Mrs. Chapone, too, had her own coteries, which, though not sought by the young, and, perhaps, fled from by the gay, were rational, instructive, and social; and it was not with self-approbation that they could ever be deserted. But the search of greater gaiety, and higher fashion, rarely awaits that award.
The meetings, in truth, at her dwelling, from her palpable and organic deficiency in health and strength for their sustenance, though they never lacked of sense or taste, always wanted spirit; a want which cast over them a damp that made the same interlocutors, who elsewhere grouped audiences around them from their fame as discoursers, appear to be assembled here merely for the grave purpose of performing a duty.
Yet here were to be seen Mrs. Montagu, Mrs. Carter, Hannah More, the clever family of the Burroughs, the classically lively Sir William Pepys, and the ingenious and virtuous Mrs. Barbauld.
But though the dignity of her mind demanded, as it deserved, the respect of some return to the visits which her love of society induced her to pay, it was a tête à tête alone that gave pleasure to the intercourse with Mrs. Chapone: her sound understanding, her sagacious observations, her turn to humour, and the candour of her affectionate nature, all then came into play without effort: and her ease of mind, when freed from the trammels of doing the honours of reception, seemed to soften off, even to herself, her corporeal infirmities. It was thus that she struck Dr. Burney with the sense of her worth; and seemed portraying in herself the original example whence the precepts had been drawn, for forming the unsophisticated female character that are displayed in the author’s Letters on the improvement of the mind.
SIR WILLIAM WELLER PEPYS.
But the meetings of this sort, to which sarcasm, sport, or envy have given the epithet of blueism, that Dr. Burney most frequently and the latest attended, were those at the house of Mr., since Sir William Weller Pepys.
The passion of Sir William for literature, his admiration of talents, and his rapturous zeal for genius, made him receive whoever could gratify any of those propensities, with an enchantment of pleasure that seemed to carry him into higher regions. The parties at his house formed into little, separate, and chosen groups, less awful than at Mrs. Montagu’s, and less awkward than at Mrs. Vesey’s: and he glided adroitly from one of these groups to another, till, after making the round of politeness necessary for the master of the house, his hospitality felt acquitted of its devoirs; and he indulged, without further restraint, in the ardent delight of fixing his standard for the evening in the circle the most to his taste: leaving to his serenely acquiescent wife the more forbearing task of equalizing attention. To do that, indeed, beyond what was exacted by good breeding for the high, and by kindness for the insignificant part of his guests, would have been a discipline to all his feelings, that would have converted those parties, that were his pride and his joy, into exercises of the severest penitence.
But while an animated reciprocation of ideas in conversation, a lively memory of early anecdotes, and a boundless readiness at recital of the whole mass of English poets, formed the gayest enjoyment of his chosen and happiest hours, the voice of justice must raise him still higher for solid worth. His urbanity was universal. He never looked so charmed as when engaged in some good office: and his charities were as expansive as the bounty of those who possessed more than double his income. So sincere, indeed, was his benevolence, that it seemed as much a part of himself as his limbs, and could have been torn from him with little less difficulty. [51]