LETTER XLII
LADY G——, TO MISS BYRON MONDAY, MAY 8.
My lord and I have had another little—Tiff, shall I call it? It came not up to a quarrel. Married people would have enough to do, if they were to trouble their friends every time they misunderstood one another. And now a word or two of other people: not always scribbling of ourselves.
We have just heard, that our cousin Everard has added another fool of our sex to the number of the weak ones who disgrace it: A sorry fellow! He has been seen with her, by one whom he would not know, at Cuper's Gardens; dressed like a sea-officer, and skulking like a thief into the privatest walks of the place. When he is tired of the poor wretch, he will want to accommodate with us by promises of penitence and reformation, as once or twice before. Rakes are not only odious, but they are despicable fellows. You will the more clearly see this, when I assure you, from those who know, that this silly creature our cousin is looked upon, among his brother libertines, and smarts, as a man of first consideration!
He has also been seen, in a gayer habit, at a certain gaming-table, near Covent Garden; where he did not content himself with being an idle spectator. Colonel Winwood, our informant, shook his head, but made no other answer, to some of our inquiries. May he suffer! say I.—A sorry fellow!
Preparations are going on all so-fast at Windsor. We are all invited. God grant that Miss Mansfield may be as happy a Lady W——, as we all conclude she will be! But I never was fond of matches between sober young women, and battered old rakes. Much good may do the adventurers, drawn in by gewgaw and title!—Poor things!—But convenience, when that's the motive, whatever foolish girls think, will hold out its comforts, while a gratified love quickly evaporates.
Beauchamp, who is acquainted with the Mansfields, is intrusted by my brother, in his absence, with the management of the law-affairs. He hopes, he says, to give a good account of them. The base steward of the uncle Calvert, who lived as a husband with the woman who had been forced upon his superannuated master in a doting fit, has been brought, by the death of one of the children born in Mr. Calvert's life-time, and by the precarious health of the posthumous one, to make overtures of accommodation. A new hearing of the cause between them and the Keelings, is granted; and great things are expected from it in their favour, from some new lights thrown in upon that suit. The Keelings are frightened out of their wits, it seems; and are applying to Sir John Lambton, a disinterested neighbour, to offer himself as a mediator between them. The Mansfields will so soon be related to us, that I make no apology for interesting you in their affairs.
Be sure you chide me for my whimsical behaviour to Lord G——. I know you will. But don't blame my heart: my head only is wrong.
***
A little more from fresh informations of this sorry varlet Everard. I wished him to suffer; but I wished him not to be so very great a sufferer as it seems he is. Sharpers have bit his head off, quite close to his shoulders: they have not left it him to carry under his arm, as the honest patron of France did his. They lend it him, however, now and then, to repent with, and curse himself. The creature he attended to Cuper's Gardens, instead of a country innocent, as he expected her to be, comes out to be a cast mistress, experienced in all the arts of such, and acting under the secret influences of a man of quality; who, wanting to get rid of her, supports her in a prosecution commenced against him (poor devil!) for performance of covenants. He was extremely mortified, on finding my brother gone abroad: he intends to apply to him for his pity and help. Sorry fellow! He boasted to us, on our expectation of our brother's arrival from abroad, that he would enter his cousin Charles into the ways of the town. Now he wants to avail himself against the practices of the sons of that town by his cousin's character and consequence.
A combination of sharpers, it seems, had long set him as a man of fortune: but, on his taking refuge with my brother, gave over for a time their designs upon him, till he threw himself again in their way.
The worthless fellow had been often liberal of his promises of marriage to young creatures of more innocence than this; and thinks it very hard that he should be prosecuted for a crime which he had so frequently committed with impunity. Can you pity him? I cannot, I assure you. The man who can betray and ruin an innocent woman, who loves him, ought to be abhorred by men. Would he scruple to betray and ruin them, if he were not afraid of the law?—Yet there are women, who can forgive such wretches, and herd with them.
My aunt Eleanor is arrived: a good, plump, bonny-faced old virgin. She has chosen her apartment. At present we are most prodigiously civil to each other: but already I suspect she likes Lord G—— better than I would have her. She will perhaps, if a party should be formed against your poor Charlotte, make one of it.
Will you think it time thrown away, to read a further account of what is come to hand about the wretches who lately, in the double sense of the word, were overtaken between St. Denis and Paris?
Sir Hargrave Pollexfen, it seems, still keeps his chamber: he is thought not to be out of danger from some inward hurt, which often makes him bring up blood in quantities. He is miserably oppressed by lowness of spirits; and when he is a little better in that respect, his impatience makes his friends apprehensive for his head. But has he intellects strong enough to give apprehensions of that nature? Fool and madman we often join as terms of reproach; but I believe, fools seldom run really mad.
Merceda is in a still more dangerous way. Besides his bruises, and a fractured skull, he has, it seems, a wound in his thigh, which, in the delirium he was thrown into by the fracture, was not duly attended to; and which, but for his valiant struggles against the knife which gave the wound, was designed for a still greater mischief. His recovery is despaired of; and the poor wretch is continually offering up vows of penitence and reformation, if his life may be spared.
Bagenhall was the person who had seduced, by promises of marriage, and fled for it, the manufacturer's daughter of Abbeville. He was overtaken by his pursuers at Douay. The incensed father, and friends of the young woman, would not be otherwise pacified than by his performing his promise; which, with infinite reluctance, he complied with, principally through the threats of the brother, who is noted for his fierceness and resolution; and who once made the sorry creature feel an argument which greatly terrified him. Bagenhall is at present at Abbeville, living as well as he can with his new wife, cursing his fate, no doubt, in secret. He is obliged to appear fond of her before her brother and father; the latter being also a sour man, a Gascon, always boasting of his family, and valuing himself upon a De, affixed by himself to his name, and jealous of indignity offered to it. The fierce brother is resolved to accompany his sister to England, when Bagenhall goes thither, in order, as he declares, to secure to her good usage, and see her owned and visited by all Bagenhall's friends and relations. And thus much of these fine gentlemen.
How different a man is Beauchamp! But it is injuring him, to think of those wretches and him at the same time. He certainly has an eye to Emily, but behaves with great prudence towards her: yet every body but she sees his regard for her: nobody but her guardian runs in her head; and the more, as she really thinks it is a glory to love him, because of his goodness. Every body, she says, has the same admiration of him, that she has.
Mrs. Reeves desires me to acquaint you, that Miss Clements, having, by the death of her mother and aunt, come into a pretty fortune, is addressed to by a Yorkshire gentleman of easy circumstances, and is preparing to leave the town, having other connexions in that county; but that she intends to write to you before she goes, and to beg you to favour her with now and then a letter.
I think Miss Clements is a good sort of young woman: but I imagined she would have been one of those nuns at large, who need not make vows of living and dying aunt Eleanors, or Lady Gertrudes; all three of them good honest souls! chaste, pious, and plain. It is a charming situation, when a woman is arrived at such a height of perfection, as to be above giving or receiving temptation. Sweet innocents! They have my reverence, if not my love. How would they be affronted, if I were to say pity!—I think only of my two good aunts, at the present writing. Miss Clements, you know, is a youngish woman; and I respect her much. One would not jest upon the unsightliness of person, or plainness of feature: but think you she will not be one of those, who twenty years hence may put in a boast of her quondam beauty?
How I run on! I think I ought to be ashamed of myself.
'Very true, Charlotte.'
And so it is, Harriet. I have done—Adieu!—Lord G—— will be silly again, I doubt; but I am prepared. I wish he had half my patience.
'Be quiet, Lord G——! What a fool you are!'—The man, my dear, under pretence of being friends, run his sharp nose in my eye. No bearing his fondness: It is worse than insolence. How my eye waters!—I can tell him—But I will tell him, and not you.—Adieu, once more.