ROYAL CONCERN FOR THE COLONEL’s GOUT.
Sunday, July 27.—This morning in my first attendance I seized a moment to tell her majesty of yesterday’s dinner. “So I hear!” she cried; and I was sorry any one had anticipated my information, nor can I imagine who it might be.
“But pray, ma’am,” very gravely, “how did it happen? I understood Mr. Fairly was confined by the gout.”
“He grew better, ma’am, and hoped by exercise to prevent a serious fit.”
She said no more, but did not seem pleased. The fatigues of a Court attendance are so little comprehended, that persons known to be able to quit their room and their bed are Instantly concluded to be qualified for all the duties of their office.
We were again very early, as their majesties meant to go to the cathedral at Gloucester, where the Bishop of Gloucester, Dr. Halifax, was to Preach to them. But I-was particularly glad, before our breakfast, was over, to see Mr. Fairly enter my little parlour. He was Still In his gouty Shoe, and assisted by a stick, but he had not suffered from his yesterday’s exertion.
Before the things were removed, a page opened the door, and all the royal family—king, queen, and three princesses—came into the room to see Mr. Fairly and Inquire how he did. I hardly know with which of the five he is most in favour, or by which most respected, and they all expressed their concern for this second attack, in the kindest terms.
The king, however, who has a flow of spirits at this time quite unequalled, would fain have turned the whole into ridicule, and have persuaded him he was only fanciful.
“Fanciful, Sir?” he repeated, a little displeased; and the good king perceiving it, graciously and good-humouredly drew back his words, by saying “Why I should wonder indeed if you were to be that!”
When they all decamped I prepared for church. I had appointed to go with Miss Port, and to meet her on the road. Mr. Fairly said, if I would give him leave, he would stay and write letters in my little parlour. I supplied him with materials, and emptied my queen’s writing-box for a desk, as we possess nothing here but a low dining-table. So away went journals, letters, memorandums, etc., into the red portfolio given me by my dear father.
As soon as I presented him with this, not at all aware of the goods and chattels removed for the occasion, he said it was so very comfortable he should now write all his letters here, for at his lodgings he had such a miserable low table he had been forced to prop it up by brick-bats!
Mr. Fairly sealed and made up his dispatches, and then said he would stroll a little out to put his foot in motion. “And what,” he asked, “shall you do?”
I had a great mind to say, Why, stroll with you; for that, I think, was the meaning OF his question; but I feared it might prevent my being dressed against the return Of the queen, and I do not think she would have thought it an adequate excuse.