COURT DUTIES DISCUSSED.
December.-Let me now, to enliven you a little, introduce to you a new acquaintance, self-made, that I meet at the chapel, and who always sits next me when there is room,—Mrs. J——-, wife to the Bishop of K—: and before the service begins, she enters into small talk, with a pretty tolerable degree of frankness, not much repressed by scruples of delicacy.
Take a specimen. She opened, the other morning, upon my situation and occupation, and made the most plump inquiries into its particulars, with a sort of hearty good humour that removed all impertinence, whatever it left of inelegance and then began her comments.
“Well; the queen, to be sure, is a great deal better dressed than she used to be; but for all that, I really think it is but an odd thing for you!—Dear! I think it’s something so out of the way for you!—I can’t think how you set about it. It must have been very droll to you at first. A great deal of honour, to be sure, to serve a queen, and all that: but I dare say a lady’s-maid could do it better,—though to be called about a queen, as I say, is a great deal of honour: but, for my part, I should not like it; because to be always obliged to go to a person, whether one was in the humour or not, and to get up in a morning, if one was never so sleepy!—dear! it must be a mighty hurry-skurry life! you don’t look at all fit for it, to judge by appearances, for all its great honour, and all that.”
Is not this a fit bishop’s wife? is not here primitive candour and veracity? I laughed most heartily,—and we have now commenced acquaintance for these occasional meetings.
If this honest dame does not think me fit for this part of my business, there is another person, Mlle. Montmoulin, who, with equal simplicity, expresses her idea of my unfitness for another part.—“How you bear it,” she cries, “living with Mrs. Schwellenberg!—I like it better living in prison!—‘pon m’honneur, I prefer it bread and water; I think her so cross never was. If I you, I won’t bear it—poor Miss Burney!—I so sorry!—‘pon m’honneur, I think to you oftens!—you so confined, you won’t have no pleasures!—”
Miss Gomme, less plaintive, but more solemn, declared the other day, “I am sure you must go to heaven for living this life!”—-So, at least, you see, though in a court, I am not an object of envy.