“This was well understood, and echoed round the table.
“‘This would do for you completely, Mr. Burke,’ cried Mrs. Crewe, laughing, ‘if it could but get into a newspaper! Mr. Burke, they would say, has now spoken out! The truth has come to light over a bottle of wine! and his real defection from the cause of true liberty is acknowledged! I should like,’ added she, laughing quite heartily, ‘to draw up the paragraph myself!’
“‘Pray then,’ said Mr. Burke, ‘complete it by putting in, that the toast was addressed to Miss Burney!—in order to pay my court to the Queen!’
“This sport went on, till, upon Mr. Elliot’s again mentioning France, and the rising Jacobins, Mr. Richard Burke, filling himself a bumper, and flourishing his left hand, whilst preparing with his right to toss it off, cried, ‘Come! here’s confusion to confusion!’
“Mr. Windham being mentioned, I was gratified by the warmth with which Mr. Burke returns his attachment; for upon Mr. Elliot’s speaking with regret of Mr. Windham’s being so thin, Mr. Burke exclaimed: ‘He is just as he should be! If I were Windham this minute, I should not wish to be thinner nor fatter, nor taller nor shorter, nor in any way, nor in any thing, altered.’
“A little after, speaking of former times, you may believe how I was struck, nay, how enchanted, to hear Mr. Burke say to Mrs. Crewe: ‘I wish you had known Mrs. Delany! She was a perfect pattern of a perfect fine lady; a real fine lady of other days. Her manners were faultless; her deportment was of marked elegance; her speech was all sweetness; and her air and address were all dignity. I always looked up to Mrs. Delany, as the model of an accomplished gentlewoman of former times.’
“Do you think I could hear this testimony to the worth of my revered and beloved departed friend unmoved?
“When, afterwards, we females were joined by the gentlemen at tea, Mr. Richard Burke, crossing hastily over to me, cried, in a loud whisper, almost in my ear: ‘Miss Burney! prune your plumes!—allow me to say, I never was so glad in my life as I am to see you in the world again! Prune your plumes, we all conjure you!—Prune your plumes! we are all expectation!’
“Our evening finished more curiously than desirably, by a junction that robbed us of the conversation of Mr. Burke. This was the entrance of Lord Loughborough and of Mr.[30] and Mrs. Erskine, who, having villas at Hampstead, and knowing nothing of Mrs. Crewe’s party, called in accidentally from a walk. If not accidentally, Mr. Erskine, at least, would probably have denied himself a visit that brought him into a coterie with Mr. Burke; who openly, in the House of Commons, not long since, upon being called by Mr. Erskine his Right Hon. Friend, sternly demanded of him, whether he knew what Friendship meant?
“From this time there was an evident disunion of cordiality in the party. My father, Mr. Elliot, Mr. Richard Burke, and young Burke, entered into some general discourse, in a separate group. Lord Loughborough joined Mrs. Burke. My new young partizan[31] sat with Miss Crewe and Miss Townshend; but the chair of Mrs. Erskine being next to mine, she immediately began talking to me as chattily and currently as if we had known each other all our lives.