AMIABLE MRS. SCHWELLENBERG AGAIN.
Sept. 4.—To-day there was a Drawing-room, and I had the blessing of my dearest father while it lasted; but not solus; he was accompanied by my mother; and my dear Esther and her little innocent Sophy spent part of the time with us. I am to be god-mother to the two little ones, Esther’s and James’s. Heaven bless them!
We returned to Kew to a late dinner; and, indeed, I had one of the severest evenings I ever passed, where my heart took no share in unkindness and injustice. I was wearied in the extreme, as I always am on these drawing-room days, which begin with full hair-dressing at six o’clock in the morning, and hardly ever allow any breakfast time, and certainly only standing, except while frizzing, till the drawing-room commences; and then two journeys in that decked condition—and then another dressing, with three dressing attendances—and a dinner at near seven o’clock.
Yet, not having power to be very amusing after all this, I was sternly asked by Mrs. Schwellenberg, “For what I did not talk?”
I answered simply, “Because I was tired.”
“You tired!—what have you done? when I used to do so much more—you tired! what have you to do but to be happy:—have you the laces to buy? have you the wardrobe to part? have you—you tired? Vell, what will become next, when you have every happiness!—you might not be tired. No, I can’t bear It.”
This, and so much more than it would be possible to write, all uttered with a haughtiness and contempt that the lowest servant could not have brooked receiving, awoke me pretty completely, though before I was scarce able to keep my eyelids a moment open; but so sick I turned, that indeed it was neither patience nor effort that enabled me to hear her; I had literally hardly strength, mental or bodily, to have answered her. Every happiness mine!—O gracious heaven! thought I, and is this the companion of my leisure—the associate of my life! Ah, my dear friends, I will not now go on—I turn sick again.