“He then laughed so cordially, that we were tempted, by such extraordinary good-humour, to beg him, almost in a body, to permit us to partake of his mirth.
“He complied very gaily. ‘A friend of mine,’ he cried, ‘before I went abroad, had so often been teazed to esquire her to some of these medleys, that he thought to give the poor woman a surfeit of them to free himself from her future importunity. Yet she was a very handsome woman, very handsome indeed. But just as they were going into the great room, he had got one of her visiting cards ready, and contrived, as they passed through a crowded passage, to pin to the back of her robe, Mrs. Twoldham, Wimpole Street. And not three steps had she tript forward, before some one called out: “Hah! Mrs. Twoldham! how do you do, Mrs. Twoldham?”—“Oho, Mrs. Twoldham, are you here?” cried another; “Well, Ma’am, and how do all friends in Wimpole Street do?” till the poor woman was half out of her wits, to know how so many people had discovered her. So she thought that perhaps her forehead was in sight, and she perked up her mask; but she did not less hear, “Ah! it’s you, Mrs. Twoldham, is it?” Then she supposed she had left a peep at her chin, and down again was tugged the poor mask; but still, “Mrs. Twoldham!” and, “how do you do, my dear Mrs. Twoldham?” was rung in her ears at every step; till at last, she took it into her head that some one, who, by chance, had detected her, had sent her name round the room; so she hurried off like lightning to the upper suite of apartments. But ’twas all the same. “Well, I declare, if here is not Mrs. Twoldham!” cries the first person that passed her. “So she is, I protest,” cried another; “I am very glad to see you, my dear Ma’am! what say you to giving me a little breakfast to-morrow morning? you know where, Mrs. Twoldham; at our old haunt in Wimpole Street.” But, at last, the corner of an unlucky table rubbed off the visiting card; and a waiter, who picked it up, grinned from ear to ear, and asked whether it was hers. And the poor woman fell into such a trance of passion, that my friend was afraid for his eyes; and all the more, because, do what he would, he could not refrain from laughing in her face.’
“You can scarcely conceive how heartily he laughed himself; he quite chuckled, with all the enjoyment in mischief of a holiday school boy.
“And he harped upon the subject with such facetious pleasure, that no other could be started.
“‘I once knew,’ he cried, ‘a man, his name was Robert Chambers, and a good-natured little fellow he was, who was served this very trick the first masquerade he went to in London, upon fresh coming from Scotland. A gentleman who went to it with him, wrote upon his black domino, with chalk, “this is little Bob Chambers, fresh come from Edinburgh;” and immediately some one called out, in passing him, “What Bob? little Bob Chambers? how do, my boy?” “Faith,” says Bob, to his friend, “the people of this fine London are pretty impudent! I don’t know that I know a soul in the whole town, and the first person I meet makes free to call me plain Bob?” But when he went on, and found that every creature in every room did the same, he grew quite outrageous at being treated with so little ceremony; and he stamped with his foot at one, and clenched his fist at another, and asked how they dared call him Bob? “What! a’n’t you Bob, then?” replies one; “O yes, you are! you’re Bob, my Bob, as sure as a gun! Bob Chambers! little Bob Chambers. And I hope you have left all well at Edinburgh, my Bob?” In vain he rubbed by them, and tried to get on, for they called to him quite from a distance; “Bob!—Bob! come hither, I say!—come hither, my Bobby! my Bob of all Bobs! you’re welcome from Edinburgh, my Bob!” Well, then, he said, ’twas clear the devil owed him a spite, and had told his name from top to bottom of every room. Poor Bob! he made a wry face at the very sound of a masquerade to the end of his days.’
“To have looked at Mr. Bruce in his glee at this buffoonery, you must really have been amused; though methinks I see, supposing you had been with us, the picturesque rising of your brow, and all the dignity of your Roman nose, while you would have stared at such familiar delight in an active joke, as to transport into so merry an espiegle, the seven-footed loftiness of the haughty and imperious tourist from the sands of Ethiopia, and the waters of Abyssinia; whom, nevertheless, I have now the honour to portray in his robe de chambre, i.e. in private society, to my dear Chesington Daddy.
“What says he to the portrait?”
With fresh pleasure and alacrity, Dr. Burney now went on with his work. So unlooked for a re-inforcement of his means could not have arrived more seasonably. Every discovery, or development, relative to early times, was not only of essential service to the Dissertation on the Music of the Ancients, upon which, now, he was elaborately engaged, but excited general curiosity in all lovers of antiquity.