors 
 of the tail of a typhoon he had encountered on 
 his outward-bound voyage, and the head of a 
 shark on his return. It would be irrelevant to 
 vary the picture of their pilgrimage by a hint of 
 all the damp beds, tough beef-steaks, sloe-juice 
 wine, and sloe-leaf tea, they confronted by the 
 way. All these minor miseries served as texts 
 for Richard's protestations to his bride, that 
 
 With her conversing, he enjoyed hard beef, 
 Sour veal, or musty lamb, — all pleased alike ; 
 
 while Mary-Matilda maintained, for the first six 
 weeks, that the tenderness of her dear Richard 
 fully compensated the toughness of the steaks. 
 
 At length the November fogs set in. Mar- 
 tindale could no longer travel with the windows 
 down, and was obliged to plead guilty to the 
 twinges of a flying rheumatism. The loving 
 
138 MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 couple having now been acquainted for four 
 months, and united for two, had confided and 
 re-confided to each other (like two benighted 
 princesses meeting in a wood in one of Made- 
 moiselle de Scudery's novels) all the incidents 
 of their past lives. Mary-Matilda was beginning 
 to yawn wider and oftener than was either be- 
 coming or safe, considering the state of the at- 
 mosphere ; and it was at length agreed between 
 them that, although travelling was a delightful 
 thing, it would be still more delightful to settle 
 in a good warm residence for the winter. 
 The world was all before them where to choose : — 
 Richard spoke of Hertfordshire ; Mary- Ma- 
 tilda thought of London ; — and lest either should 
 obtain ascendancy in this their first matrimonial 
 privy-council, they mutually determined on 
 Bath. They could not have chosen better. Bath 
 was precisely the place for the man who could se- 
 lect a carriage for country use with a blue bullion 
 hammercloth, and for a lady who could set off 
 on a tour to the mountains in a white satin hat 
 and feathers. To Bath they went ; engaged a 
 handsome house, gave dinners, were " visited 
 
MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 139 
 
 by every body ;" and before the return of spring 
 made manifest to Richard that he would shortly 
 be the happy father of a little Dick, Mrs. 
 Martindale, the daughter of Sir John Grinder- 
 well, — Mrs. Martindale, whose fine clothes were 
 now replaced by still finer, and who wore such 
 beautiful pearls and such a quantity of ostrich 
 feathers, — was pronounced to be one of the beau- 
 ties of Bath, and " quite the woman of fashion." 
 Richard grew more persuaded than ever that 
 he was the luckiest and happiest of men ; and 
 Mrs. Millegan (whose daughters had been 
 finished at a Bath boarding-school, and retained 
 several correspondents there) was ready to ex- 
 pire of indignation on learning in what style her 
 brother lived, and that Mrs. Richard Martin- 
 dale's ball had been the most splendid of the 
 Circus and the Season. The whole of the Mar- 
 tindale family had, in the first instance, received 
 the announcement of his marriage as a personal 
 injury; and their only comfort was in pointing 
 out that one of a Baronet's many daughters 
 could not but prove a very unthrifty helpmate. 
 They had fancied Richard, at forty-four, a man 
 
160 MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 of more sense than to be captivated by the 
 
 first pretty face that came in his way ; and 
 
 now that he had actually become the prey of a 
 
 mrl of whom he was old enough to be the fa- 
 ts o 
 
 ther, and who would doubtless make him father 
 of as large a family as that which blessed 
 the union of her own prolific father and mother, 
 they cared not how little they heard about him. 
 Clammer Mill proved a profitable bargain ; — 
 Jacob's wing had been finished by contract so 
 as to leave him two hundred pounds in pocket ; 
 Dick Harriot was doing wonders at Cam- 
 bridge ; and all congratulated themselves on 
 having been so prompt in screwing what they 
 wanted out of the pocket of " that silly fellow, 
 Richard." 
 
 Mrs. Millegan was the only one of the family 
 who was implacable. Had she dreamed on 
 Dick's arrival in England that he was likely to 
 make a fool of himself by marrying, she cer- 
 tainly would have spoken out at the period of 
 his insulting her by the present of that useless, 
 showy carriage ; a thing, as Millegan observed 
 at the time, that "would require a couple of hun- 
 
MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 161 
 
 dreds a year to keep it up;" a thing, as Lady 
 Charlotte and Lady Jemima Mowbray had been 
 observing ever since, "quite inconsistent with their 
 establishment and style of living;" a thing she 
 had never sought — never wished for. Had he 
 given her a pony-cart, as she hinted to him, 
 there would have been some sense it. But a 
 London chariot and horses ! — and such horses ! 
 lame, blind, spavined, windgalled: — " Mr. Mille- 
 gan had sold them for a song to the Red Dragon 
 at Hertford, and they were actually running in 
 the mail ! " 
 
 " Little Nancy " (who was now a woman of 
 some fifteen stone) could by no means pardon 
 her brother ; and when the newspapers eventu- 
 ally announced that the lady of Richai'd Martin- 
 dale, of the Circus, Bath, had given birth to a 
 son and heir, the sole ejaculation of her sisterly 
 tenderness on the occasion was, " Much good 
 may it do him ! " It was but an augmentation 
 of her wrath, when she learned from her brother 
 Robert, whom as her husband's man of busi- 
 ness it had not been convenient to her to include 
 in her family quarrel, that this addition to the 
 
162 MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 tribe of Martindale had been christened Grin- 
 derwell. " Grinderweli Martindale ! — Perhaps 
 some day or other to become Sir Grinderweli 
 Martindale ! — The euphony of such a title ! — 
 Why could not Dick content himself with one 
 of the family names, Richard, Robert, or Jacob ? 
 Between a Miss Clotilda, and a Master Grin- 
 derweli, the Martindale family was likely to 
 descend in a pretty way to posterity." 
 
MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. ]63 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 All quit their homes, and rush into the sea. 
 
 COWPER. 
 
 Much as Mr. and Mrs. Martindale were de- 
 lighted, and had reason to be delighted with 
 Bath, the summer season of course suggested 
 that, although that lively spot is the country to 
 London, it is a city to the country. It was 
 indispensable too, to secure a change of air for 
 the accouchee ; but as unfortunately the period 
 for Sir John and Lady GrinderwelFs annual mi- 
 gration from Grinderwell House was already 
 arrived, it was useless to think of accepting the 
 invitations with which, from the moment of their 
 marriage, they had been weekly favoured by the 
 Baronet. Martindale suggested, however, (per- 
 haps in consideration for Mrs. Richard's family 
 
164 MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 feelings, perhaps for the advantage of restoring 
 his sister-in-law Julia to the care of her affection- 
 ate parents, the young lady having arrived at Bath 
 with her brother Captain Grinderwell soon after 
 their settlement there) that they should join Sir 
 John and Lady Grinderwell at Exmouth, where 
 the family was about to pass the autumn ; a pro- 
 ject seconded with rapture by Mary-Matilda, 
 who was dying to show her baby and her new 
 set of pearls to Ma and sisters, and to whisper 
 in confidence to Harriet and Anne how very 
 strangely Julia had been flirting with a half-pay 
 Captain of the Gloucestershire militia. The 
 Martindales were therefore soon established at 
 Exmouth, within a few doors of the Grinder- 
 wells ; and, as Richard repeatedly observed to 
 an old Cape chum whom he accidentally met 
 there, nothing could be pleasanter or more 
 cheerful than their little family party. So many 
 young people ; so much music ; so much riding, 
 driving, and dancing ; so many little supper 
 parties; so many large dinner parties at his own 
 house ; besides gipseyings, picnics, and other 
 manoeuvres invented by Baronets of large 
 
MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 165 
 
 family and small fortune ; the budding beauties 
 of Master Grinderwell, and the promise of a 
 second olive branch to make glad his heart ;— all 
 was auspicious, all was cheering, all was satis- 
 factory ! — 
 
 " Ay, ay ! " growled Edward Warton, a cun- 
 ning old bachelor, who, like his friend, had 
 amassed a considerable fortune on the shores of 
 Table Bay, but was too wise to squander a shil- 
 ling of it even on himself. "I see you have 
 married half a dozen wives insteadof one.— Good 
 look out for old Grinderwell, deuced bad one 1 
 take it, for your weekly bills ! — Nunky pays for 
 all, eh, Dick ? — Sharp woman, that old mother- 
 in-law ! — Sad do, I fear, this match of your's ! 
 —Always a sister or two staying in the house, eh 
 Dick? — Take care they don't eat you out of 
 house and home I — But I forgot; you've got no 
 home, I fancy ? — Only a gimcrack lodging-house 
 at a watering place ! " — 
 
 " I have a very excellent mansion in Bath," 
 said Martindale with indignation, " where I 
 hope you will come and see me — that you may 
 
166 MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 humanize your notions a little respecting my 
 wife and her family.'* 
 
 " Bath !— what a place to live in ! a mob 
 of swindlers, dowagers, and decayed spinsters ! 
 Bath ! — Why not purchase a good substan- 
 tial country seat at once; which would have 
 given you a stake in the countr}^, and a respect- 
 able roof under which to bring up your chil- 
 dren, eh Dick?"— 
 
 " I had none when I hired my house in the 
 Circus." 
 
 " Now only just see what /have done. — Last 
 year, I had an opportunity of buying an estate 
 in Shropshire. Capital purchase, — eligible in- 
 vestment ! Got seven per cent for my money, 
 and had an excellent freestone dwelling-house 
 and offices, thrown into the bargain ! — Let it 
 immediately for two hundred a year. — Too large 
 for an old bachelor like me. — /, you know, have 
 not been lucky enough to meet with a Miss 
 Grinderwell." 
 
 " There are three very much at your service," 
 said Richard drily. 
 
 "Thank you, thank you! — Not half such a 
 
MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 167 
 
 good investment as my Shropshire estate. For- 
 tunes of fifteen hundred pounds a piece, I un- 
 derstand; eh Dick? — The interest scarcely pays 
 for their daily visits to the confectioners' shops, 
 I fancy.'' 
 
 "I never hear of Mary-Matilda's visits, I 
 assure you. Julia, Harriet, and Anne, may have 
 been occasionally seen taking an ice, by way of 
 excuse for flirting with the officers." 
 
 " The officers ? Poison ! — Marry into a family 
 of such a description ? I would as soon look out 
 for a Mrs. Warton in a stroller's barn ! — Ay, ay, 
 Dick, you'll soon get tired of this ragamuffin 
 watering-place sort of life ; and when you 've got 
 a comfortable place in the country, let me know, 
 and I'll come and pass a month with you." 
 
 Long before the close of the autumn, Ned 
 Warton's predictions were partly verified. Mar- 
 tindale grew heartily sick of watering places; 
 and was beginning to think the Grinderwell 
 young ladies too flippant, and the Grinderwell 
 young gentleman too noisy. Sir John was a 
 grumpy, discontented radical, — a professed libe- 
 ral and domestic tyrant ; and as to her ladyship, 
 
168 MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 since she left off her maternal exercises, the 
 poor woman had done nothing but stuff and 
 sleep. It sometimes occurred to poor Richard, 
 moreover, that he was made a butt by the 
 captains of hussars, lancers, dragoons, carabi- 
 neers, fusileers, and fencibles, who lounged in 
 his house, drank his claret, and flirted with his 
 sisters in law. He began to be tired of a round 
 of company, and to long for a quiet study or 
 bookroom to spell the newspapers in ; and 
 almost regretted that there were still three 
 months unexpired of his year's residence in the 
 Circus. To be sure the waters were supposed 
 to be useful to his rheumatism ; and he liked his 
 Whist Club, and found his neighbours Sir 
 Hookah Smith, and Sir Sangaree Brown ex- 
 tremely agreeable. But at his time of life (it 
 was the first time he had ever been heard to 
 allude to " his time of life," even in soliloquy) 
 people wanted to be quiet. There was too much 
 bustle at Bath for a man of five-and-forty, worn 
 out by a hot climate. 
 
 Nevertheless when the term of his stay there 
 was on the point of expiring, his resolution to 
 
MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 169 
 
 quit was almost shaken by the numerous argu- 
 ments brought forward by Mary-Matilda for a 
 renewal of the lease. — " She should so much 
 like to be confined again at Bath : — and Ma 
 had promised that Anne and Harriet should 
 come and pass the winter with her ! " — This last 
 declaration was decisive. Martindale immedi- 
 ately protested that to prolong their residence 
 at Bath was out of the question, that the air 
 disagreed with him ; and after one or two floods 
 of tears more nearly approaching to hysterics 
 than any thing she had attempted since her 
 scene in the vestry on her wedding-day, Mrs. 
 Richard consented to accompany her lord and 
 master to Nerot's Hotel, tiil they could procure a 
 suitable residence in town. It was not that she 
 disliked the notion of figuring in London ; but 
 she had a shrewd suspicion that, although a 
 somebody at Bath and a very considerable 
 somebody at Exmouth, she should be a nobody 
 in the metropolis. " Tel brille au second rang 
 qui s^ eclipse au premier ; " and, after shining as 
 a fixed star in the Circus, it was very hard to 
 dwindle into one of the thousandth magnitude 
 
 VOL. I. I 
 
170 MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 in Baker-Street, or Gloucester-place. Unused 
 to London, she was certain she should find it 
 very dull ; — nor did her arrival in Clifford- 
 street on a foggy evening in November, tend to 
 brighten her opinions on the subject. It was 
 not till, at the close of a week, she found herself 
 comfortably settled in a handsome house in 
 Harley-street, with an equally handsome estab- 
 lishment, that she began to admit the possibility 
 of living in London. 
 
 Richard Martindale was now happier than he 
 had been since the first fortnight of his original 
 arrival at Cheltenham. 
 
 In Harley and the half-dozen adjoining streets, 
 he had at least half a dozen dozen oriental ac- 
 quaintances, with whom he could sit gossipping 
 about things, people, and places, — events past, 
 present, and to come, — wholly uninteresting to 
 the kingdom in general. Instead of one whist 
 club, as at Bath, he had now four ; and instead 
 of the captains of hussars, lancers, dragoons, 
 carabineers, fusileers, and fencibles, — he had his 
 friend Ned Warton, besides eight Directors, six 
 Calcutta nabobs, and two yellow Knights Com- 
 
MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. ITI 
 
 panions who had served with distinction at 
 Bhurtpoor. With the assistance of a speculative 
 agent, he still contrived to receive four thou- 
 sand a year income from his eighty-five thousand 
 pounds: and as his brother Robert often ob- 
 served, " a man might really live like a prince on 
 such a fortune; — and do something for his 
 family into the bargain." 
 
 I 2 
 
172 MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 A woman moved is like a fountain troubled. 
 Muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty. 
 
 Shakspeare. 
 
 In every great metropolis there must neces- 
 sarily exist as great a variety of circles and 
 coteries, as of classes in the vegetable or animal 
 creation. It is absurd to attempt the sweeping 
 distinctions of equestrian and pedestrian, patri- 
 cian and plebeian, in a city numbering a million 
 and a half of inhabitants. Even the minority 
 of the patricians may be subdivided into several 
 classes ; and as to the plebeians, Linnaeus him- 
 self would be puzzled to dispose of the varieties ! 
 
 Now the coterie to which the Martindales 
 instinctively attached themselves, was of the 
 genus called " dinner-giving people," a large and 
 (as the newspapers say) "influential" bodj 
 
MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 1T3 
 
 (chiefly resident in the N.N.W. of London), who 
 make it the business of their lives to assemble at 
 their tables three or four times a month sixteen 
 well-dressed individuals, severally possessed of 
 an amount of plate, linen, china, and domestics, 
 equal to their own ;— and who, in reward for this 
 mechanical act of hospitality, are entitled to dine 
 on all the other days, in a company equally 
 numerous, and on viands equally delicate. The 
 ambition of displaying at their own board, meat 
 in due season and fruit out of it, — of obtaininoj 
 Sir Thomas's opinion that their hock is superior 
 to that of Sir Charles, and securing Lady Char- 
 lotte's verdict that their peaches are three weeks 
 earlier than those of Sir Thomas, — suffices for 
 their happiness; and there is a steadiness of dull 
 decorum about the tribe, an affectation of ra- 
 tionality and "charming people "-sort of excel- 
 lence, essentially different from the sprightli- 
 ness of ball-haunters and the brilliancy of 
 genuine fashionables. Fashionables and ball- 
 haunters of course occasionally dine out; but 
 they always remain distinct from the lumber- 
 ing class of regular dinner-giving people. 
 
174 MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 In this vocation, the Martindales shone supe- 
 rior. Their plate was new and handsome, their 
 establishment numerous ; and among all the 
 mercantile baronets and oriental dignitaries fre- 
 quenting the house, it was decided that except 
 Mr. Calicut the Director (whose table was sup- 
 plied by his own farm in Surrey), not a family 
 in Harley-street, " did the thing in better style.** 
 Nothing can be easier than to become the nu- 
 cleus of a little knot of society on similar terms. 
 An exchange of dinners among persons ever 
 so slightly acquainted, is no robbery; but a 
 sort of mutual benefit company, whose cre- 
 dits and debits are honestly and accurately ba- 
 lanced. But in addition to this, the business of 
 his life, Richard Marti ndale was not without his 
 pleasures. Like all orientals, he was a lounger 
 by profession. There was nothing so delightful 
 to him as to saunter into his club (a club 
 well deserving the name of " The Mil- 
 lionary"), and gossip tchow tchow with a knot 
 of other elderly gentlemen of equally gam- 
 bouged complexion ; — to hear and contribute to 
 the last new rumours from Calcutta, Madras, 
 
MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 175 
 
 Bombay, Ceylon, the Mauritius, the Cape ; — to 
 wonder over old jungle stories, and new ro- 
 mances concerning the cholera ; — to elephantize 
 in Asiatic grandiloquence, revel in Asiatic remi- 
 niscences, and grow poetical concerning theturbot 
 and lobster-sauce of the preceding day and the 
 anticipated haunch of the following. And then 
 he loved to wander up and down St. James 's- 
 street, linked by either arm to some well- 
 fed, well-dressed, middle-aged, middle- talented 
 man; ready, like himself, to measure inch 
 by inch, with Lilliputian labour, the last ar- 
 guments of Peel, or the latest eloquence of 
 Brougham ; to sneer at Macaulay as a the- 
 orist, or break their heads against the cast- 
 iron compactness of an article by Fonblanque ; 
 to give their opinions upon all things and 
 all people as lengthily and emphatically as 
 if they were worth listening to ; and to take 
 their ease and their ice at Grange's, or their 
 sandwich at the Cocoa Tree. Esentially a 
 good-humoured, happy, and happy-making 
 man, poor Richard Martindale, exulting in 
 comfort at home and popularity abroad, was 
 
376 MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 one of the most contented and inoffensive among 
 the do-nothings of the west end. 
 
 Even his wife, — who, as a very silly woman, 
 with three giggling sisters, four impudent bro- 
 thers, and a spunging father and mother, might 
 have been expected to form some drawback on 
 his domestic enjoyments, — turned out far better 
 than could have been anticipated ; for, following 
 the destinies of her sex, she was fated to behold 
 a little Richard Martihdale arrive so soon after 
 a little Grinderwell, — a little George so shortly 
 after little Richard, — and a little Clara, Maria, 
 and Sophia, in the three following years, that 
 she had no leisure to do more than sit at the 
 head of Richard's dinner-table, and exhibit her 
 expansive person at a few annual balls in the 
 neighbourhood of Portland-place. Her eldest 
 sister had married the Grinderwell curate ; Anne 
 had eloped with an Irish lieutenant of infantry ; 
 and Julia had become the w^ife of a General Mac 
 Glashun, chief agent of Bolivar, or prime minister 
 of the Cacique of Poyais, or Chancellor of the Ex- 
 chequer at Lima, or some such apocryphal dig- 
 nity, whom she met at Bath, and with whom she 
 
MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 177 
 
 shortly afterwards sailed for South America ; — 
 but Mrs. Martindale had very little share in 
 promoting either of these three suitable alliances. 
 On her own account, too, she had given up all 
 interest in the attractions of captains of hussars, 
 lancers, or dragoons, carabineers, fusileers, or 
 fencibles ; and, following the usual routine of an 
 empty-headed, hollow-hearted woman, had laid 
 aside the coquette to become the dawdle. Al- 
 though still devoted to dress, her finery was a 
 mere affair of competition with Mrs. Calicut^, 
 or Lady Kedgeree, or Lady Hookah Smith ; 
 and the greater part of her time was spent, as 
 a matter of routine, in gossipping with her head 
 nurse or the apothecary. In the autumn, they 
 all went to the sea, for change of air for the chil- 
 dren ; at Christmas, they either paid a family 
 visit to Grinder well Hall, or took a course of 
 the Cheltenham w aters ; but they were always 
 back again in Harley-street by February, to be 
 ready for the east wind, and their favourite Satur- 
 day dinner parties. They were regular in their 
 appearance at the gay church of St. Marylebone 
 on Sundays ; regular in their drive afterwards in 
 I 5 
 
178 MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY* 
 
 Hyde Park ; regular in an annual exhibition at 
 tlie drawing-room ; and regular in all the other 
 evolutions of the opulent mediocracy. 
 
 It is not to be supposed that such a career of 
 contentment and ease could fail of attracting 
 the notice of that busy enemy of mankind, who, 
 from the days of Job to those of George III., 
 has l>een so apt to interfere in the household 
 happiness of the human race. Though the 
 Martindale family had kept up nothing of that 
 cordial intercourse with poor Richard which 
 marked his original advent at Nerot's hotel, and, 
 though their indifference towards him had un- 
 questionably increased in proportion to the 
 sprouting and spreading of his olive branches, 
 there was a decent degree or exhibition of 
 friendliness kept up among them. Whenever 
 Robert or Jacob visited London on business, 
 they dined in Harley-street ; and usually 
 returned the compliment by a leash of par- 
 tridges on the first of September, or a brace of 
 pheasants on the first of October, when they 
 were sure the family were out of town ; and on 
 occasion of Mrs. Richard's annual accouche- 
 
MY PLACE IN THE COUiNTRY. 179 
 
 ment, her spouse, in the fulness of his joy, made 
 it a point to despatch a letter of announcement 
 to each of his sisters and sisters-in law. 
 
 But various changes had now taken place in 
 the united Martindale clan. Marriot senior, 
 the drowsy, was now sleeping his last sleep ; and 
 Marriot junior, the genius (to whose education 
 uncle Richard had so absurdly dedicated the 
 sum of two thousand pounds), was reigning in 
 his stead. Having augmented his paternal 
 estate by the sum of fifteen thousand pounds 
 reluctantly ceded with the fair^ hand of his 
 daughter Clotilda, by his uncle the attorney, Mr. 
 Marriot of Starling Park had become, or fan- 
 cied himself to have become, a man of some con- 
 sequence in the county. As the relative of 
 their agent the wortliy Millegan, the Mowbrays 
 were in the habit of honouring him with a gra- 
 cious bow when they saw him at the Hoo races, 
 or the cricket matches or archery meetings of 
 the county ; and of inviting him with his showy 
 bride to all their public days at Mowbray 
 End. 
 
 But on the spring succeeding his fortunate 
 
180 MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 marriage, Richard Marriot, giving loose per- 
 haps to the inspirations of that genius so much 
 lauded by his motlier, took it into his head to 
 pass a month or two in town. He was now in 
 possession of nearly three thousand a year, and 
 shrewdly suspected himself to be almost as great 
 a man as his uncle Richard; and having, by 
 means of a house agent, settled himself in a half 
 dirty, half tawdry house in Welbeck-street, 
 flew to secure an introduction for his talking, 
 showy, superficial bride, to Mrs. Richard ; who, 
 as a baronet's daughter, was accounted the gran- 
 dee of the Martindale family, Marriot had 
 hinted to Clotilda, previous to their arrival in 
 town, that very likely aunt Richard might be 
 moved to introduce her into society and present 
 her at court ; and the belle of the country town 
 had preconceived a notion of the matron of 
 Harley-street as of the most fashionable, or as 
 she called it toyiish woman in London. 
 
 A large and rapid increase of family is said to 
 be as bad for the temper as for the figure ; and 
 however copiously developed Mrs. Richard Mar- 
 tindale's organ of philoprogenitiveiiess, certain 
 
MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 181 
 
 it is that she was by no means so mild and con- 
 cihating as when figuring of yore in die Bath 
 pump-room; or playing the chaperon to her 
 sisters on the esplanade at Weymouth. Her 
 nephew Harriot, moreover, was precisely one 
 of the human beings towards w^hom her milk of 
 human kindness was thoroughly soured. She 
 could never forgive him the sacrifice of two 
 thousand pounds (two thousand pounds, robbed 
 as it were by anticipation from her unborn 
 progeny) to affix an empty initial honour to 
 the name of an individual whose obscure ex- 
 istence at Starling Park certainly demanded no 
 such evidence of scholarship. She had always 
 disliked Mr. Marriot as a presuming conse- 
 quential young gentleman : and now that he had 
 assumed new dignity, both squirearchical and 
 matrimonial, she prepared herself to dislike him 
 more than ever. She would have borne almost 
 any other relative of her husband's. Poor Wil- 
 liam, the son of the Rev. Jacob, who was now 
 married to one of his Millegan cousins, and 
 settled as an under master at Charter House 
 School, was always warmly though patronizingly 
 
182 MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 welcomed in Harley-street ; but Mr. and Mrs. 
 Marriot, with their bright green carriage, and 
 passion for finery and sight-seeing, were poor 
 Mrs. Richard's aversion, or, as Liston says, " I 
 may say, her favourite aversion." 
 . Now Clotilda was one of those impenetrable 
 persons, to whom it was almost impossible to 
 give offence. An only daughter, — the sole 
 heiress of one of the most opulent and influential 
 residents in a small country-town, who, from pos- 
 sessing considerable electioneering tact, was al- 
 ways very much covu'ted in his own person as 
 well as in those of his wife and daughter, — she 
 had been in the habit of considering herself of 
 so much importance, that she could not for an 
 instant suppose that any one was inclined to 
 think of her disparagingly, or treat her disre- 
 spectfull}^ She had considered herself a very 
 fine thing when worshipped at the country balls 
 as Miss Clotilda Martindale ; but she thouorht 
 herself a much finer as Mrs. Mai'riot of Starlinix 
 Park, with a new carriage of her own, a new vi- 
 siting ticket, a new set of pearls mounted in cor- 
 nucopias, and above all,— a "Place in the 
 
MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 183 
 
 Country." That Mrs. Richard Martindale could 
 be inclined to slight a person thus variously and 
 richly endowed, was of course out of the ques- 
 tion ; and when young Mrs. Marriot paid her 
 first visit in Harley-street, laughing and talking 
 as loud as possible to show the ease of her man- 
 ners, and the indignant aunt received her with 
 the coldest and most repellent taciturnity, the 
 self-satisfied bride determined that the apathy of 
 the Baronet's daughter was but a distinguishing 
 trait of fashionable manners ; and that it was 
 now du hon ton to look sulky and affect a mono- 
 syllabic terseness in conversation. 
 
 Being well aware (from the long-standing je- 
 remiads of aunt Millegan and uncle Jacob, 
 against the wasteful extravagance of such a prac- 
 tice) of the Martindales' addiction to dinner- 
 giving, the young couple were for some time in 
 daily expectation that a festival would be con- 
 cocted in their honour ; and Mrs. Marriot had 
 already determined to make her dthut on the 
 occasion in her wedding dress of Urling' lace, 
 with her new set of pearls. But when three 
 
184 MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 weeks of their stay in town expired without 
 the appearance of the anticipated invitation 
 card, Mrs. M., instead of growing affronted, 
 assured her husband that it was no longer the 
 custom of the great world to give wedding din- 
 ners; and that, as a point of etiquette, their 
 uncle and aunt Martindale were waiting for an 
 invitation to Welbeck- street. Upon this hint, 
 a " requests the honour " was despatched to 
 them at ten days' notice, and Mr. and Mrs. 
 Richard, from their natural or acquired predi- 
 lection for dinner parties, could not find it in 
 their hearts to be dignified and say " no." 
 
 Little, indeed, did the sullen aunt imagine, as 
 she took leave on the appointed day of the little 
 family of Martindales, busy at their evening 
 trough of bread and milk, how miiyhtv an influ- 
 ence that same dinner party was to exercise over 
 her future destinies. During its progress, in- 
 deed, nothing occurred which did not tend to- 
 wards her satisfaction. She saw that Mrs. Mar- 
 riot was totally unaccomplished in the science 
 of dinner giving. There 'was no cucumber for 
 the salmon, although the month of April was 
 
MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 185 
 
 half over. The white soup tasted of washballs ; 
 veal-tendrons were made to match with sweet- 
 breads ; and the dish of a large boiled turkey was 
 garnished with parsley sufficient to have decorated 
 a jack-in-the-green ! An old fashioned blanc- 
 mange was among the sweet dishes of the second 
 course, and altogether the dinner was a con- 
 temptible affair:— just such as might have been 
 expected at the table of an attorney's daughter, 
 whose experience did not exceed the apple-tart 
 and custard delicacies of an election supper. 
 
 But if, by the supercilious way in which she 
 raised her eyeglass to her eye to investigate the 
 arrangements of the table, Mrs. Martindale con- 
 trived to excite the choler of her niece, Clotilda 
 managed shortly to return the compliment, and 
 with compound interest. She had invited to 
 meet the woman of consequence of her ov/n fa- 
 mily, the woman of consequence of her own 
 neighbourhood. The Welbeck-street party 
 consisted, in addition to the four Martindalians, 
 of Mr. Blickling, the county member, and the 
 Hon. Mrs. Blickling his wife; a Mr. and Mrs. 
 Cleverley, of Poplar Grove, in the same neigh- 
 
186 MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 bourhood ; besides two Honourable Mowbrays, 
 a younger Marriot (a man of wit and fashion 
 about town), and one or two college friends 
 of the host. In such a circle, the Richard 
 Martindales had very little to say. There 
 was no opportunity for orientalisms from uncle 
 Richard, or nursery anecdotes from his lady ; 
 nothing was discussed but the agricultural in- 
 terests and Hertfordshire topics ; and instead of 
 Portland-place balls, Wimpole-street concerts, 
 and the beauties of the new Easter piece, Mr. 
 and Mrs. Richard were compelled to hear of 
 Hatfield, Gorhambury, Panshanger, and the 
 theatricals of the Hoo. 
 
 Even when the ladies retreated to the draw- 
 ing-room, and the partie quarree formed by 
 Mrs. Blickling and Mrs. Cleverley on one 
 sofa, and Clotilda and her aunt on the other, 
 commenced the usual tittle-tattle peculiar to 
 such occasions, Mrs. Richard was struck dumb 
 by perceiving that neither of her three com- 
 panions were in the slightest degree interested 
 on her account of a family-squabble between 
 her first and second nurses about a dose of 
 
MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 187 
 
 rhubarb for her second boy, such as she was in 
 the habit of quoting after dinner at her friend 
 Mrs. Calicut's. Mrs. Blickling had the polite- 
 ness to cry " indeed ! " more than once in the 
 course of her narrative ; but it was clear she 
 did not enter into the history with right maternal 
 interest ; and like Constance, Mrs. Martindale 
 was tempted to exclaim, 
 
 She talks to me, that never had a son. 
 Mrs. Cleverley and the bride, meanwhile, having 
 none either, turned a decidedly deaf ear to the 
 whole anecdote; and when Mrs. Richard arrived 
 at the close of the tale with " and next day, poor 
 Nurse came to me with tears in her eyes, and 
 told me she should have no objection to stay, 
 provided I made it a rule in my nursery that the 
 under nurse was not to stir the children's tea ;'* 
 she found that Clotilda and the lady of Poplar 
 Grove were deep in housewifely details of a dif- 
 ferent nature. 
 
 " Oh, yes ! " cried Clotilda, who, no longer 
 having the fear of aunt Martindale so strongly 
 before her eyes, had re-assumed her loud volu- 
 bility ; *' I assure you we have up all our 
 
1881 MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 poultry and vegetables from Starling Park. It 
 is really impossible to keep a decent table in 
 London unless one has a Place in the Country." 
 
 " I have generally heard," observed Mrs. 
 Richard contemptuously, " that Covent Garden 
 is the best garden in England." 
 
 " For those v^'ho are accustomed to adulterated 
 London provisions, no doubt it is," retorted her 
 niece ; " but when people require things to be 
 pure and wholesome and in a natural state, 
 there is something so nasty, something so revolt- 
 ing, in the way in which Battersea vegetables are 
 forced, and London poultry fattened." 
 
 " Horrible indeed ! " exclaimed Mrs. Blick- 
 ling, " I own I never can prevail on myself to 
 touch that tell-tale colossal asparagus, or those 
 disgustingly bloated fowls. TVe have a cart 
 twice a week through the season from our Place 
 in the Country." 
 
 " Mr. Cleverley will eat none but his own 
 mutton," cried the lady of Poplar Grove. 
 
 " And I own I never fancy any but the Blick- 
 ling venison !" observed the Member's lady, with 
 ; grand, parkish sort of air and tone. 
 
MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 189 
 
 " What lovely jonquils ! " interpolated Mrs. 
 Richard, anxious to get rid of these details of 
 the buttery hatch. And the double violets 
 are really quite luxurious ! How very fra- 
 grant ! " 
 
 " Pmy let me offer you a bunch if you are 
 fond of them," cried her niece with patronizing 
 graciousness. " We have quantities sent us up 
 from Starling almost every day." 
 
 " It is so convenient to have one's place 
 within a certain distance of town,'"' said Mrs. 
 Blickling. " When I hear people parading 
 about their estates in Yorkshire or Devonshire, 
 I always recollect the convenience of driving 
 down to peace and tranquillity with as much 
 ease as if we were going to a dejeuner at Wim- 
 bledon ! Three hours take us to Blicklinff. 
 We even have up all our cream for ices, and 
 home-made bread. In short I look upon Blick- 
 ling as the farm which supplies our table. I 
 should hate a place in one of the remote coun- 
 ties. I hope, however, I am not offending Mrs, 
 Martindale by saying so ?— In what county is 
 Mrs. Martindale's seat?" 
 
190 MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 Mary-Matilda, thus interrogated, could not 
 but reply; and though it was with a visage 
 the colour of a stick of red sealing-wax, she 
 managed to make her answer as dignified as 
 periphrasis could render it. 
 
 "My father, Sir John Grinderwell, lives in 
 Dorsetshire. At present, Mr. Martindale has 
 no country-seat." 
 
 The " at present" conveyed of course to the 
 mind of two out of the three ladies, that Mr. 
 Martindale was a landed proprietor in expect- 
 ancy. Mrs. M. herself was probably in the 
 entail of the Grinderwell estates. 
 
 " No country-seat ? — How very tiresome that 
 must be I" drawled Mrs. Cleverley of Poplar 
 Lodge, leaning back on the cushions of the sofa 
 with a singular augmentation of self-importance. 
 " And what do you do with yourself at the close 
 of the season ? " 
 
 <c We generally go the sea, " snarled Mrs. 
 Richard; "where, I observe, w^e meet all our 
 friends who have fine seats of their owti, of 
 which they are for the most part horribly tired : 
 so that if Mr. Martindale and myself had any 
 
MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 191 
 
 taste for a place in the country during the au- 
 tumn, we might find hundreds to be let, and the 
 satisfaction of a choice.'* 
 
 " But that is so different from a place of one's 
 own ! " — ejaculated Clotilda, looking sentimental, 
 and twisting her ermine boa till she pulled off a 
 tail. " I declare I know every bush and briar 
 at Starling ; and there is not a flower in the gar- 
 den which does not inspire « thoughts too deep 
 for tears.' " 
 
 " Nothing like a place of one's own ! " cried 
 Poplar Lodge. 
 
 «s No, — nothing like a place of one's own ! " 
 exclaimed Blickling Hall. 
 
 " No, — nothing like a place of one's own ! " 
 echoed Starling Park. 
 
 " Besides, one cannot hire a place for the 
 Easter holidays, or Whitsuntide, or every now 
 and then when one's children require a week's 
 change of air." 
 
 " We change the air by going to Brighton," 
 said Mrs. Richard, trying to subdue herself into 
 an air of mildness. " Most medical men are of 
 opinion that sea-air is the best thing for chil- 
 
192 MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 dren ; and I am told Sir Henry Halford is de- 
 cidedly of opinion that the West Cliff at Brigh- 
 ton equals Montpelier or Madeira.'^ 
 
 "I fancy it is/" said Mrs. Cleverley. "At 
 least, we make it a point to give our little ones 
 the chance of six weeks there every year. But 
 I own I can't endure Brighton in the summer ; 
 when all the cits, who have no country resi- 
 dence, go down there just by way of getting out 
 of London. I like to go when one finds a little 
 society." 
 
 " And then it is so delightful to get back to 
 one's owit shrubberies, after being cramped up 
 to walk on that odious Chain Pier ! " exclaimed 
 the Hon. Mrs. Blickling. " I declare Blickling 
 never appears half so fresh and green to me, as 
 after staring upon chalk and shingles for a week ; 
 and really the enjoyment of the Hall after those 
 miserable card-paper houses ! " — 
 
 It was lucky for Mrs. Richard Martindale 
 that the gentlemen just then made their appear- 
 ance for coffee. The agricultural interest was 
 getting too much for her. 
 
MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 193 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Papillia, wedded to her amorous spark. 
 
 Sighs for the shades — How charming is a park ! 
 
 Pope. 
 
 From the day of this fatal dinner-party 
 Richard Martindale's fate was fixed. Mrs. 
 Richard, like the dying Falstaff, could do no- 
 thing but "babble of green fields;" and her 
 head-nurse began to assure her that it was plain 
 she had a "longing for a place in the country." 
 Almost before the close of the season, she ex- 
 pressed a determination to avoid Brighton 
 "while those odious citizens were there, who 
 only went because they had no place of their 
 own ; " and yet, though protesting against 
 every spot along the coast from Scarborough 
 and Cromer to Ilfracomb and Tenby, she per- 
 sisted in declaring that the seven little Martin- 
 
 VOL. T. K 
 
194 MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 dales would not be able to exist seven days 
 longer without country air. 
 
 It was in vain that Richard suggested expe- 
 dients. " Ramsgate," she observed, " was so 
 glaring; Broadstairs so glum; Margate so vul- 
 gar; Dover so bustling; Worthing so tame; 
 Hastings so gossipping ; Weymouth so country- 
 fied; Exmouth, Sidmouth, Torquay, and the 
 Welch coast, so inconveniently remote. Harro- 
 gate smelt like a gunsmith's shop ; Buxton was 
 full of Irish dowagers ; Malvern was a mere stare 
 over a tailor's book of patterns; Cheltenham re- 
 minded her too much of old times, and Lea- 
 mington of new people. The water did not 
 agree with her at Tunbridge; and a week at 
 Southend would condemn the whole family to 
 the ague." 
 
 Richard then proposed a family crusade 
 against Grinderwell House. But Sir John Grin- 
 derwell had only been dead six months; Sir 
 Joseph, her elder brother, had not yet taken 
 possession ; and the Dowager Lady was living 
 there pro tempore. As a last resource, there- 
 fore, he asked her what she thought of a round 
 
MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 195 
 
 of visits in Hertfordshire? — His brothers and 
 sisters, she knew, had often invited them ; and 
 his niece Clotilda would be enchanted to have 
 them all for a month at Starling Park. 
 
 This was pouring oil upon the flame. Mrs. 
 Richard, half whimpering half sulky, took 
 this opportunity of pointing out to his notice 
 that he, — the richest of the family, — was the 
 only one of its members who was not blest 
 with a country-seat; and the unhappy man, 
 not venturing to suggest that he was also the 
 only one who possessed a house in town, — was 
 wise enough to look penitent, and very much 
 ashamed of being but a second son.' Even when 
 assured by his wife that, accustomed from her 
 infancy to the pride, pomp, and circumstance 
 of Grinderwell House, she had no taste for a 
 country attorney's square red-brick house, the 
 front and offices looking into the by-street of a 
 provincial town while the rear commanded only 
 the damp Clammer Mill meadows, — those mea- 
 dows purchased with his own money, and of 
 right the property of poor dear little Grinderwell, 
 — he had not courage for reply or explanation 
 K 2 
 
196 MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 " As to a country visit at the Parsonage," 
 muttered the discontented fair one, " I declare 
 I would as soon introduce my poor babes into a 
 kennel of foxhounds, as among those great rude 
 bears of Mr. Jacob Martindale. A boy in a 
 leather cap and corderoys, is my moral aversion : 
 and five of them \—five! I am certain I should 
 have one of my nervous fevers before I left the 
 place." 
 
 " Well, my love, what say you to a little visit 
 to my sister Millegan ? She, you know, has no 
 bears of boys to kill the children with hugging. 
 One only of her girls is now unmarried : and I 
 assure you nothing can be more orderly than 
 her establishment, nothing more compact and 
 comfortable than her house." 
 
 " Very likely. When people have a place 
 of their own in the country, it is worth their 
 while to make it comfortable, and to keep their 
 establishment in order. A house in town is only 
 half a home; one never feels settled in it; and 
 the sort of rambling life we lead in going from 
 watering place to watering place, is little better 
 than sauntering away our best years without aim 
 
MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 197 
 
 or purpose. It is so different — so very different, 
 when people have a place of their own, which 
 they embellish and improve for the sake of the 
 children who come after them ] — Heigho I " 
 
 " The child, you mean, my love ; except the 
 eldest son, I know not who benefits by the out- 
 lay. Now at Grinderwell, for instance, your — " 
 " Where there is rank to be kept up, as is 
 the case with my family," said the Baronefs 
 daughter, looking like an empress, " the thing 
 is very different. But at worst a mortgage for 
 the benefit of the younger children will always 
 bring matters straight. However, it is useless 
 discussing the subject. We are never likely to 
 have a place in the country, and it therefore 
 signifies very little how other people arrange 
 their affairs. I know not, indeed, why I should 
 ever for a moment fancy you would desire such 
 a thing. Your family having always been con- 
 tent to reside in a country town, and you having 
 passed your life in a colony, it is scarcely to be 
 expected that you should be sensible to the 
 charm of an hereditary house ; — a place where 
 people strive to be respected, in order that their 
 
198 MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 children after them may enjoy the odour of their 
 good name." 
 
 " I don't see why people may not be respected 
 in town," cried Richard, somewhat piqued by 
 this last taunt. " People may always bequeath 
 an honest name to their children. In profes- 
 sions, for instance, in trade, in — " 
 
 " Professions, — trade ! " cried Sir Joseph 
 Grinderwell's sister, despising the Hertford 
 doctor's son, as heartily as if he had not elevated 
 her to a condition of life far beyond her claims 
 or pretensions. " I really hope you will not 
 talk so before the children, for they are getting 
 old enough to understand you ;"-and what will 
 little Grinderwell think ? " 
 
 " And how do you decide about this visit to 
 the Millegans ? " — asked Richard, afraid of being 
 too angry unless he changed the subject. 
 
 " What visit ? — I'm sure I never thought of 
 any. There is nothing that would be more dis- 
 agreeable to me than to be staying in a house 
 like that of the Millegans, standing in the very 
 shadow of a great establishment such as Mowbray 
 End ; and accepted on sufferance there like a 
 
MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 199 
 
 poor relation, or the curate of the parish ; hav- 
 ing Lord Mowbray's carriage sent to take you 
 to dinner, and her ladyship ringing the bell, and 
 ordering it to take you home again, when she is 
 tired of you ! — From what I heard pass between 
 your niece Mrs. Marriot and the young Mow- 
 brays the day I dined in Welbeck-street, such, 
 I am certain, are the terms on which Lord 
 Mowbray lives with his agent's family." 
 
 " Millegan is his lordship's auditor, it is true," 
 observed Richard Martindale. " But his own 
 family is of very ancient standing in the county. 
 The Millegans have been respectable yeomen 
 on their estate, ever since the reign of Edward 
 the Sixth ; v/hile the Mowbrays have been heard 
 of in the county only within the last century." 
 
 " Perhaps so ; " replied Mary- Matilda, re- 
 verting within herself to the spreading genealo- 
 gical tree adorning the dining-room chimney- 
 piece of Grinderwell House ; in which Grin- 
 waldus (its acorn) figured as cup-bearer to 
 King Edgar. " You see that all the importance 
 of either family, such as it is, appears to be de- 
 rived from having a place in the country." 
 
200 MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 A few days after this conversation, Richard 
 Martindale, whose passion for home, whether in 
 town or country, was not likely to be increased 
 by the bitter tone recently acquired by his wife, 
 boldly announced his intention of running down 
 into Hertfordshire for a few days, to visit his 
 relations ; or more properly speaking, and more 
 wisely acting, took his departure without any 
 previous announcement. Mrs. Richard had 
 therefore all the delight and glory of becoming 
 an oppressed individual, of assuming a plaintive 
 tone, wearing an invalid cap, and hoping that 
 when she was dead and gone, her husband might 
 not repent too severely his cruelty and neglect 
 of so devoted a wife. It is true she had now 
 been married nearly ten years, during which 
 time Richard had never before been ten hours 
 absent from her apron string. It is true, that 
 Richard was now fifty-four, an age scarcely 
 consistent with libertinism or frivolity ; yet still 
 there was something very suspicious about this 
 sudden journey. The freak had entered his head 
 while he was perusing " The Morning Post." 
 How did she know that he was gone into Hert- 
 
MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 201 
 
 fordshire at all ? — How did she know but that 
 the staid and sober Mr. Martindale had re- 
 ceived some kind of assignation or appointment 
 through its columns, such as — " * * 's letter 
 is received ; and Rosa will meet him at the 
 time and place appointed, if he can make it 
 convenient to leave town." — 
 
 Mary- Matilda hated mysteries. Why had her 
 husband kept so secret his desire of a visit to Hert- 
 fordshire ? Perhaps he was gone to consult with 
 his brother the attorney, about some means of get- 
 ting rid of her, and forming a separate establish- 
 ment. Perhaps — But why enumerate the vagaries 
 feeding the fancy of a peevish woman, parted 
 for the first time from her husband, without any 
 means of employment for her vacant mind. It 
 was some comfort that she could send for the 
 apothecary ; declare herself indisposed ; lie on 
 the sofa; take hartshorn; and sentimentalize 
 herself into languor upon a diet of green tea 
 and custard pudding, She was determined that 
 at least, when the truant did think proper to 
 return to the home he had so basely abandoned, 
 he should find her looking as pale as the cam- 
 k5 
 
S02 MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 brie handkerchief she now incessantly applied to 
 her eyes. If she did not favour him with a scene 
 on such an occasion, she might never have ano- 
 ther opportunity. 
 
 Five tedious days had passed away. Poor 
 Mrs. Richard, having scolded ail her children 
 and as many of her servants as she dared, and 
 being too bent on playing the victimized invalid 
 to admit visitors, was growing very tired of her- 
 self and her heroics. At last, on the fifth even- 
 ing, half famished by her perseverance of sullen 
 abstinence, and satisfied that as it was Saturday 
 night, she had no chance of hailing her culprit's 
 marital knock at the door till Monday morning, 
 she suddenly rang the bell, and ordered a sup- 
 per tray into her dressing-room. When lo ! 
 just as she had filled her plate with a provision 
 of cold lamb and sallad enough to have dined a 
 corporal of dragoons, the door was flung open, 
 and Richard rushed into her arms. The sur- 
 prise and disappointment were alike overwhelm- 
 ing. She, who had been picturesquifying in her 
 dressing gown for five long tedious days ; who 
 had purchased a new bottle of salts for the occa- 
 
MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 203 
 
 slon ; who had rehearsed her shrieks, and pre- 
 pared her agonizing flood of tears — she to be 
 caught in the fact of a tumbler of Madeira 
 negus, and a fat shoulder of lamb ! — It was too 
 ignominious. 
 
 " So you are come at last," cried the morti- 
 fied victim, compelled to wipe her mouth in- 
 stead of her eyes, as she accepted his warm em- 
 brace. 
 
 " The business was not settled till six o'clock 
 this evening," cried Richard. " But it is ouis, 
 and Heaven send us health to enjoy it." 
 
 " I don't understand you?" 
 
 " Have you a clean plate there, my dear ? " 
 inquired Richard Martindale, seating himself 
 beside her before the fatal tray, having al- 
 ready rung a bell for a further supply of knives 
 and forks. " Do you know I have had no din- 
 ner. I was in such haste to get up to you, to 
 tell you the news, that I jumped into a post- 
 chaise the moment it was over. How are the 
 children ? " 
 
 " You will positively drive me distracted 
 TVIiat news ? — You have told me none." 
 
«04 MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 " Your health, my love. How refreshing is 
 a glass of wine, after a fatiguing day and a dusty 
 drive ! I suppose you expected me, as you 
 have prepared supper ? — " 
 
 " How was I to expect you ? — I may think 
 myself lucky that I see you any time within 
 these six weeks. How could I possibly guess 
 when it would suit you to return home ? " 
 " Didn't you receive my letter ? — " 
 " What letter ?— " 
 " By this morning's post ? — " 
 " I have heard nothing of you, Mr. Martin- 
 dale, since you started off on pretence of a visit 
 to your family, nearly a week ago." 
 
 " How very extraordinary, — how devilish pro- 
 voking ! " cried Richard, setting down his glass. 
 " I was so very particular about that letter. I 
 inquired so often about the post hour from my 
 brother's clerks. By Jove, — here it is ! " — cried 
 he, suddenly detecting the neglected dispatch safe 
 in his waistcoat pocket. " In my hurry, I must 
 have forgotten to put it in the post." 
 " A very convenient excuse." 
 
MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 205 
 
 " Well, I am not sorry for it. The surprise 
 will be all the greater." 
 
 " What surprise ? — " 
 
 " Nay, since you know nothing about the 
 matter, I shall punish you for that cross face by 
 making you guess." 
 
 " You are really too vexatious ! — After the 
 week of dreadful suspense I have been passing, 
 to break in upon me in this sudden way, and 
 perplex me with all these mysteries. How am 
 I to know what you mean ? '* 
 
 " My dearest love, do not irritate yourself,'* 
 said poor Richard, drawing his chair nearer to 
 hers, when he perceived that she was on the 
 verge of a genuine flood of tears. " I will ex- 
 plain the whole business to you from the very 
 beginning." 
 
 " No ; I don't want to hear a word about it," 
 cried the lady, retreating to the sofa in a mag- 
 nificent fit of the pouts. " Believe me, I have 
 no curiosity about any of your family affairs. I 
 dare say you and your brothers can manage 
 tUem very well amongst you without any inter- 
 
206 MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 ference of mine. Doubtless Mr. Robert Mar- 
 tindale's professional advice — " 
 
 " My dear, dear Mary- Matilda ! " exclaimed 
 her husband, somewhat provoked after a long 
 day's fast to be obliged to procrastinate his cold 
 lamb in honour of her ill-humour. " You inust 
 be aware that my sole motive in making this 
 purchase is to gratify the desire you have so long 
 expressed of — " 
 
 " What purchase? " ejaculated the breathless 
 lady, jumping up from her reclining position. 
 
 " The Marygold Hill estate, my love. You 
 know how eagerly you have beset me lately for 
 a place in the country." 
 
 " You have actually bought a place in the 
 country? — " 
 
 '• The papers were signed this afternoon. 
 A great bargain, I am told ; but the purchase 
 was a serious affair. Five-and-forty thousand 
 pounds !— But it is the most beautiful thing ! 
 All within a ring fence; — a trout stream running 
 through the lawn ; — best preserves in the coun- 
 try ;— timber magnificent,— gardens superior ip 
 
MY PLACE IX THE COUNTRY. 20T 
 
 those at Grinderwell Hall ! The Marriots' 
 place a citizen's villa by comparison ! — Drawing 
 room and library opening into a conservatory of 
 rare exotics ; saloon forty feet by eighteen. 
 But here is George Robins's advertisement of 
 the place, which originally led me into temp- 
 tation. Don't you remember how I started in 
 the midst of reading the newspaper that morn- 
 ing at breakfast ? — I could not hear or answer 
 a word you said to me, after the notice of sale 
 had caught mine eye." 
 
 " Mv dear, dear Richard ! " exclaimed the 
 vanquished lady, holding the crumpled news- 
 paper in one hand, and throwing the other arm 
 round his neck. " Why did you not tell me 
 at once ? — " 
 
 " I think you must now be satisfied that I 
 have neglected nothlncr to fulfil vour wishes ? " 
 
 " I never was so delighted in my life ! — A 
 finer place than Starling Park ! — Forty-five 
 thousand pounds ! — Saloon, library, conserva- 
 vatory ! — Show me the advertisement, Richard; 
 show me the description." 
 
 '• I can't, — ah, — here it is. * That unique resi- 
 
208 MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 dence known by the name of Marygold Hill ; 
 situate five miles from the stirring little county 
 town of Hertford.' " 
 
 " Good Heavens ! In Hertfordshire ! Just 
 in the midst of all your odious family ! How 
 very provoking ! I 'm sure when I told you that 
 I should like a country seat, I never dreamed 
 that, without consulting me^ you would think of 
 going and buying a place in Hertfordshire. — I 
 would as soon go to — " 
 
 " The devil ! '* cried the indignant husband ; 
 and his new place in the country was the origin 
 of his first serious quarrel with his wife. 
 
MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 209 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Abused mortals ! did you know 
 
 Where joy, heart's-ease, and comfort grow. 
 
 You'd scorn proud tow'rs 
 
 And seek them in these bow'rs ; 
 Where winds sometimes our woods may shake. 
 But blustering care can no vile tempest make. 
 
 Sir W. Raleigh. 
 
 The bustle of a removal is admitted to be so 
 fatiguing to the body and irritating to the mind, 
 that it cannot be too rapidly passed over. We 
 might otherwise be compelled to admit that even 
 the mild Richard was stimulated into a fit of 
 profane swearing, on finding the leg of his mag- 
 nificent billiard table very clumsily dislocated, 
 and a sword-stick poked through the canvas of 
 a fine Gainsborough. As to Mary-Matilda, 
 an attack of nervous fever, consequent on the 
 fatigues of the march, threatened to lay her in 
 
210 MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 the family-vault forming part and parcel of the 
 purchase of the Marygold estate; while the 
 seven little Martindales, from Grinderwell the 
 Great down to the ultima Thule or Fooley, 
 little Miss Clotilda, were as inconvenient and 
 inconvenienced as their nurses could manao^e to 
 make them. 
 
 Let us therefore suppose the nineteen waggon 
 loads of domestic furniture (including the thir- 
 teen grumbling menials from Harley-street) 
 fairly deposited and fairly settled. But to im- 
 agine this, we must also admit the expiration of 
 a calendar year ; for full twelve months were 
 required to adjust the rival claims of the 
 butler and housekeeper, to " this 'ere cupboard 
 and them 'ere shelves," — no less than to enable 
 Mrs. Richard to determine whether the young 
 ladies should sleep in the front nursery or the 
 back; or whether the Worcester china vases 
 would look better in the blue drawing-room or 
 the chintz breakfast-parlour. It required a 
 winter to ascertain which of the chimnies 
 smoked, and which of the doors required list- 
 ing; and a second summer to find out whether 
 
MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 211 
 
 the general clearage of evergreens from the court- 
 yard they had been supposed to render damp, 
 and the fall of a grove of chesnuts protecting 
 the house from the western sun, would prove a 
 seasonable benefit. Mr. Richard had from the 
 first asserted that they could not expect to be 
 comfortable in less than a year. The new 
 plantations could not be completed, the new 
 offices finished, or the workmen got out of the 
 house in less time. 
 
 The year was gone ; the second tolerably ad- 
 vanced ; but the fair proprietess of Marygold 
 Hill could by no means be persuaded to pro- 
 nounce herself comfortable. A new little mary- 
 gold was budding; and the fractious invalid 
 could neither bring herself to like the neigh- 
 bouring apothecary, nor reconcile herself to the 
 loss of Lady Kedgeree's daily calls of inquiry, 
 or her Harley-street neighbour Mrs. Calicut's 
 hourly councils of gossip. Richard Martindale 
 already affected the cockney country gentleman ; 
 sported a fustian jacket, leathern gaiters and a 
 bill-hook; went out before breakfast, spud in 
 hand, to make war upon the thistles and. 
 
212 MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 dandelions ; and above all, during the shooting 
 season was never to be heard of (except by the 
 distant report of his Man ton) from breakfast till 
 dinner, or during the hunting season from 
 breakfast till luncheon. Mary-Matilda conse- 
 quently found her time hang somewhat heavy 
 on her hands. She was not yet on easy terms 
 with her new neighbours; and her own pre- 
 vious experience of a country life had been 
 made in a house full of giggling sisters and 
 riotous brothers. But her own girls were too 
 young to giggle, her boys too dull for mischief; 
 and moreover a termagant head nurse, the inse- 
 parable prime minister of every silly indolent 
 mother having more than two thousand a year, 
 would only allow her the children's company at 
 her own pleasure and convenience. She had no 
 hereditary interests in the condition of the 
 neighbouring poor, or the prosperity of the 
 neighbouring farmers. All were alike strangers ; 
 and though the Martindale family were very 
 kind in volunteering visits toMarygold Hill, they 
 always came with prying, investigating, arithmeti- 
 cal looks ; Mrs. Robert begging her to take her 
 
MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 213 
 
 daughter Marr lot's advice in the management 
 of her dairy and housekeeper's accounts ; 
 Mrs. Jacob, spunging for cuttings from the 
 greenhouse or a breed of her choice Dorkings ; 
 Mrs. Millegan annihilating the utmost efforts of 
 her fine ladyism by a sketch of the superior 
 splendours of Mowbray End ; and Mrs. Mar- 
 riot sen^ the widow, who was living in a cottage 
 in her son's village, overwhelming her with 
 tracts and controversy. Mrs. Richard was 
 never so ill as after some of these envious, pre- 
 suming people had been staying at Marygold 
 Hill ; and at length, though reluctantly, and 
 with the lonelinesss of a long winter in perspec- 
 tive bethought her of renewing her corres- 
 pondence with her own married sisters. She 
 longed to figure before them in her new dignities 
 of patroness of a village and proprietress of a 
 country seat; and nothing was more easilv ar- 
 ranged. — Mrs. Mac Glashun, who had fancied 
 herself the wife of a Lieutenant General of 
 Poyais dragoons, now found herself the widow 
 of an ensign of Irish militia, with two young 
 children, whom she was very glad to quarter on 
 
214 MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 the charity of any member of the family willing to 
 provide them with bread aud butter ; and Har- 
 riet, whose union with theGrinderwell curate had 
 caused him to be ejected from his cure by the 
 rector nominee of the late Sir John, w^as now 
 settled with him on a vicarage of forty pounds 
 a year on the Lincolnshire coast, living on 
 conger eels and lived upon by the fen-flies. 
 Both, on the first hint of an invitation, hastened 
 agerly to Marygold Hill ; and it was no small 
 affliction to the pride of the arrogant Mrs. 
 Richard Martindale, that Mrs. Trotter made her 
 appearance by the north mail, and Mrs. Mac 
 Glashun and her children by the day coach. 
 
 Poor Richard, always kind and well-inten- 
 tioned, was only the more cordial in his mode of 
 reception in consideration of their mode of tra- 
 velling ; indeed, he was far better pleased at the 
 idea of having his two sisters-in-law as his in- 
 mates, now that they were tamed by misfortune, 
 than during the heyday of their partiality for cap- 
 tains of hussars, dragoons, lancers, carabineers, 
 fusileerSj and fencibles. Moreover, if the truth 
 must be told, he was not sorry to have an excuse 
 
MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 215 
 
 for occasionally prolonging his day's sports, and 
 takino: a bachelor-dinner with the Harriots, 
 Millegans, Martindales, or his new friend, Jack 
 Cleverly, of Poplar Lodge. 
 
 Now this new friend Jack Cleverley, was 
 perhaps of all poor Mrs. Richard's Hertford- 
 shire grievances the most enormous; being a 
 huge, large-limbed, cheery, back-slapping in- 
 dividual, widi the strength and eke the 
 lungs of an ox, who looked npon the fair and 
 frail sex (like the mares in his stable and the 
 cows in his meadow) as useful animals, created 
 for the service and delectation of mankind. 
 Despising the great lady of Harley-street with 
 all his soul, as too lazy to nurse her own chil- 
 dren and too helpless to drive herself round the 
 farm like his ovai stirring housewife, he was 
 never to be persuaded into the slightest defer- 
 ence towards her nervous headaches; shouting 
 whenever he sat by her at dinner as if he had 
 been tally-hoing to the hounds, and slamming 
 the doors after him whenever he was staying in 
 the house, as if he were bullying the waiters at 
 a travellers' inn. He was, indeed, a hateful 
 creature in her eyes and ears ; talking with his 
 
216 MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 mouth full, wiping it on the table-cloth, breath- 
 ing like a grampus, and sucking in his tea from 
 the saucer with the impetus of the famous Ame- 
 rican whirlpool that swallows up ships of the 
 line. Mary-Matilda's first topic of lamenta- 
 tion (after listening to Mrs. Mac Glashun's 
 movinsf tale of those Occidental adventures which 
 had terminated with seeing the unhappy ex- 
 lieutenant-general hanged higher than Haman, 
 on a Mexican gallows erected between two 
 cabbage-palm-trees, — and trying to seem inter- 
 ested in poor Mrs. Trotter's description of her 
 little parsonage-garden, with its slimy fen- 
 ditches and fetid exhalations,) was the misfor- 
 tune of possessing a loud vulgar neighbour like 
 Jack Cleverly, who had no greater satisfaction 
 than in decoying Martindale away from home, 
 brutalizing him with strong ale, and persuading 
 him that it was a mark of manliness to defy the 
 influence of an "affectionate domestic partner." 
 It was in vain that Mrs. Mac Glashun described 
 her sufferings when left a nursing mother in a 
 torrid climate ; — Mary-Matilda interrupted her 
 to complain that poor little Dick had a chil- 
 blain in his little finger, thanks to Martindale's 
 
MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 21*7 
 
 obstinacy in choosing to purchase an estate in a 
 county notoriously the coldest in England; and 
 while Mrs. Trotter was pointing out to her com- 
 miseration, that for three years she had been 
 living in a fishing-hamlet, without a neighbour 
 within forty miles saving the officers of excise 
 and coast blockade and their spirituously-inclined 
 consorts, — the lady of Marygold Hill begged to 
 assure her that such a spot was infinitely pre- 
 ferable to a country house, placed under watch 
 and ward of a husband's vulgar family. She 
 appealed to the judgments of both, whether any 
 thing could afford stronger proof of Martindale's 
 want of knowledge of the world, than to sink 
 half his fortune in the purchase of an estate in 
 the only county in England where no extent of 
 landed possessions would obliterate the recol- 
 lection, that " after all he was nothing but a 
 second son of old Doctor Martingale of Her'ford, 
 who had made money in Indy;" — and to their 
 feelings, as daughters of the house of Grinder- 
 well, on the ignominy of being introduced into 
 the neighbourhood under the patronage of 
 Richard's eldest brother's wife (the heiress of 
 
 VOL. I. L 
 
218 MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 a rich brewer), and to the county in general, 
 per favour of Mrs. Millegan's favour with the 
 great people at Mowbray End. Somehow or 
 other, both Julia and Harriet were disposed to 
 harden their hearts towards the picture of 
 their sister's distresses. They, who had been 
 subdued in a rougher school, who had contended 
 with cold and heat, hunger and bereavement 
 since they flirted at Weymouth or pouted at 
 Grinderwell House, could not connect the idea 
 of misfortune with the wife of an affectionate 
 husband, the mother of seven fine children, and 
 the owner of a handsome country seat in one of 
 the best counties in England. 
 
 Perhaps it was this obduracy which gave 
 them a smister position in Mrs. Richard Mar- 
 tindale's opinion. Other causes of dissatisfac- 
 tion soon however became apparent. Mary- 
 Matilda had been originally considered by far 
 the prettiest of tlie four sisters; but now, 
 though the ten years which had passed over 
 her head since the tour into Wales still left 
 her flaxen hair and pink cheeks, — habits of 
 luxurious idleness, and other natural causes had 
 
MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 219 
 
 produced an expansion of outline far from 
 conducive to her reputation as a beauty. 
 Her cheeks were bloated, her eyes offuscate ; 
 little yellow ringlets hung scantily round the 
 enlarged oval of her rubicund face; and, at 
 eight-and- twenty, she might have passed for the 
 age proverbially connected with the qualification 
 " fat and fair." Mrs. Mac Glashun and her 
 sister, on the contrary, attenuated by privations, 
 had pi-eserved their shapes, and therewith that air 
 of gentility with which the choicest costume can 
 never invest a dumpy woman ; and no sooner 
 did the good air and good fare of Mary^old 
 Hill restore animation to their features and 
 bloom to their cheeks, than they shone forth as 
 very pretty women, and came to be talked of as 
 Mrs. Richard Martindale's beautiful sisters. The 
 Hon. Mrs. Blickling insisted upon being fa- 
 voured with their company at a popularity ball 
 her husband, the member, was giving to the free 
 and independent gentlemen of the county of 
 Herts ; and it was indeed wormwood to Mary- 
 Matilda, who had made herself obnoxious in a 
 cheerful social neighbourhood by stickling for 
 L 2 
 
220 MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 precedency as a baronet's daughter, to have her 
 two sisters appear on so ostensible an occasion in 
 dyed silk gowns, as a curate's wife and adven- 
 turer's widow; and yet to know that they were 
 fiftyfold as much liked and admired as herself. 
 Now in London this never could have hap- 
 pened. Her Harley-street friends would never 
 have dreamed of pressing their civilities on a 
 Mrs. Mac Glashun and a Mrs. Trotter, who 
 had no houses of their own in which to requite 
 the obligation ; and even had they been capable 
 of such a waste of magnanimity, the general 
 indifference to family connections prevalent in 
 London society, would have prevented any one 
 from knowing, caring, or commenting upon the 
 relationship, or instituting comparisons between 
 the parties. They had not been established two 
 months at Marygold Hill, before Mary- Matilda 
 wrote to her favourite sister Anne (the wife of 
 the Irish captain, who w as now on half-pay, and 
 settled on a small hereditary estate on the bor- 
 ders of Connemara), to describe how very trou- 
 blesome she found those wild heathens, the little 
 Mac Glashuns, in her nursery ; and how much 
 
MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. S21 
 
 she was apprehensive that Harriet and Julia 
 would assume the command of her establishment, 
 and probably give offence in the family and 
 neighbourhood during her approaching con- 
 finement. 
 
 There was no resisting this sororal appeal ! 
 Mrs. O'Callaghan certainly had intended to pass 
 a happy domestic winter in the bogs. But she 
 would not allow poor little Mary- Matilda to be 
 put upon ; nobody could say what might be the 
 result of her suffering any annoyance during the 
 ensuing delicate crisis. So having persuaded 
 Captain O'Callaghan to become her escort; 
 away she went by long sea to London; and, from 
 the Tower Stairs, straight to those of Marygold 
 Hill. The heroine was already in the straw ; 
 but her husband (albeit somewhat startled by 
 this third addition to his family circle) gave 
 them a hearty welcome. All colonial people 
 are hospitably inclined ; and though he could 
 certainly have dispensed with the Captain's 
 company, against whom, during his courtship 
 of Anne Grinderwell he had conceived an 
 antipathy, yet still any connection of his dear 
 
222 MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 Mary-Matilda was welcome. It was still winter. 
 And is it not the custom in Great Britain for 
 people to collect as many as possible of their 
 friends and relations at Christmas mider their 
 roof? Is not hospitality an almost religious 
 duty on the part of the proprietor of a " Place 
 in the Country ? " 
 
MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 223 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 There are a set of joyless fellows who, wanting capa- 
 city to make a figure among mankind upon benevolent 
 and generous principles, try to surmount their insigni- 
 ficance by laying offences in the way of such as make it 
 their endeavour to excel upon the received maxims and 
 honest arts of life. Arbuthnot. 
 
 It was an awful visitation to the irritable 
 nerves of Mrs. Richard Martindale, who, during 
 her annual indispositions, had been accustomed 
 by her kind husband to have things kept so 
 quiet in the house, that the blind mole heard 
 not a foot-fall — when the little Mac Glashuns, 
 instigated by uncle O'Callaghan, set up their 
 war-whoops in the hall ; or when uncle O'Cal- 
 laghan himself, after a second bottle of Madeira 
 at luncheon, stumbled along the corridor to the 
 billiard-room, singing " I am the boy for be- 
 
224 MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 witchino: them," in a tone that would have 
 drowned Jack Cleverley's loudest view halloo ! 
 Her head-nurse gave her warning, and even 
 the nursery-maid " warn't going to stay to be 
 made keeper to them two little heathen savages." 
 Forced into a premature assumption of strength 
 and authority, the nervous lady exerted herself 
 to resume her post in the drawing-room : — and 
 then things went worse than ever. 
 
 The treacherous Anne had evidently coalesced 
 with Julia and Harriet ; and great was the art 
 with which all three prevented their nefarious 
 proceedings from coming under Martindale's 
 observation, by soothing him with their flatteries 
 and pretended regard. It was vain for Mary- 
 Matilda to hint to Mrs. Trotter that her poor 
 husband doubtless found his solitary situation in 
 the fens extremely disagreeable ; or to Captain 
 and Mrs. O'Callaghan that the weather was 
 growing delightful for a voyage. They always 
 contrived that the worthy Richard should seize 
 that very opportunity for assuring them that his 
 house was their own ; that if Trotter found it 
 dull at Swamperton, he had better join his wife 
 
MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 225 
 
 at Marygold Hill ; and that the state of Irish 
 affairs was not such as to justify his Connemara 
 brother-in-law in a precipitate return to his Sa- 
 bine farm. His wife could have found it in her 
 heart to burke him for his officious hospitality 
 to her encroaching family. 
 
 Nor was it only that their innovations pro- 
 duced real inconvenience and annoyance in the 
 establishment ; but the Martindale family, living 
 near enough to have an eye upon their pro- 
 ceedings, and enchanted to have an opportunity 
 of paying off to the nabob's wife the innumerable 
 slights and insults with which she had beset 
 them, took care to let her see they were fully 
 aware that her hungry swarm of poor relatioais 
 had alighted like locusts upon poor Richard's 
 property, to devastate and devour. The elder 
 brother Robert had died a few months before ; 
 expressly for the purpose, Mrs. Richard thought, 
 of bequeathing sixty thousand pounds to the 
 Marriots, and making Clotilda more vulgar 
 and presumptuous than ever ; but the remainder 
 of the Martindale clan (rejoiced to find out, 
 and to show they had found out, that the family 
 l5 
 
226 MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 of "my father Sir John Grinderwell," with 
 which they had been so frequently twitted, was, 
 in fact a tribe of needy beggars) constantly wrote 
 her word that they would drop in upon her and 
 their brother or uncle Richard, " when her 
 own family had quitted her. They would not 
 think of intruding so long as she had so much 
 good company about her." — Wretches ! not one 
 of them but knew she had as much chance of 
 getting rid of her sisters, as of that capital man- 
 sion known by the name of Marygold Hill. 
 . Ned Warton, too, who had so long refrained 
 from intercourse with his Cape Town friend, 
 thought proper at this unlucky juncture to pro- 
 pose the month's visit with which, nine years be- 
 fore, he had threatened his dear Richard Martin- 
 dale ; and the lady, who, at any other period, 
 would have rebelled against the merest hint of 
 such a favour, dared not provoke the report he 
 would doubtless circulate among their mutual 
 rice-and-currie acquaintance in town, that he 
 could not be received at Marygold Hill because 
 the house was garrisoned with the poor relations 
 of poor Dick's poor wife. She would have done 
 
MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 227 
 
 better, however, to incur the imputation ; for, 
 after having vainly hinted to the O'Callaghans the 
 propriety of giving up their comfortable room, 
 and perceived that there was a confederacy among 
 her sisters to keep possession of their original 
 quarters, she was obliged to consign Mr. War- 
 ton to a little poky chamber without a fire-place, 
 commanding a picturesque view of the bottle- 
 racks and knife-houses. 
 
 " Very well indeed ; this will do very com- 
 fortably for my man, Sam ! you don't mind 
 sleeping in a room without a chimney, for once 
 in a way ? " said the crafty Ned, when Richard 
 Martindale, followed by his own respectable 
 body servant, showed him to his gite. " And 
 now let me see my own apartment.'* 
 
 Upon this hint, Martindale, stung by his 
 irony, yet trembling at his own audacity, actually 
 conducted him to his own bed-room ; and War- 
 ton, who could not bring himself to feel the 
 slightest compassion for a hen-pecked man, had 
 the comfort, while he watched the unpacking of 
 his portmanteau, to hear the altercation that 
 ensued in the adjoining dressing-room, between 
 
228 MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 Richard and his wife, on the subject of this un- 
 precedented exercise of marital interference. 
 
 " We can very easily have a French bed put 
 up for ourselves in this room," exclaimed the 
 husband; "I really had not the face to make 
 my respectable friend Warton sleep in that 
 corner cupboard. Since you could not prevail 
 on the O'Callaghans to give up the south bed- 
 room, we must make up our minds to be incon- 
 venienced for a short time. Remember, my 
 love, it is for the sake of one of my oldest 
 friends; and people are often obliged to re- 
 concile themselves to such shifts in their own 
 Place in the Country." 
 
 " I shall sleep with my poor children in the 
 nursery," said Mrs. Martindale, her throat dry 
 with rage : ^^ you may do as you please. I should 
 like to know v/hether any other woman in Eng- 
 land was ever turned out of her own bed to 
 make way for a crackbrained fool, with the 
 tricks of a baboon, and the insolence of — " 
 Warton threw his slipper against the dressing- 
 room door to warn the irate lady that he was 
 within hearing ; and Mrs. Richard Martindale, 
 
MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 229 
 
 unable to face him immediately after such an 
 exposure, chose to be indisposed, and dine up 
 stairs. Shouts of laughter and the fumes of 
 cigars and whisky toddy ascending from the 
 hall, soon warned her that the monster Warton, 
 and the brute O'Callaghan, were colleaguing 
 over their saturnalian orgies ; and very proba- 
 bly engaging poor Richard himself in a career 
 of libertinism. "And this," said she, as she 
 wept over a plate of partridge and bread sauce 
 furtively brought up by her own maidj " this is 
 the comfort of having a Place of one's own in 
 the Country ! — " 
 
 It affords unlucky proof of the evil particles 
 floating in our nature, that no compacts are 
 more effective than those founded on malicious 
 calculations, and a common animosity. Ned 
 Warton, who, though he would as soon have 
 put to sea in a sparrow's eggshell, as marry 
 with Sir John Grinderwell's daughter, had 
 never forgiven his chum and contemporary 
 Richard for carrying off a young and lovely 
 wife ; — and who entertained a rooted antipathy 
 to the fubsy doll by whom his friend Dick had 
 
230 IVIY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 been so often prevented dining with him at the 
 chib, and going half-price to laugh at Munden, 
 — no sooner discovered that the coarse, rampant, 
 rollicking. Captain O'Callaghan entertained a 
 similar dislike to his cold-hearted sister-in-law, 
 than he entered into a league with him, offensive 
 and defensive, to rescue Richard from her sub- 
 jugation, or make the house too hot to hold her. 
 Dick Harriot, too, the genius of Starling Park, 
 who retained a strong sense of his obligations to 
 his uncle, and who consequently despised the 
 shallow woman by whom he was despised, — 
 having taken a chance dinner at Marygold Hill 
 after a hard day's hunting, — instinctively joined 
 the unholy alliance, and even suggested a new 
 mode of mischief to their adoption. 
 
 He undertook to point out to the notice of 
 Mrs. Cleverly the frequency of her dear Jack's 
 visits to Marygold Hill, as connected with the 
 charms and ingenuous sprightliness of the widow 
 Mac Glashun; leaving it to the well-known 
 susceptibility of the lady of Poplar Lodge to 
 favour her friend and neighbour Mrs. Martin- 
 
MY PLACE IX THE COUNTRY. 231 
 
 dale, whom she detested as heartily as friends 
 and neighbours in a dull country neighbour- 
 hood are compelled to do for want of better 
 employment, with her opinion of the conduct of 
 her sister in encouraging the attentions of a 
 married man : — and to persuade the jovial Jack 
 that the party at his uncle Richard Martindale's 
 could not get on without him, and were much 
 hurt by the infrequency and brevity of his visits. 
 Jack was not the man to resist such an appeal. 
 A house filled widi three amateurs of whisky 
 toddy, and three lively chatty women, presented 
 a real attraction ; and even Richard Martindale, 
 his friend, was no less surprised than delighted to 
 observe how unreservedly he came among them, 
 and how ready he was for a carouse with the 
 brawling O'Callaghan or his nephew Mar- 
 riot. Old Warton looked on with his cunning- 
 eye and puckered face, and saw wuth delight 
 that a catastrophe was brewing. 
 
 Now, Mrs-. Richard Martindale, on her in- 
 auo'uration into the circles of the neighbourhood, 
 had not been so inattentive to her own interests 
 as not to secure a partizan ; and the same in- 
 
232 MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 cipient ambition which prevented her from rest- 
 ing on her pillow till she had magnified her own 
 dignity by the acquisition of a place in the coun- 
 try, had suggested her choice of the County Mem- 
 ber to be her knight and champion. There was 
 something in the solemn dull impracticability of 
 the well-looking, well-conducted Mr. Blickling, 
 which forbad all possibility of scandal;— and it 
 was therefore highly satisfactory to her feelings 
 to roll into the Hertford ball-room on the arm 
 of this mighty dignitary ; or to hear the Hert- 
 fordshirians from the south-western extremity of 
 the county inquire at the Hatfield Tuesdays, 
 to whom their favourite member was paying 
 such marked attention? — Mrs. B. like most 
 county members' wives, was too much accus- 
 tomod to see him bowing, and beauing, and 
 philandering, after the fashion of Sir Christo- 
 pher Hatton with Queen Elizabeth, to take the 
 least note of his proceedings; and Richard was 
 gratified to perceive that his wife, her pearls, 
 and ostrich feathers, were received with becom- 
 ing attention. Nothing could be further from 
 gallantry than such a liaison. Blickling himself 
 
MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 283 
 
 was a man who sometimes *' spoke," but never 
 talked. Deeply imbued with a sense of his per- 
 sonal dignity as the representative of the county, 
 and proprietor of one of its finest estates, he 
 considered loquacity derogation; and having- 
 made it his maxim that men often repent of 
 saying too much but never of saying too little, 
 was looked upon as one of the most sensible 
 men either in the House or out of it. Thou- 
 sands of people said '* there was no one on 
 whose opinion they relied so much as on that 
 of the Member for Hertfordshire," without per- 
 ceiving that he was never known to give one 
 but contented himself with bowing gracefully and 
 assentingly to the expression of their own. 
 
 To her growing intimacy with this senatorial 
 tumefaction, the recent occurrences in her family 
 had opposed some obstacles ; but now that she 
 was out again, and that the weather permitted 
 her to drive over to Blickling Park, she con- 
 trived to make her way there unaccompanied^ 
 and to take a long stroll in the shrubberies with 
 a party staying in the house. Satisfied by 
 the profound reverence of the Member's bow 
 
234 MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 that she was still as great a favourite as ever, 
 Mrs. Martindale no sooner found herself^ by 
 one of the turns of the shrubbery, alone upon 
 his arm, than she seized the opportunity to re- 
 new all her former declarations of relying solely 
 and singularly upon his guidance in the direc- 
 tion of her own conduct; assuring him that 
 " his superior wisdom could alone extricate her 
 from a most unpleasant dilemma. It was im- 
 possible to place even Mr. Martindale in her 
 confidence; for the delicate relation in which 
 the offending parties stood towards him, might 
 lead to the most unpleasant results." Mr. 
 Blickling paused, and looked stedfastly and in- 
 quiringly at his fair companion, but said nothing. 
 He was very much in the habit of saying nothing. 
 "During her recent indisposition," she re- 
 sumed, " the families of the neighbourhood had 
 been so kind as to show a great deal of attention 
 to her sisters. They had been to as many din- 
 ner-parties, as many Christmas balls, as if she 
 had not been confined to her room. Mrs. 
 O'Callaghan had been kind enough to stay with 
 
MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 235 
 
 her; but Julia and Harriet had been constantly 
 out. Pobably he had frequently met them?" 
 
 The Member bowed as to the Treasury 
 Bench, but said nothing; — he was very much in 
 the habit of saying nothing. 
 
 " All this, she was sorry to admit, — sorry for 
 the sake of her own family, sorry for the sake of 
 a respectable family in the neighbourhood, — 
 had been productive of much mischief!'^ 
 
 Mr. Blickling started and stared. He even 
 spoke; he cried " Indeed !" and much as Kean 
 himself might have lago-ed the word ; and when 
 his friend Mrs. Richard Martindale proceeded 
 to unfold to him the agonized apprehensions 
 entertained by Mrs. John Cleverly of Poplar 
 Lodge, and her own terror lest "any thing 
 unpleasant" should happen during her sister's 
 visit at Marygold Hill, he seemed quite as much 
 shocked and alarmed as she could possibly de- 
 sire. But, although she expressly asked his 
 advice, and in her unwillingness to involve Mar- 
 tindale in a quarrel with his friend Jack, begged 
 to know whether it was not plainly her duty to 
 get rid of the indiscreet Mrs. Mac Glashun as 
 
236 MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 quietly as possible, the great man of Blickling 
 Park could not be induced to express a decided 
 opinion. He shook his head, waved his hands, 
 elevated his eyebrows, cleared his voice ; and 
 Mary-Matilda finally quitted the shrubbery 
 under a persuasion that her platonic knight had 
 advised her to do exactly what she had driven 
 over to Blickling determined to effect; viz. to 
 bring matters to a crisis by bringing all the par- 
 ties concerned publicly together. It had always 
 been a Martindale custom to celebrate the 
 christenings of the family by some showy fes- 
 tivity ; and as she had done nothing since her 
 arrival in the county to conciliate her neigh- 
 bours, she now resolved to give a splendid ball 
 and supper. This measure would serve to re- 
 place her in all her abdicated authority. An 
 evening, at ten days distance, was fixed for the 
 ceremony ; and Mr. and Mrs. Blickling, who 
 were already engaged to act as sponsors for the 
 new little Hertfordshire Martindale, promised 
 to dine and sleep at Marygold Hill. The 
 rest of the company were simply invited for the 
 evening. 
 
MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 237 
 
 Nothing makes people so popular in any 
 neighbourhood as the act of giving a ball. Even 
 Mrs. Richard Martindale, though in general 
 very little liked, was now pronounced to be a 
 good-natured, well-meaning woman in the main. 
 Mrs. Cleverley forgot her domestic woes, Mrs. 
 Marriot her filial mourning, the Ladies Mow- 
 bray their dignity, and the Millegans their aver- 
 sion ; nobody remembered any thing about Ma- 
 rygold Hill and its inhabitants, except that it 
 was to be opened on the fourth of March, with a 
 ball and supper, Weippert, and the Hatfield 
 band. The Lieutenant General's widow and 
 the Curate's wife contrived to coax poor Richard 
 out of new white crape christening dresses ; and 
 Ned Warton who wished for nothing better 
 than to see his friends in a scrape, looked upon 
 the whole as a "ploy," and trusted that Mes- 
 dames Martindale and Cleverly, and as many 
 of the gentlemen as possible, would make fools 
 of themselves on the occasion. 
 
 The morning arrived, and the Blicklings (to 
 whom Mrs. Trotter had volunteered to surren- 
 der her apartment) arrived also ; and while poor 
 
328 MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 Richard paraded the lady round his improve- 
 ments and broke her shins over his patent cast- 
 iron fences, his wife managed to get the County 
 Member tete-d-tcte into her l)ook-room to relate 
 to him all that had been going on since she saw 
 him last. They sat opposite each other ; Mrs. 
 Richard with compressed lips, looking rigid, 
 stern, and moral ; — Blickling like the " Portrait 
 of a Member of Parliament " in the Somerset 
 House exhibition, with his hand picturesquely 
 resting on the writing table, and his legs crossed 
 a la Knight Templar. Whenever Mrs. Mar- 
 ti ndale terminated a sentence in reprobation of 
 the wickedness of the world, and more especially 
 of married men who run after other men's wives 
 or widows, the senator gravely uncrossed these 
 impressive limbs, and (as if in mute reply to her 
 appeal) re-crossed them in an opposite direction. 
 He was too cautious for words. 
 
 "Yes! — my dear Mr. Blickling," — faltered 
 Mary-Matilda in an under-tone ; "you will, I 
 am sure, sympathize with my feelings, when I ac- 
 knowledge I have now more than ever reason 
 to believe that villany has been going on under 
 
MY PLACE IN THE COUXTRY. 239 
 
 my roof. The other evening, after dusk, my own 
 maid actually discovered a female in a white 
 dress (it could be nobody but the ill-advised 
 Mrs. Mac Glashun) clandestinely receiving a 
 letter over the paling of the shrubbery from a 
 gentleman on horseback, who could be nobody 
 but that wretch Cleverly ! " — 
 
 Mr. Blickling replied affirmatively by ma- 
 noeuvring his right leg over his left, and thus 
 alterinor the balance of his whole attitude. 
 
 " Several times lately, the house-dogs have 
 been heard to bark at undue hours; and I have 
 every reason to believe that the alarm was given 
 by these faithful creatures on account of strangers 
 loitering about the premises to favour this vile 
 — this detestable correspondence ! " 
 
 Her auditor gravely and silently resumed his 
 original position. 
 
 " To-night, however, I am determined to be 
 on the alert, and so is poor dear Mrs. Clever- 
 verley. They will xome early. The guilty par- 
 ♦^ies will not entertain a suspicion that they are 
 watched ; and my eyes shall never be off their 
 movements throuojhout the eveninoj. It is a me- 
 
S4.0 MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 lancholy thing that the iniquity of mankind 
 should compel one to have recourse to such pre- 
 cautions with one's own sister. But Julia so 
 positively persists in denying the charge, that, 
 without procuring distinct proof, I have no 
 excuse for forbidding that vile fellow the 
 house, and preserving the honour of my family/' 
 
 Again the prim and prudish Blirkling executed 
 his favourite evolution ; when, startled by a sud- 
 den burst of laughter at the bookroom window, 
 both looked up, and perceived the blooming face 
 of the widow Mac Glashun laughing under her 
 gipsey-hat; while Ned Warton stood by her 
 side, with a countenance as malignantly signifi- 
 cant as that of Vathek's Giaour. Mary- Matilda 
 rose with ineffable dignity; and the County 
 Member again uncrossed his legs, and was on 
 them in a moment. 
 
 " Observe, my dear madam, the corrupt con- 
 dition of modern society," said he sententiously, 
 as he threw open the door into the saloon. " Such 
 is the depraved state of those unfortunate peo- 
 ple's minds, that they are putting an evil con- 
 struction on the innocent friendship existing 
 
MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 241 
 
 between a woman so exemplary as you, a 
 man so unsusceptible of immoral impressions as 
 myself. Ah ! madam ! — ah ! Mrs. Richard 
 Martindale ! — what is the world coming to ! " 
 
 The evening arrived — the evening passed ; — 
 the eyes of Jack Cleverley's wife and Mrs. Mac 
 Glashun's sister were carefully fixed upon the pro- 
 ceedings of the delinquents; — but nothing trans- 
 pired. The little widow was certainly looking 
 very handsome, and danced beautifully and with 
 great animation ; but, as Mr. Blickling observed 
 aside to his fair friend, "If she flirted at all, it was 
 clearly quite as much with that eccentric old 
 humourist Warton as with the valiant Jack." 
 The ball passed off, as announced by the Hertford 
 paper next morning, "with unexampled eclat'* 
 Most of the county grandees were absent from 
 indisposition. Weippert's music was supposed to 
 have gone by the wrong coach, for it never made 
 its appearance. The Argands would not burn. 
 The white soup was sour, and the lobster sal lad 
 sweet. Still, for a country-ball, the thing went 
 off tolerably. When a great number of young 
 people meet together, and are willing to be 
 
 VOL. I. M 
 
242 MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 amused, criticism is misplaced; and as Captain 
 O'Callagban had affronted the butler by volun- 
 teering to concoct tlie negus, and been conse- 
 quently carried up to bed half an hour before 
 the commencement of the ball, there was no 
 person present of whom Mrs. Richard had any 
 particular reason to feel ashamed. 
 
 To say the truth, the old or middle-aged 
 people seemed quite as well amused at Mary- 
 gold Hill as their juniors. Ned Warton was 
 growing quite humanized, Richard Manindale 
 was in the best of spirits, and the Blicklings 
 themselves w^ere so much gratified by the hospi- 
 tality of their reception, that they actually pro- 
 posed, of their own accord, to pass another day 
 at Mrs. Martindale's seat. Mary-Matilda had 
 the satisfaction, after breakfast next morning, of 
 holding another jeremiad with the Member over 
 the sinfulness of this corrupt generation, and of 
 whispering to him that, notwithstanding all her 
 vigilance of the night before, her own maid had 
 detected the lady and gentleman stealing aw^ay 
 together from the ball-room. Mr. Blickling 
 shook his head, and was evidently much hurt 
 
MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 24-3 
 
 that so much turpitude should exist under the 
 same roof with himself and his family;— but still 
 he said nothing. 
 
 Mrs. Richard Martindale dwelt much on tliis 
 flagrant instance of his hypocrisy, when discuss- 
 ing the subject with her husband a few days af- 
 terwards, in consequence of a disgraceful disco- 
 very which had set Marygold Hill into conster- 
 nation, and sent little Mrs. Trotter back in dis- 
 grace to the fens ;— besides very nearly driving 
 the County Member from his seat, both in 
 Herts and the House. Mrs. Trotter's had been 
 the white dress in the shrubbery ; Mr. Blick- 
 ling's the bay mare that stood so quiet beside 
 the railings of the shrubbery. But Mrs. 
 Mac Glashun had no leisure to upbraid either 
 of her sisters with the aspersions thrown on her 
 fair fame at Jack Cleverley's expense. Appre- 
 hensive of the coming storm and the demur it 
 miofht occasion in her old beau*s intentions, she 
 was already off to Hertford in a postchaise, 
 with Edward War ton, Esq. and a special license ! 
 " A pretty example have we set in the neigh- 
 bourhood," faltered poor Mrs. Richard, who 
 M 2 
 
24.4 MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 was confined to her bed with genuine indisposi- 
 tion occasioned by this double shock.- " In 
 London this disgraceful affair would very soon 
 blow over ; but I foresee no end to the tittle- 
 tattle it will produce, happening at this season of 
 the year, and at — our Place in the Country!" — 
 
MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 245 
 
 CHAPTER Vlir. 
 
 The park when purchased with disgust she sees. 
 And sighs for town, " Oh ! odious, odious trees ! " 
 
 Pope. 
 
 After all that had occurred, the Martindales 
 had no longer any hesitation in informing the 
 O'Callaghans, that it was their intention to go 
 to town for a few weeks to be out of the way of 
 their country neighbours ; and the captain, who 
 had made himself mighty comfortable at Mary- 
 gold Hill with his whisky toddy, — shooting his 
 brother-in-law's pheasants, and laming his 
 hunters, — now began to look big, and to talk 
 about " the paltry upstartness of a new-bought 
 place, compared with a fine ould ancient castle 
 discinding from father to son from gineration 
 to gineration." Poor Richard, who was all phi- 
 
246 MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 Ian th ropy, contrived, however, to get rid of 
 him without a quarrel, by paying his way back 
 again to Connemara, via Holyhead. The head- 
 nurse came back; and Marygold was itself 
 again. To remain there, however, was impos- 
 sible. Mrs. Martindale felt that she had not 
 courage to encounter the hearty laugh of the 
 Cleverleys, the sneers of the Harriots, or to 
 pass in her daily drives the accusing lodge-gates 
 of Blickling Park. It had been understood, and 
 promised, indeed, on the purchase of the fatal 
 place in the country, that she was to go to tow^n 
 for the season when she pleased, — every spring 
 if it suited her, — either to an hotel or a ready fur- 
 nished house. Recollections of the miseries of 
 removal had hitherto alone prevented her from 
 exercising the right ; but now, she was ready 
 and willing to occupy a comfortable furnished 
 house engaged for her by her good-natured hus- 
 band in Queen Anne Street. She longed to be 
 once more within reach of the Kedgerees and 
 Calicuts, and all her former dinner-giving 
 friends and acquaintance. 
 
 Numerous, indeed, are the mortifications 
 
MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 247 
 
 which await a country family arriving, after some 
 years' absence, in town for the season. They 
 find themselves out of fashion, — behind the time, 
 — eclipsed, — disparaged,— forgotten by many, 
 and even deliberately cut by a few. Mrs. 
 Richard, in addition to the discovery that her 
 own wardrobe and that of her children must 
 be re-modelled, had the mortification of discover- 
 ing that Lady Kedgeree had already acquired 
 another bosom friend to gossip with in her stead; 
 and that Mrs. Calicut was quite as intimate with 
 her successor in the Harley-street house, as she 
 had ever been with herself. Richard, meanwhile, 
 on coming home every day from his solicitor's, 
 where he had now three lawsuits in progress 
 connected with the Marygold Hill estate, (one 
 concerning a flaw in the title ; another for hav- 
 ing closed up a foot-path, and a third, for an 
 action for trespass,) no longer made any secret 
 of the superior attraction he discovered in a 
 metropolis so rich in clubs, and so adapted to 
 the habits of a lounger. He was now approach- 
 ing his sixtieth year ; it was necessary that Master 
 Grinderwell should go to Eton ; " and when 
 
248 MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 the lad is at school," said he, in a desponding 
 tone, " what on earth shall I have to amuse me 
 at Marygold Hill ? My hunting days are gone 
 by ; — that impudent fellow, O'Callaghan, has 
 thinned all my preserves ; — I make but a poor 
 hand at farming; — and altogether, I feel that the 
 country is no place for me. Besides, it requires 
 an immense fortune to live like a gentleman on 
 one's own estate ; and what with the five-and- 
 forty thousand pounds so rashly sunk in the 
 purchase, and the ten thousand I have frittered 
 away, hundred by hundred, since I married — 
 my circumstances are becoming considerably 
 embarrassed. As my poor brother's partner, 
 Latitat, says, ' unless I can make the Marygold 
 estate yield somewhat of a more profitable re- 
 turn, I may look upon myself as a ruined man.' '' 
 " No man can press oil out of a stone," says 
 the Italian proverb ; and Richard found to his 
 cost, that it was impossible to extract a pro- 
 fitable return from a fancy-place, consisting of 
 lawn, shrubbery, paddock, and woodlands in 
 their nonage. His brother Robert's successor, 
 however, who had a keen eye for speculation. 
 
MY FLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 249 
 
 had the good luck to discover an excellent stra- 
 tum of brick earth on the estate ; and accord- 
 ingly, by the time Mary-Matilda had blushed 
 her last blushes for the delinquencies of her two 
 sisters and made up her mind to return home, 
 she had the satisfaction of finding the only pic- 
 turesque point of the grounds disfigured by kilns 
 and littered by brick straw, and the whole at- 
 mosphere, the " precious country air " she had 
 sacrificed so much to secure for her children, 
 foully impregnated with hydro-sulphuretted gas. 
 Poor Richard assured her, that the success of 
 his brick-kiln could alone redeem him from the 
 difficulties into which he had been plunged by 
 his rash purchase of the estate ; and at length 
 compromised the matter by undertaking to buikl 
 her a splendid new steam-conservatory round 
 the basement story of the house, capable of 
 removing all the bad effects of the gas. 
 
 Mrs. Richard had ample need for this little 
 smoothing down of her ruffled pride. During 
 her spring in town, the Marriois had been busy 
 turning their sixty thousand pounds to account, 
 in making magnificent improvements, and re- 
 M 5 
 
^SO MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 furnishing Starling Park. Thanks to the mo- 
 dels afforded them at Mowbray End, the man- 
 sion was completed in the best taste ; and, as 
 Clotilda admitted to her aunt, while parading 
 her through every room in the house from the 
 attics to the housekeeper's room, " they really 
 flattered themselves it was the most perfect thing 
 in that part of the country."— Mrs. Martindale 
 thought of the two thousand pounds settled by 
 poor Richard on his nephew, to insure him a 
 college education, and wondered when she 
 should be able to have a white marble bath in 
 her dressing-room, or lace trimmings to her 
 muslin curtains. 
 
 With her own family, meanwhile, Mrs. 
 Richard had resigned all intercourse. Sir 
 Joseph Grinderwell affected to resent her neg- 
 ligence as the origin of his sister's indiscretion ; 
 and her younger brothers were eating govern- 
 ment bread in different parts of the globe ; — 
 one as a resident in Newfoundland, one as a 
 consul in Cochin-China, and one thirty feet be- 
 low the level of the Thames, as clerk in a frog- 
 trap at Somerset House. She had no one to 
 
MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 251 
 
 quarrel with, no one to molest; — even the humble 
 Jacob Martindale treated her with that frigid 
 deference which forbids all approach to famili- 
 arity ; and Mary-Matilda, who had been so 
 lively at Grinderwell House, so merry at Chel- 
 tenham, so happy in Wales, so contented at 
 Bath, so dissipated at Weymouth, so courted in 
 Harley-street, discovered that in the country, to 
 which she had restricted the remainder of her 
 days, she was likely to be dull, dispirited, de- 
 spised, and lonely. It was very little consola- 
 tion to her to feel that she was proprietress of a 
 place in the country, now that her means no 
 longer permitted her to enliven it with enter- 
 tainments, fill it with company, and assume a 
 leading part in the neighbourhood. She took 
 it into her head they were designated all over the 
 county as " the Martindales of the Brickfield ; " 
 while the more moral circles probably pointed 
 her out to abhorrence, as a member of that ob- 
 liquitous family which had induced the County 
 Member into backsliding. 
 
 " Ah, Richard ! " she exclaimed, when ano- 
 ther winter vras about to set in, and they liad 
 
252 MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 not SO much as the O'Callaghans at their dis- 
 posal to assist them in making war against the 
 long evenings and snowy mornings, " I shall 
 never forgive you for having made me renounce 
 that comfortable Harley- street house for this 
 desolate place. To live as we did there, forms 
 the utmost limit of my desires ; — good establish- 
 ment, pleasant dinner parties, winter at Brigh- 
 ton, summer at Hastings ;— the children always 
 well, the servants always happy ; — the Kedgerees, 
 the Calicuts, and poor dear Camphor the apothe- 
 cary withiu a stone's throw. — It really was mad- 
 ness on your part to set your heart upon a coun- 
 try life. You are not fit for it, my dear, you are 
 really not fit for it.— You cannot do without your 
 club; or your morning's lounge with Sir Hookah 
 Smith and Sir Brown Kedgeree. I wish to 
 Heaven I had been as well aware when you 
 took this place, as I am now, of your inaptitude 
 for rural pleasures ; nothing should have in- 
 duced me to allow you to bury us for life, in 
 order that you might gratify the pride of the 
 .JMartindale family by purchasing a place in their 
 native county. There are the poor girls, who 
 
MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 253 
 
 will soon be wanting masters, and who will be 
 brought up mere Hottentots (I beg your pardon, 
 — believe me, I intended no allusiou to your early 
 avocations), and turn out perhaps vulgar fine 
 ladies, like your niece Clotilda.'^ 
 
 " Or worse, like your two flirting sisters," 
 might have burst from the lips of a man less 
 mildly quiescent than the patient Richard. He 
 however, contented himself with observing, 
 " Well, my love, we must hope for the best. 
 Your mother may perhaps take it into her head 
 to leave you enough to enable you to make a 
 little visit to town every spring; or perhaps — '^ 
 
 " A letter by express, Sir," said the footman, 
 placing a voluminous dispatch in the hands of 
 Mr. Martindale, and quitting the room. 
 
 " What is it, what is it?"— cried his wife, 
 breathless with consternation. " Is it any thing 
 about little Grinderwell? — any thing from 
 Eton?"— 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Any thing regarding my sisters ? " 
 
 « No." 
 
 " In a word, are the tidings good or bad ? 
 — your banker, your agent?" — 
 
254 MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 
 
 " I hardly know whether to call them good or 
 bad," said Richard, much perplexed ; " for you 
 wom.en are so confoundedly capricious, that one 
 can never anticipate on what opinion you may 
 finally anchor." 
 
 " For Heaven's sake, do not prose so when I 
 am dying with curiosity. Give me the letter ! " 
 
 " Tell me first," said Martindale, grown 
 cunning with experience and placing the folded 
 epistle carefully in his pocket, " tell me first, 
 candidly and explicitly, do you repent having 
 purchased Marygold Hill ;— and would you, if 
 you could, return to the freedom of a London 
 life ? " 
 
 " That I would ! "—ejaculated Mrs. Richard, 
 firmly believing such a release to be beyond her 
 husband's power. " If we could but get rid of 
 this estate, I should be the happiest woman in 
 the world." 
 
 "I give you joy then, my dear Mary-Ma- 
 tilda," continued he, drily. " Latitat informs 
 me that we have lost our suit. The title can- 
 not be made good; and, after all, Marygold 
 Hill returns to the possession of its lawful owner. 
 
MY PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. 255 
 
 I shall be a loser to the amount of some thou- 
 sands by the money I have expended on the 
 improvements ; in consideration of which, tlie 
 adverse party have very liberally offered me a 
 long lease of the place on easy terms; and 
 should you feel any reluctance in quitting it — " 
 " No, no, no ! " cried Mrs. Martindale. 
 " Pray let us return to the mode of life for 
 which we were born, and which suits us best. 
 I have had quite enough of Marygold Hill. 
 Believe me, I have lost all predilection for 
 a Place in the Country." 
 
THE SECOND MARRIAGE, 
 
 Qui se marie avec un veuf, epouse nu homme et un 
 fantome." Montaigne. 
 
THE SECOND MARRIAGE. 139 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 By Tre and Pen 
 
 You know the Cornish men. 
 
 Old adage. 
 
 Julia was the only daughter of Mr. Treve- 
 lyan. But although her father's county may be 
 implied in his patronymic, his fortune and condi- 
 tion must remain problematical, unless the 
 reader's mind is set at rest by the assurance that 
 he was rich in five thousand per annum, some- 
 what more substantially founded than Cornish 
 fortunes in general ; and in a landed estate which 
 would have looked much better on Stanfield's 
 canvas than in its rude reality. Trevelyan Hall 
 and its surrounding landscape were, in fact, so 
 much more picturesque than pleasing to their 
 
260 THE SECOND .AlARRIAGE. 
 
 hereditary denizen, that no sooner did the gene- 
 ral pacification of Europe sanction the measure, 
 than Mr. Trevelyan caused its rocks and woods 
 and waterfalls to be specified in language far 
 more efflorescent than the soil which gave them 
 a local habitation, — inserted in the folios of Bates 
 and Gillow, as "To be let for a term of years," — 
 and without waiting for a lessee, who might be 
 some time in making his way to the Land's End, 
 — the Squire, Squiress, and their only daughter, 
 " departed from Kirkham's Hotel, in Lower 
 Brook-street, on a tour of the Continent." 
 
 The field was a wide one ; the heroine ad- 
 mirably qualified to feel and increase its vast 
 variety of interests. Julia was scarcely eighteen; 
 handsome, intelligent, and good-humoured; 
 with the lustre of youth still beaming in her 
 character and countenance, unimpaired by the 
 vigils and affectations of London life. Julia 
 Trevelyan had, indeed, as much cause for gaiety, 
 both of heart and manners, as can be well ima- 
 gined. What are called the good things of this 
 world were largely at her disposal; and the only 
 shadow intermingled with her sunshine, was 
 
THE SECOND MARRIAGE. 261 
 
 attributable to a circumstance with which most 
 human beings would be content to compromise. 
 The only child was too much an object of affec- 
 tion to those about her, to be allowed the free 
 use of her time and limbs; and after running 
 much chance of being killed with kindness in her 
 childhood, ran some hazard of being made 
 miserable for the remainder of the life thus 
 fortunately preserved, by the anxiety of her 
 father and mother to render her the happiest of 
 human beings. It is very difficult to be rational 
 on the subject of an only daughter; more par- 
 ticularly a lovely and loving only daughter — 
 framed 
 
 " In the very poetry of nature/' 
 and springing up to womanhood under our eyes. 
 Trevelyan and his wife were what is termed 
 " the best people in the world ;" a definition 
 far from implying that they were the most 
 agreeable. The Cornish couple were unlucky 
 in seeing the light at a period when the march 
 of intellect was less universal in its recruiting 
 
 o 
 
 system than at the present day. A long avenue 
 afforded, even in the eighteenth century, a pro- 
 
162 THE SECOND MARRIAGE. 
 
 digious fortification to a squirearchical mansion 
 against the innovations of education and re- 
 formation ; and the misses and masters of a fa- 
 mily too " particular " to have recourse to school 
 education, were allowed to remain almost as 
 innocent as they were born of all branches of 
 polite education, beyond the indispensable ac- 
 complishments of reading and writing. Even 
 the faculty of turning these to account was re- 
 garded as superfluous or professional ; and Mrs. 
 Trevelyan, as Miss Trevanion, with fifty thou- 
 sand pounds for her fortune, had been afflicted 
 with very httle literature beyond a few books of 
 devotion, such as the " Whole Duty of Man," 
 and the " Economy of Human Life;" — in addi- 
 tion to an almost Alexandrian library of " oc- 
 casional" Sermons. The family recipe book 
 teemed with specimens of the laxity of her early 
 orthography ; and the chintz room, and north 
 room, and half a dozen other " best bed rooms" 
 at Trevelyan Hall were still disfigured by 
 samples of shell work, needle pieces, and lambs- 
 wool. Such as had obtained for the Cornu- 
 bian heiress a reputation for " fine taste," 
 
THE SECOND MARRIAGE. 263 
 
 rivallino: that which turned the head of Clarissa 
 Harlowe. In becoming the wife of a neigh- 
 bouring squire, and changing only two out of 
 the three syllables composing her maiden name, 
 Mrs. Trevelyan fixed herself for life in a sphere 
 for which she was admirably fitted; and the 
 happy couple went on step by step, and hand in 
 hand, through life ; passing a season in the me- 
 tropolis once in three years, to prove to their 
 friends in general that time had not overlooked 
 them in his task of making the sons and daugh- 
 ters of clay hourly older and daily uglier : — and 
 fancying they were marching with the times and 
 fulfilling the great purposes of existence, by the 
 occasional introduction of a new piece of furni- 
 ture or set of china at the Hall ; a new annual 
 or exotic in the gardens, a new agricultural im- 
 plement on the estate, or a new set of sermons 
 into the bookcase. 
 
 Every thing, indeed, went smooth and straight 
 with them, saving in the nursery department ; 
 and Mrs. Trevelyan's career might have proved 
 insipid even to her limited capacities of enjoy- 
 ment, but for the annual triumph of producing 
 
264 THE SECOND MARRIAGE. 
 
 a little olive-branch and going through the cere- 
 monial of bonfires, bellringings, and oxen 
 roasted whole, in honour of half a dozen suc- 
 cessive heirlings to the Hall; and the annual 
 affliction of their half dozen subsequent sick- 
 nesses, deaths, and burials. 
 
 Julia, the last of the Trevelyan generation, 
 seemed to bring with her change of sex, a change 
 of fortune. No bonfires blazed, no bells were 
 rung, no oxen roasted, no doles distributed, for 
 a mere Miss Trevelyan. She was received into 
 the family with very lukewarm rejoicing (like 
 Shakspeare's Elizabeth), as only 
 
 A girl. 
 
 Promising boys hereafter t 
 
 but, as if in defiance of destiny, the young lady 
 grew and grew, and throve and throve, till her 
 parents almost forgot to despond over the fate 
 which limited their inheritance to her single self. 
 At length, with the tardy conviction that she was 
 to be the last of her little flock, came the re- 
 doubled tenderness, rendering her existence at 
 once a pain and pleasure ; and no sooner were 
 poor Mrs. Trevelyan and her nurse moved to 
 
THE SECOND MARRIAGE. 265 
 
 acknowledge that " the nursery chair had best be 
 moved to the lumber room," than poor little 
 Julia became enshrined, an unwilling idol, in the 
 golden niche destined to her future safe-keeping. 
 An idol has but a sorry life of it ! —Incense and 
 isolation are sickening things ; and could the 
 little girl have conjectured, in her pink sash and 
 shoes, to what concatenation of events her per- 
 sonal importance was owing, she would assuredly 
 have evoked from the vault beneath the family 
 pew, a line of evanished baby squires, emulating 
 the ghastly exhibition of Banquo's crowned suc- 
 cessors. The loss of Trevelyan Park would 
 have been pure gain, coupled with the forfeiture 
 of that morbid tenderness which induced her 
 father to worry her and himself to death, 
 whenever her finger ached ; and her mother 
 to live a martyr to imaginary evils hereafter 
 likely to assail the " sole daughter of her house 
 and heart." Mr. Trevelyan was in a perpetual 
 tremor lest Julia should die and leave him 
 childless ; Mrs. Trevelyan in an unceasing 
 flurry lest by some omisssion, some maternal 
 negligence, a weak point should be left un- 
 
 VOL. I. N 
 
266 THE SECOND MARRIAGE. 
 
 guarded in her daughter's destinies, where sorrow 
 might break in or the troubles of Ufe gain foot- 
 ing, to molest this bright exemption from the 
 sentence of fallen humanity. Between both, and 
 solely in their excess of zeal to secure her health 
 and happiness, the poor girl was fairly plagued 
 to death. 
 
 The whole mischief arose from their want of 
 better occupation. The squire and his wife had 
 no employment either for mind or body. He 
 was neither a reading man nor a sportsman ; she 
 was neither afflicted with a musical taste, — nor a 
 botanical, — nor a puritanical; planted no gar- 
 dens, superintended no Sunday schools ; nay, she 
 had not so much as a pet spaniel or a pet album 
 over which to potter aw^ay her leisure. 
 
 When little Julia was rescued at last from 
 Papa and Buchan, from the village apothecary 
 and family medicine chest, to be inaugurated into 
 the mysteries of the school-room, a new era 
 dawned upon poor stupid Mrs. Trevelyan, re- 
 doubling in her estimation the importance of 
 maternal nature. She had at lenorth somethinoj 
 to do, besides losing her keys and finding them 
 
THE SECOND MARRIAGE. 261 
 
 again. She came to be consulted about back- 
 boards and stocks, grammars and dictionaries, 
 Genlis and Edgworth. Her opinion was as 
 regularly asked by the new governess as if it had 
 been worth having ; and Miss Wilmot, during 
 the twelve years she presided over Julia's 
 education, actually managed to have her own 
 way with her pupil, by persuading the lady 
 of the Hall that way was of her own exclu- 
 sive pointing out; that not a pincushion was 
 planned, nor a sonata selectecl, except under her 
 special jurisdiction. Old Trevelyan, indeed, 
 occasionally interfered in the regimen of the 
 future heiress of his honours ; prescribed ground- 
 rice pudding instead of whole, and advised beef- 
 tea in alternation with mutton-broth. He even 
 insisted on a pony as an interlude to the severe 
 studies to which he saw the precious victim sub- 
 jected; and managed, in spite of all his wife's 
 hysterics, to accomplish the all-accomplished 
 Miss Trevelyan as the best horsewoman in the 
 county. 
 
 At first, indeed, it appeared the sole object of 
 these doating parents to render Julia worthy of 
 n2 
 
268 THE SECOND MARRIAGE. 
 
 the auspicious destinies already provided for her. 
 The elaboration of study to which she was sub- 
 jected purported only to qualify her for her sta- 
 tion in her own county and country, as the heiress 
 of Trevelyan Hall. But no sooner was the miracle 
 accomplished, — no sooner was her father con- 
 vinced that (without having attained the long- 
 predicted spine complaint) she had been made 
 mistress of several languages, and that her 
 drawings and etchings, bravuras and ballads, 
 fairly warranted the annuity settled upon Miss 
 Wilmot on her dismissal from office, than he 
 discovered that she was much too good, fair, 
 and clever for the atmosphere of Cornwall . 
 His heiress had a right to become something 
 more distinguished than his mere heiress. No 
 one in the neighbourhood was worthy of her 
 hand. Julia must see the world, must visit 
 foreign countries; and whereas a prolonged 
 tour on the continent promised an extension of 
 her father and mother's domestic happiness by 
 delaying her settlement in life, the project of 
 going abroad for a year or two, was readily 
 adopted in lieu of their triennial visit to Lon- 
 
THE SECOND MARRIAGE. 269 
 
 don. With a huge patent medicine chest, and 
 pocket editions of Mrs. Chapone and Gregory's 
 Legacy, they accordingly entered the travelling 
 carriage about to become their home ; and al- 
 though, by the time they rattled out of the court- 
 yard of Quillacq's hotel, poor Julia had discovered 
 that the hurry of travelling would not emanci- 
 pate her from the troubles of her filial estate so 
 much as she had hoped, it was indeed delightful 
 to be released from the one gravel walk to 
 which her daily exercise at Trevelyan Park had 
 been for many years restricted; and the early 
 to bed and early to rise, — the bread and butter 
 breakfasts and roast mutton dinners, — swallowed 
 on the unsilenceable authority of the great tur- 
 ret-clock, by which all her proceedings, moral 
 and active, had been regulated from her child- 
 hood upwards. 
 
270 THE SECOND MARRIAGE. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 A cheerful temper, joined -with innocence, makes 
 beauty attractive, knowledge delightful, and wit good 
 natured. Addison. 
 
 The Trevelyans, visiting the continent for 
 somewhat more than the usual purpose of 
 catching a glimpse of the Louvre, crossing the 
 Simplon, gaping at the Duomo and St. Peter's, 
 and returning through Paris for the purpose of 
 smuggling over a collection of Herbault's last, 
 — had wisely provided themselves with the best 
 letters of introduction. It was their intention, 
 after passing the summer in Switzerland, to 
 winter in Florence ; Mr. Trevelj^an having 
 taken it into his nervous head that it was neces- 
 sary to attemper Julia's constitution to the fervid 
 suns of Italy, before he permitted her to bask in 
 the utmost blaze of the sweet south. 
 
THE SECOND MARRIAGE. 2T1 
 
 In Florence, accordingly, they were very soon 
 settled. The lovely and gifted heiress was ac- 
 counted a charming acquisition to the musical 
 circle of the embassy and the theatricals of the 
 Normanbys ; where even the hypochondriac 
 father and prosy mother were excused and 
 accepted, in favour of a beautiful girl in the en- 
 tail of a fine estate and the possession of a host 
 of charms. The Carnival came, with its sugar- 
 plumbs and balls, and Miss Trevelyan at the 
 close of its enchantments found herself on the 
 road to Lucca for the bathing season;— having 
 refused an Irish baronet, — a Cumberland squire 
 travelling to be polished, — an honourable Colo- 
 nel of grenadiers on his way to join his regiment 
 at Corfu, — and a little chicken-faced lordlin": far 
 gone in consumption, and bear-led by a reverend 
 dominie, who already carried in his pocket the 
 programme of his pupil's funeral ceremonies. 
 Of these adorers, Julia laughed at some, and 
 2c7Y/i others ; sincerely regretting that there was 
 not merit enough among the whole squadron to 
 form one tolerable hero of rumance ; and that 
 she was compelled to wander forth into the land 
 
272 THE SECOND MARRIAGE. 
 
 of poesy, without having imbibed a little touch 
 of sentiment to animate the landscape into 
 brighter beauty, and lend new softness to the 
 language of love. 
 
 Julia was gratified to perceive that her father 
 and mother had no intention of parting with 
 her on easy terms ; but she little knew how in- 
 dispensable she was to them, as a tenant for 
 their empty hearts. In her childhood, the anx- 
 ieties of her teething, measles, whooping-coughj 
 and scarlatina, had kept their feelings from 
 stagnation: — Mr. Trevelyan had been saved from 
 a severe fit of blue devils, one rainy winter in 
 Cornwall, by an alarm of small-pox; and Mrs. T. 
 had derived all the tragic interest of her life, from 
 the duty of supervising Julia's interview's with the 
 dentist, and first experience of her pony. But 
 never had she been so valuable to either, even 
 at the crisis of her typhus fever, as now ; when 
 the daily arrival of some new adorer afforded 
 them occasion for new alarms, new investiga- 
 tions, new inquiries touching the endowments, 
 temporal and spiritual, of the aspirant. — The 
 excitement was delightful 1 
 
THE SECOND MARRIAGE. 273 
 
 « With such a treasure to dispose of," whis- 
 pered poor Mrs. T. to her friend the Dowager 
 Lady Wadham, as they sat gossipping together 
 at one of Torlonia's soirees, " I feel that I can- 
 not be too vigilant. One meets with so many 
 adventurers on the continent, even in the best 
 society ; and I declare 1 never feel easy when I 
 see Julia dancing with a stranger, till I have 
 informed myself of his name, nation, and all 
 that is known respecting him. — Ah ! my dear 
 Lady Wadham, it is an awful charge to have 
 an only daughter ! " 
 
 " So I should imagine," replied the old lady, 
 who possessed about as much sensibility as the 
 velvet fauteuil in which she was seated. "I am 
 sure my five girls never gave me so much un- 
 easiness, all put together, as Miss Trevelyan 
 does you. Yet mine were sad wild creatures, 
 and we lived near a garrison town ; — while your 
 daughter appears prudence itself." 
 
 "Very true, my dear Madam. But one 
 should do one's best to prevent a young creature 
 from falling in mischief's way." 
 
 " And pray, who is that very handsome 
 n5 
 
274 THE SECOND MARRIAGE. 
 
 piece of mischief in Miss Trevelyan's way 
 just now ? — " 
 
 " I left her in the other room dancing with 
 the young Duke of Brancaleone." 
 
 " Then, I suppose she grew tired of him ; 
 for there she stands," continued Lady Wadham, 
 raising her glass to her eye, " in earnest con- 
 versation with a very fine young man, whom I 
 never saw before ; — there, next to the old Mar- 
 chioness in the yellow turban." 
 
 " God bless my soul ! — whom can he possibly 
 be ? " exclaimed Mrs. Trevelyan, in rising agi- 
 tation. " Who can have introduced him to my 
 daughter ? — They are talking together very 
 familiarly on so short an acquaintance ; I must 
 speak to Mr. Trevelyan about it. — Mr. Treve- 
 lyan never allows Julia to be introduced to peo- 
 ple without his previous sanction — Where can 
 Mr. Trevelyan be ! He ought to be made 
 aware of what is going on. — My dear Lady 
 Wadham, you don't happen to see Mr. Treve- 
 lyan any where ? — Really Julia should be more 
 guarded. She is no longer a child. She is old 
 enough to be aware of the imprudence of com- 
 
THE SECOND MARRIAGE. 2T5 
 
 mitting herself by making promiscuous acquaint- 
 ance. I wish I could find Mr. Trevelyan.'* 
 
 A similar anxiety on the part of the Squire 
 soon brought him from the further end of the 
 room, to reciprocate his inquiries respecting 
 Julia's new partner ; but their united investiga- 
 tion yielded no further information than that he 
 was a nouveau dehai'que, just arrived from Eng- 
 land. 
 
 " Perhaps it may turn out to be the young- 
 Lord Avenmore," whispered Mrs. to Mr. T. 
 " I know he is brin^inor us letters from our 
 friends in Yorkshire." 
 
 " Or perhaps it is the new attacM who is ex- 
 pected to pass through, on the Neapolitan Mis- 
 sion. I received a hint about him from the 
 Turbervilles. Lord Durlington's second son ; 
 but with his mother's fortune settled upon him 
 to the amount of five-and-twenty thousand a 
 year. To be sure the Durlingtons are people 
 of a very suspicious complexion ; I should 
 scarcely like Ju. to marry into a family witli 
 that clear transparent skin. There must be 
 pthisis or scrophula at the bottom of the business. 
 
276 THE SECOND MARRIAGE. 
 
 Not even Gowland could work such a miracle 
 as Lady Durlington's face." 
 
 " Then the stranger yonder can have nothing 
 to do with the?n ; for he is as swarthy as a Moor. 
 I declare, Mr. TreveJyan, I begin to feel a 
 little fidgetty about the business. You must re- 
 monstrate seriously with Julia as soon as she has 
 done dancing." 
 
 To remonstrate seriously with a creature 
 whose light footsteps approach us in the confi- 
 dence of perfect innocence, her chesnut ringlets 
 carelessly shaken aside, her blue eyes glancing 
 beneath them, — half-shy, half-tender — her white 
 teeth exhibited by an incessant play of smiles 
 and dimples — her sweet voice ringing like the 
 carol of birds, is a difficult task. Instead of ques- 
 tion or reproval, the old man found that nothing 
 was required of him but to bow very low to the 
 stranger, on his daughter's announcement of — 
 " Sir Alan Redwood, a friend of my uncle 
 Trevanion." 
 
 Mrs. Trevelyan instantly rose from her seat, 
 to prove by the length and depth of her curtsey 
 how much she was satisfied to find him an Eng- 
 
THE SECOND MARRIAGE. 277 
 
 lishman — how much more to find him a Sir 
 Anything Anybody — how, most of all, to learn 
 that he was blest with the friendship of her 
 worthy brother Trevanion. 
 
 Sir Alan, meanwhile, seemed to limit the ex- 
 tent of his personal importance to the conscious- 
 ness of having been recently the partner of the 
 loveliest girl in the ball-room. He bowed 
 gravely, stiffly, Englishly, to the profound obei- 
 sance of his countrywoman ; and Julia was for 
 a moment mortified by the coldness of his re- 
 plies to her father's polite inquiries touching 
 the health and journey of an individual he was 
 addressing for the first time ; and the dry repul- 
 sive way in which he suddenly quitted the 
 group, and made his way to a sneering coterie 
 of diplomats who stood strung together near the 
 door. 
 
 " What a pity that he should be so ungra- 
 cious !" thought Miss Trevelyan, as her mother 
 toddled back to Lady Wadham to communicate 
 all she knew respecting the illustrious stranger, 
 and solicit further information. " He is very 
 handsome — very well-informed : — I did not fore- 
 
S78 THE SECOND MARRIAGE. 
 
 see he could be so disagreeable.*' — And it 
 afforded her real gratification, in the course of 
 the evening, that Sir Alan Redwood should see 
 how assiduously her hand was sought by the 
 most distinguished partners in the room ; and 
 still more, with how much respect her father 
 and mother were treated by the leading per- 
 sonages of the society. She almost wished, in- 
 deed, that her friend Lady Clairiville had not 
 introduced this same surly English Baronet to 
 her acquaintance. But it did not much signify. 
 He had already informed her that he was on his 
 way to Naples; and birds of passage are too 
 frequent in Rome at the commencement of the 
 winter to render them of much account. Sir 
 A]an would be off in a day or two, and would 
 probably leave little occasion to regret his 
 departure. 
 
THE SECOND MARRIAGE. 279 
 
 CHAPTER HI. 
 
 There was no great disparity of years. 
 
 Though much in temper, but they never clash'd ; 
 
 They mov'd like stars united in their spheres. 
 
 Or like the Rhone by Leman's waters wash'd. 
 
 Where mingled and yet separate appears 
 
 The river from the lake. Byron. 
 
 In spite of his own announcement, however, 
 and in spite of the announcement of all the 
 gossips, Sir Alan Redwood loitered on from 
 day to day, from week to week. It was not, as 
 Lady Wadham ill-naturedly insinuated, that he 
 was disappointed of his remittances from Eng- 
 land, and pretended a predilection for Rome 
 merely from an inability to get forward to 
 Naples. The English Baronet lived (as the 
 English love to live) at the most expensive hotel 
 in the most expensive manner ; not only paying 
 his way as he went, but paying a great deal of 
 way that he did not go. Moreover he was a 
 
280 THE SECOND MARRIAGE. 
 
 dilettante or cognoscente (as the English travellers 
 love to be, in things that delight them not and 
 concerning which they know nothing) ; and dis- 
 played much liberality among the studios and 
 ateliers which are frequented by his youthful 
 countrymen in Rome, much as Tattersall's and 
 Hoby's are frequented in London, and where 
 they seldom display much beyond their own 
 ignorance. It was plainly no deficiency of 
 means to go further and fare worse, which de- 
 tained him so long in the Eternal City. 
 
 It is almost superfluous to notice that where- 
 ever the inhabitants of the British Islands much 
 do congregate, there must inevitably be dinner- 
 parties : — not dinners only, — not good eating and 
 drinking, — but parties of gentlemen and ladies, 
 dressed in their best attire, to sit round a table, 
 and partake of it in the most formal and dis- 
 agreeable manner, precisely at the moment de- 
 voted by other nations to the enjoyment of 
 lighter entertainment, the theatres and the pro- 
 menades. Even in the campaigns of the Peninsu- 
 lar war, even when superannuated cows and 
 mules furnished the best part of the bill of fare, 
 
THE SECOND MARRIAGE. 281 
 
 and the leg of an ass-foal was accounted a deli- 
 cacy, regular cards of invitation are known to 
 have been sent out by more than one gallant 
 Colonel, whose baggage consisted chiefly in 
 saucepans and gridirons; and even at Rome, 
 instead of " doing as Romans do," it is the cus- 
 tom of our countrymen to gather together, per 
 dozen, precisely at the hour and in the fashion 
 they would do in Berkeley-square or Grosvenor- 
 place. The Trevelyans, who enjoyed the exact 
 amount of popularity ensured by great respect- 
 ability of tone, equipage, and establishment, 
 were greatly in request at these ultramontane 
 feasts. Sir Thomas and Lady Dunderhead, or 
 Mr. and Mrs. Bumble Drone, were urgent for 
 " the favour of their company," because they 
 knew that the favour of their own company 
 would be requested in return on the following 
 week, to meet pretty nearly the same company, 
 and feed on exacdy the same quality of viands 
 and wines, enlivened by a prosy recital of their 
 morning exploits, and a general lamentation 
 over the dulness of the English papers. They 
 were asked every where; they went every 
 
282 THE SECOND MARRIAGE. 
 
 where ; and every where they went, it was now 
 their fortune to meet Sir Alan Redwood ; who, 
 thanks to tlie taciturnity of his manners, had 
 attained the renown of being a very sensible 
 young man, — and thanks to his brusquerie, of 
 being a very distinguished one. It is singular 
 how much some people gain by making them- 
 selves disagreeable ! — 
 
 Julia Trevelyan's estimate of the English Ba- 
 ronet who " said farewell and went not," was 
 however very different from that of Lady Wad- 
 ham and the rest of the cassino playing com- 
 munity. She did not think him a Solon, she 
 did not think him a Saint. She did not con- 
 jecture that he would ever set the Thames or the 
 Tiber on fire, drink up Eisel, or eat a crocodile. 
 She only thought him the most charming man 
 in the world ; and herself the most unlikely 
 woman to attract his notice. 
 
 Dinner parties of twelve seldom include more 
 than one lovely Julia, or one distinguished young 
 Baronet; and it was consequently their fortune 
 to be placed side by side by the benevolent pro- 
 vidence of their hosts, much oftener than seemed 
 
THE SECOND MARRIAGE. 283 
 
 to suit the inclinations of the superciHous Sir 
 Alan, or the delicacy of the sensitive Miss Tre- 
 velyan. She saw plainly that he did not think 
 her worth conversing with; that the long-winded 
 inanity of her father and mother had inspired 
 him with a very disparaging notion of the intel- 
 lect of the family ; that, beyond the courtesy of 
 placing a beccofico on her plate, he was in fact 
 very little cognizant of her being seated on the 
 chair beside him. Her pride at length sug- 
 gested, that he might suppose she had some 
 share in the ari'angements for their danc- 
 ing, riding, sitting, and talking together, made 
 by the unanimous consent of society, without re- 
 ference to her inclinations. 
 
 Dismissing the artless cordiality of her general 
 address, Julia accordingly strove to insinuate an 
 unwonted air of dignity, and even disdain, into 
 her intercourse with her handsome countryman. 
 But by this she gained notliing. Her reserve 
 rendered him only more reserved, — her scorn, 
 more fastidious ; and whereas she had been pre- 
 viously amazed and distressed by rumours, that 
 " Sir Alan Redwood and Miss Trevelvan were 
 
284 THE SECOND MARRIAGE. 
 
 going to be married," she had now the vexation 
 to find that public report only modified the He 
 into " Sir Alan and Miss Trevelyan had been 
 engaged, but had broken off the engagement." 
 All this was mortifying enough ; and the more 
 so, that Mrs. Trevelyan evinced no great indig- 
 nation either at the first or second falsehood. 
 " Nothing has prevented more marriages," said 
 she, in answer to her daughter's expostulations, 
 " than premature disavowal. Were I to set 
 about denying the report, Sir Alan might say 
 that it would have been as well to wait till we 
 were asked ; and perhaps make it an excuse for 
 never proposing at all." 
 
 " But, my dear mother, believe me, he is 
 never likely to propose at all," exclaimed poor 
 Julia, reddening to the temples, at this specimen 
 of her mother's discretion. '' Surely you must 
 have observed, from the very first night of our 
 introduction, his coldness, his moroseness, his 
 every thing short of incivility towards us all ? — " 
 
 " Nonsense, my dear ! — Sir Alan is a very 
 well-bred young man, who does not go about 
 shaking hands with and whispering to every one, 
 
THE SECOND MARRIAGE. 285 
 
 like Sir Lucius Blarnymore ; or pass his time 
 in morning visiting, like poor little Lord Dwin- 
 dleham. He pays us as much attention as he 
 pays any one." 
 
 " Granted ! — and an additional proof that he 
 is very unlikely to make me an offer of his hand. 
 He talks to me just as he talks to Lady Wad- 
 ham or the paralytic Princess Ronsiglione. Is 
 that the tone for a lover ? " — 
 
 " Why what in the world do you imagine 
 detains him here at Rome, except the view of 
 recommending himself to our family ? " — 
 
 " Indeed I imagine nothing on the subject : 
 and least of all that Sir Alan entertains the 
 smallest interest concerning me or mine. Par- 
 don me, dear mother, if I express a hope, that 
 you have not allowed your conjectures to tran- 
 spire among Lady Wadham and her set?" — 
 
 " My dear love, the fact is too apparent. 
 They all see it as well as myself: they cannot 
 help seeing it, and they cannot help saying so, 
 and I cannot blame them. Consider for a mo- 
 ment ! — Sir Alan arrives here with the intention 
 of refreshing himself on his journey by a few 
 
286 THE SECOND MA.RRIAGE. 
 
 days rest. Every thing is arranged for his de- 
 parture ; — passports made out, — trunks packed. 
 He comes to Torlonia's , — dances with you, — 
 burns his passport, unpacks his trunks^ — and, on 
 pretence of some nonsense or other, lingers on 
 week after week, meeting you day after day, and 
 daily more intent on the connexion.*' 
 
 " I scarcely know how to answer so partial a 
 statement. But as it must be plain to you that 
 he cannot marry me without your consent and 
 my own, you will admit that he takes very little 
 pains to conciliate either or any of us ? " — 
 
 " Oh ! that is his way. He is not a fop,— he 
 is not a courtier; — and being probably aware that 
 nothing would be more gratifying to your father 
 and myself than to secure so eligible a con- 
 nexion, perhaps he thinks a waste of courtship 
 superfluous." 
 
 *' My dear, dear mother !— this is worse and 
 worse ! " — cried Julia, hiding her face in her 
 hands. — " If you say only half so much to Lady 
 Wadham, I no longer wonder at the cold con- 
 tempt of his demeanour. To fancy that I am 
 sitting patiently in the hopes of finding his 
 
THE SECOND MARRIAGE. 287 
 
 handkerchief thrown into my lap: — and willing 
 and eager to become Lady Redwood on any 
 terms upon which he may vouchsafe to grant me 
 the opportunity !— Oh ! mother, mother ! — why 
 have you exposed me to such a humiliation." 
 
 " What can be the matter with you, child ? 
 I don't like to see you crying for such trifles ! — 
 IVeally begin to believe, with your father, that 
 you are not well. He says the Sicilian wines 
 here don't agree with you, — that you look 
 heated; — and wants you to take some Seidlitz 
 powders." 
 
 " I should do very well could I but per- 
 suade you to dismiss the absurd notion that Sir 
 Alan Redwood has any particular object, any 
 object in which / am concerned, for prolong- 
 ing his sojourn here." 
 
 " But why wish to persuade me of such a 
 thing ? — It would be a great disappointment to 
 me ! I have set my heart upon the match." 
 
 " You, who love me so tenderly, would 
 entrust my happiness to the care of a man we 
 liave only known six weeks ! " 
 
 " Ah ! but every one sees that you are very par- 
 
288 THE SECOND MARRIAGE. 
 
 tial to him. In my opinion. Sir Alan is the only 
 man you have ever really liked. I was telling 
 Lady Wadham so, last night at the Cardinal's ." 
 
 " Ah, mother, mother ! — and a man too with 
 whose principles and connexions we are utterly 
 unacquainted." 
 
 " My dear Julia, you don't suppose that your 
 father and I have been proceeding blindfold in 
 this business ? — From the very night of Sir Alan 
 Redwood's introduction to us, from the moment 
 I perceived that you had taken such an instan- 
 taneous fancy to each other, I wrote over to my 
 brother Trevanion (with whom he said he was 
 acquainted), to make the most minute investiga- 
 tion into the particulars of his family, fortune, 
 and character." 
 
 " And supposing they have reached his 
 ears ? " 
 
 " Supposing they have, — what can be more 
 natural than the solicitude of parents situated 
 as we are situated? — I have little doubt that he 
 is fully aware of the circumstance, and highly 
 applauds our prudence." 
 
 " And what must he have been thinking of 
 
THE SECOND MARRIAGE. 289 
 
 me all this time," faltered Miss Trevelyan ; 
 looking more like a heroine than she ever looked 
 in her life. 
 
 "But, my love, you don't inquire the parti-* 
 culars of your uncle's reply ? " 
 
 " It is quite a sufficient misery that the inquiry 
 was ever made." 
 
 " Ah ! you will change your mind, my dear 
 Ju., when you hear that Sir Alan has nearly 
 thirty thousand a year, and one of the most 
 beautiful seats in Yorkshire; and that he is con- 
 nected on all sides in the most unexceptionable 
 manner." 
 
 " I am only glad to find that he has some 
 little excuse for the self-importance I have 
 always found so disagreeable." 
 
 " It is certainly some drawback, that the child 
 survives ; but, as it is only a girl, there would 
 be nothing to interfere between your children 
 and the entail. Trevelyan Park might be set- 
 tled on your second son, with a provision for 
 change of name." 
 
 " Children ? — daughter ? — son ? " — 
 
 " Yes, my love. She died in childbed, you 
 
 VOL. I. o 
 
290 THE SECOND MARRIAGE* 
 
 know; and her family have the care of the 
 child." 
 
 «* To what family and what child are you 
 alluding?"— 
 
 " To Sir Alan Redwood's, to be sure." 
 
 " Sir Alan a married man ? " — 
 
 " A widower, my dear Julia. Your uncle 
 Trevanion writes me word that the young man 
 is travelling on the continent only to dissipate 
 his affliction for the loss of his wife. A charm- 
 iig creature, he says ; — so beautiful, so accom- 
 plished, and poor Sir Alan so tenderly attached 
 to her ! ''— 
 
 " And this is the man we have been pestering 
 with invitations to fetes and operas ! — No won- 
 der he was so much disgusted with our proceed- 
 ings. How frivolous must all my girlish folly 
 have appeared in his eyes." 
 
 "We met him first, you know, in a ball- 
 room. Lady Redwood has been dead a year, 
 or you would scarcely have seen him capering 
 about in weepers." 
 
 " Capering about ! *' — 
 
 "And from the moment people re-appear in 
 
THE SECOND MARRIAGE. 291 
 
 society, they must expect to be treated like the 
 rest of the world. Sir Alan Redwood cannot 
 expect that we are all to be pensive and grave 
 becauses he chooses to be sorry for his wife. 
 Hush ! here he comes." 
 
 " Pray, pray mamma," whispered Miss Tre- 
 velyan, as the baronet's steps were heard tra- 
 versing the ante-chamber, "do not let him sup- 
 pose we have been discussing his affairs ; consi- 
 der how officious and impertinent we should 
 appear ! " 
 
 It was probably an apprehension that Mrs. 
 Trevelyan would commit her by some new indis- 
 cretion, that lent so beautiful a flush to Julia's 
 cheek when Redwood entered the room. It was 
 probably the new interest he had recently ac- 
 quired in her eyes, which caused her voice to 
 tremble when she addressed him. A husband 
 and a father ! — a bereaved husband — a father 
 separated from his only child ! Such sorrow as 
 he must have undergone ; such painful remem- 
 brances as must still haunt his mind ! — Involun- 
 tarily her eyes filled with tears, as she remarked 
 for the first time that his brow was hollow, and 
 o 2 
 
292 THE SECOND MARRIAGE. 
 
 his lips feverish and compressed. How often 
 must she have insensibly wounded his feelings — 
 how often vexed and offended him ! — Julia Tre- 
 velyan never discovered how far her predilec- 
 tions had outstripped her intention, and how 
 deeply, tenderly, and irrevocably her affections 
 were pledged to Sir Alan Redwood, till she had 
 reason to believe that his own were wedded to 
 the grave — that he was a heartbroken and mis- 
 anthropic man ! 
 
 It was probably the sympathy thus developed, 
 which softened even the harsh Englishman's in- 
 tonation, as he addressed a few uninteresting in- 
 quiries to the lovely heiress. Blind as he w^as — 
 blinded either by prejudice, pride, or mental 
 affliction, — the perturbation, the tenderness of 
 Miss Trevelyan's manner could not escape him. 
 He drew his chair nearer to hers, and for a mo- 
 ment affected to interest himself in the drawing 
 at which she was diligently working with a view to 
 escape his coldly scrutinizing glances. Julia felt 
 her breath grow shorter, and her cheeks of a more 
 burning crimson. She was determined that he 
 should have no plea for supposing that she had 
 
THE SECOND MARRIAGE. 293 
 
 participated in her mother's investigations ; and 
 replying to his questions with an abruptness 
 almost as startling and ungracious as any he had 
 ever practised towards herself, Sir Alan was for 
 the first time induced to consider the beautiful 
 Julia as wayward and capricious. He was indig- 
 nant. He had thought better of her ; had re- 
 garded her as the least spoiled child of the most 
 spoiling parents that the weakest human nature 
 could furnish ; and intent perhaps on making 
 his dissatisfaction apparent, assumed in his turn 
 a harshness of tone such as induced Julia sud- 
 denly to let fall her pencil, and lift her large dark 
 grey eyes to his, with an expression that could 
 not be mistaken ; — with the deprecating, de- 
 voted, doubting, timid tenderness, of first and 
 unreturned affection. There was no resisting 
 this mute and involuntary appeal. Sir Alan 
 Redwood, silently seizing the hand of the lovely 
 artist, pressed it fervently in his, and would pro- 
 bably have raised it to his lips, had she not forci- 
 bly disengaged it, — risen abruptly from her seat, 
 — .and quitted the room. Mrs. Trevelyan 
 was too busy with her knitting, and too slow 
 
294 THE SECOND MARRIAGE. 
 
 of apprehension to notice what was going on. 
 As Juha passed her chair^ she saw indeed that 
 the tears were streaming down her face ; and 
 attributed her daughter's emotion to the ag^i- 
 tating nature of the conversation they had re- 
 cendy held together. — She only hoped that Sir 
 Alan was not so clear-sighted as herself ! 
 
THE SECOND MARRIAGE. 295 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 I love him not, — nor hate him not ; and yet 
 I have more cause to hate him than to love him. 
 For what had he to do to chide at me ? 
 
 As You LiKB It. 
 
 Fortunately for the happiness of man-and- 
 womankind, those subtleties of sentiment which 
 agonized the sensibiUties of young ladies and 
 young gendemen of the days of the Harlowes 
 and Grandisons, have vanished from the com- 
 mon-place routine of life. For many years 
 past, we have heard of no female victims to the 
 delicate distress of having given away an un- 
 vvooed heart ; nor do we know a single marriage 
 embittered by a recurrence of the Richardsonian 
 paradox of who loved first, and why. It does 
 not, however, appear certain that the moral tur- 
 
296 THE SECOND MARRIAGE. 
 
 pitude of the action is by any means diminished; 
 and it is with fear and trembling we admit that 
 poor Julia Trevelyan's heart was exclusively 
 dedicated to the flinty Sir Alan, long before he 
 had vouchsafed to press her hand, or even com- 
 passionate the tears he wrung from her gentle 
 eyes. We admit that the conduct of our he- 
 roine was very blameable. — It was, however, very 
 natural ; for the young Baronet was not alone 
 the most attractive man with whom she had ever 
 been acquainted ; but the only one, young and 
 unmarried, who had evinced no pretensions to 
 her liand ! — 
 
 But now, — now that she had so completely 
 betiayed herself, now that the unguarded weak- 
 ness of her demeanour afforded him greater ex- 
 cuse for triumph than even Mrs. Trevelyan's 
 manoeuvres, — did he tiow, did he still maintain 
 that frigid reserve, that mortifying apathy, 
 which had so long borne testimony to the pre- 
 engrossment of his feelings? — Impossible !~He 
 could not longer close his heart against a young, 
 beautiful, gentle, accomplished, rich, well-born 
 girl ; whose devotion to himself was manifest. 
 
THE SECOND MARRIAGE. 29'7 
 
 notwithstanding all her efforts, all her struggles, 
 all her delicacy; who loved him in spite of 
 himself — and of Aer^e^ also. 
 
 Yes ! — Things went worse between them than 
 ever ! — A new shade of embarrassment seemed 
 added to a mutual position, already only too 
 embarrassing, Julia, ashamed of the emotion 
 involuntarily betrayed, grew almost sullen with 
 its object; while Sir Alan, instead of throwing 
 himself at her feet as the happiest and most 
 grateful of men, scarcely even deigned to oc- 
 cupy the place by her side forced upon him by 
 tlie misjudging zeal of Mr. or Mrs. Trevelyan. 
 
 Whenever he addressed her it seemed by in- 
 voluntary impulse; and though a close observer 
 might have noticed that his eye from a distance 
 was constantly directed towards her, and his 
 lips, when he did speak, compressed, as if by a 
 strong effort to restrain his declarations, poor 
 Julia saw nothing in his demeanour but in- 
 creased reserve, increasing alienation. Very 
 earnestly did she long for the first symptoms of 
 the return of spring; for in the spring they 
 were to quit Rome ; and she had actually suc- 
 o5 
 
298 THE SECOND MARRIAGE. 
 
 ceeded in persuading her parents to a voyage to 
 Sicily, in order to avoid the appearance of tra- 
 velhng in company with the surly Redwood by 
 pursuing their original plan of a journey to 
 Naples. Bui the first symptoms of spring were 
 fated to waft new projects upon their balmy 
 gales. 
 
 It was about the end of February ; and a continu- 
 ation of cold weather, such as, to use the Roman 
 proverb, had " hung beards on the frost-bitten 
 Tritons of the fountains in the Piazza Navona," 
 rendered a change of temperature peculiarly 
 welcome ; when a few days of sunshine brought 
 forth at once the ready verdure of that accessi- 
 ble soil, and, as if by a magic touch, the gar- 
 dens of Monte Pincio grew suddenly bright 
 v»ith flowers. Tulips, anemones, and hyacinths, 
 started up as if long impatient for a summons; 
 — the intense verdure of the yellow jasmine- leaves 
 grew glossier and greener than ever ; — tiie bright 
 bay and peaked phyllerea seemed to wake into 
 vivid existence; — even the eternal pine-trees 
 threw aside their mourning habits, and, if they 
 still sighed, imparted a spicy sweetness to their 
 
THE SECOND MARRIAGE. 299 
 
 sighs, as though grateful to the sunshine, that dis- 
 dained not to smile upon their desolation. All 
 the world was astir again. Superlatives were 
 audible in the streets: '^Bellissimo! — dolcissi- 
 mo! — beatissbno ! ^' were heard on every side. 
 The Piomans began to dream of their villeggla- 
 tura, — and the English to project picnics. Lady 
 Wadman was wild to go and eat pigeon-pies 
 at Adrian's villa; and Mrs. Green Smith and 
 Miss Brown Thompson thought that a gypsey 
 party to Tivoli would be the most delightful 
 thing in the world. 
 
 In these expeditions, and fifty others of an 
 equally incongruous nature, the Trevelyans 
 were necessarily included; and although the 
 old gentleman entertained a notion that malaria 
 and the picturesque are two airy nothings very 
 frequently to be met with in one and the same 
 " local habitation,'' yet, for the sake of seeing 
 Julia scramble over broken columns on Sii* Alan 
 Redwood's arm, or hunt for wild anemones 
 with Sir Alan Redwood by her side, he was 
 very willing to eat his ham sandwiches or cold 
 chicken in any ruined temple or desolated 
 
300 THE SECOND MARRIAGE. 
 
 villa, selected by the bad taste of the indifferent 
 society by which he was surrounded. 
 
 It would have tasked Miss Trevelyan's can- 
 dour to decide whether it w^as by consent or 
 compulsion that she found herself included in a 
 party of this description, made by Lady Clairi- 
 ville, to visit Horace's villa, and dine tant Men 
 que mal in the beautiful ruins adjoining the 
 village of Roua Giovane. They were to pass 
 the morning in wandering beside the shallow 
 waters of the Licenza; or explore, on mules 
 provided for the purpose, the woods and preci- 
 pices of Mount Lucretilis, overhanging the 
 favourite haunts of the poet. But when she 
 found herself gradually led apart by Sir Alan, 
 and conducted among the green thickets of arbu- 
 tus, where the violet and orchis seemed springing 
 under her feet, she saw no cause to repine at hav- 
 ing accepted the invitation, nor any reason to 
 doubt that the object of her affection was for 
 once intent on securing a tete-a-tete. The clear 
 Italian sky was bright over their heads; the 
 song of the distant goatherd, reaching their 
 ears at intervals from the mountain side, alone 
 
THE SECOND MARRIAGE. 301 
 
 disturbed the stillness of the landscape; — and 
 never had Redwood conversed with her in 
 terms of such endearing familiarity. There 
 was nothing of love, indeed, in his language ; 
 but a great deal in his tone. He talked 
 of poetry and poets ;— of nature and religion ; 
 —of every thing that people talk of when love 
 is uppermost in their hearts and souls; and 
 moreover, having persuaded her to rest her- 
 self by his side on one of those moss-covered 
 stones marking the limits of the winter chan- 
 nel of the Licenza, which seem to have been 
 lying there in their hoariness since the very days 
 of Horace, bent his looks upon hers with an 
 expression whence all his former reserve was 
 banished ; — an expression such as marks the 
 glance of a human eye towards the object on 
 earth upon which it most delights to gaze. He 
 became abstracted, incoherent,— and Miss Tre- 
 velyan saw in a moment that the long-wished, — 
 long-despaired of confession w^as at hand; — when 
 lo ! just as she was beginning to tremble with 
 emotions of mingled joy and fear, a loud halloo 
 from a dandy dragoon, a brother of Lady Clairi- 
 
302 THE SECOND MARRIAGE. 
 
 ville's (who being a jester by vocation was pro- 
 nounced to be a great acquisition to all the plea- 
 sure haunts of the ennuyees of Rome) announced 
 that Lady Wadham and her Huns were at hand. 
 Julia and Redwood had just time to start up 
 from their sentimental post, and assume a tone 
 that might better assimilate with the flippant 
 bantering of their companions. But it was im- 
 possible to divest themselves of a certain air of 
 consciousness, such as induced Lady C. to assure 
 her young friend that she saw clearly " how 
 things were ;" and Lady W. to offer her con- 
 gratulations in an audible whisper to both. 
 
 Greatly, however, as poor Julia was distressed 
 by their officious impertinence, she was far more 
 so on perceiving that Sir Alan, instead of com- 
 passionating the dilemma in which she was 
 placed, studiously withdrew from her side. 
 They were now making their way to a disman- 
 tled fortress near Roua Giovane, where the 
 banquet was already prepared ; and leaving 
 her to the charge of the noisy blockhead by 
 whom they had been molested, he now affected 
 to offer his arm as the escort of Ladv Clairi- 
 
THE SECOND MARRIAGE. 303 
 
 ville ; beside whom he sat during the repast de- 
 voting himself ostensibly and exclusively to her 
 entertainment. 
 
 The tables being at length removed, dancing 
 was proposed in the quadrangle ; and in a mo- 
 ment she beheld Redwood guiding the trium- 
 phant Lady Clairiville through the mazes of 
 a waltz ! — Twilight stood her friend. Gradu- 
 ally extricating herself from the merry group, 
 poor Julia stole silently away through the inner 
 courts of the venerable edifice : — tripped hastily 
 over the short green grass, by which the inter- 
 vening mounds of earth were covered as by a 
 carpeting of green velvet; — and having reached 
 a little desolate nook of glacis bounded round 
 by the hoary walls and a wooden paling, sat 
 herself down on the ground and covered her 
 face with her hands ; the better, it may be con- 
 cluded, to collect her thoughts and shape her 
 projects for the future. Of course she would 
 not have done so ignominious a thing as weep 
 for the world ! 
 
 But after a few minutes indulgence of diese 
 
304 THE SECOND MARRIAGE. 
 
 solitary ruminations, she suddenly started up ; 
 and would have quitted her lonely oratory 
 almost as eagerly as she had sought it, but that 
 she was forcibly detained, — forcibly compelled to 
 reseat herself,— forcibly compelled to listen to a 
 voice, the faintest accents of which, whispered 
 softly into her ear, had caused her a moment 
 before to withdraw the hand from her face and 
 prepare to retrace her steps back to the com- 
 pany. 
 
 " Dearest, dearest Julia !" — exclaimed Sir 
 Alan Redwood, " you are weeping ! — What 
 brings you here ? — What has impelled you 
 to quit yonder merry group for this dreary 
 spot?" 
 
 Sir Alan seemed resolved to compensate him- 
 self for five months of self-restraint, by the sud- 
 den assumption of unlimited license ; for he not 
 only ventured upon the familiarity of Julia- 
 izing the astonished recluse, but actually pre- 
 sumed to encircle Miss Trevelyan's slender 
 waist with his arm. It was not surprising that 
 she should turn pale and tremble at so extra- 
 ordinary an irregularity on the part of so regu- 
 
THE SECOND MARRIAGE. 305 
 
 lar a maind , nemtihuess of encreasino^ twilio-ht 
 and in the stillness of so remote a spot. She 
 began heartily to wish she had kept with the 
 rest of the company ; for she had little doubt 
 that the elated Baronet was under the influence 
 of champagne. 
 
 Alas ! his was an intoxication quaffed at a 
 still more perilous source ; — his was an intoxica- 
 tion against which both soda and seltzer are in- 
 effectual correctives ; — his was the intoxication of 
 a passion long repressed, long increasing ; of a 
 tenderness only the more potent and the more 
 exquisite, that it had been subdued by ail the 
 arguments and all the efforts which human 
 resolution could suggest. 
 
 " You think me wild," cried he, in answer to 
 the silent shudder w^ith which she repelled his 
 touch. " You attribute my impetuosity to 
 audacity, — perhaps to wine, — perhaps to mad- 
 ness. — No, Julia — dearest, mos.t beloved 
 Julia, no ! — I am only too sober, — too sane, — 
 too sad.— It is with the full force of my reason 
 I am compelled to acknowledge how long, how 
 intensely I have loved you; how painfully 1 
 
306 THE SECOND MARRIAGE. 
 
 have striven to conceal ; — how vainly attempted 
 to subdue my attachment ! " 
 
 " Your attachment ! " ejaculated Miss Tre- 
 velyan, astonished out of her terrors; and already 
 relapsing into the credulous confidence ever 
 entertained by a woman towards the object of 
 her affections. " Do not imagine me so easily 
 deceived.*' 
 
 "I do not imagine you deceived !— No ! it 
 was impossible to deceive you : — I felt that it was 
 impossible. With al) my efforts to appear un- 
 constrained in your presence, with all my 
 anxiety that nothing should transpire to betray 
 the troubled state of my feelings, nothing could 
 blind your penetration ; — you saw and have seen 
 from the first moment of our acquaintance : the 
 unlimited extent of your influence over my 
 feelings." 
 
 It would have been much more to the pur- 
 pose, had Miss Trevelyan persisted in feeling or 
 feigning astonishment and incredulity. But 
 Julia was incapable of art. If no longer sur- 
 prised, she was at least gratified and penetrated 
 by all she felt and all she heard. Moreover, the 
 
THE SECOND MARRIAGE. SOT 
 
 tears were very near the surface,— quite ready to 
 spring forth again ; and without the least regard 
 to her own dignity, she actually relapsed into 
 a most unheroic flood of tears. Sir Alan re- 
 ceived no very intelligible negative to his re- 
 quest for leave to hope,— and for permission to 
 tender his proposals to Mr. and Mrs. Trevelyan. 
 
 END OF VOL. 
 
 J. C. NICHOLS AND SON, 2 5, PARLIAMENT-STREET.