“'Why, a soldier,' says he.
“'A soldier? will you so? Why, then, the best thing you can do is to embark with your brother Henry immediately, for you won't know what to do in a regiment by yourself.' Well, no sooner said than done! Henry was just going to the West Indies in Lord Harrington's regiment, and Edmund ordered a chaise and drove to Portsmouth after him. The whole was settled in half an hour.”
SARAH, DUCHESS OF MARLBOROUGH.
My sister Gast, in her younger days, was a great favourite with an old lady who was a particular crony and intimate of old Sarah Marlborough, who, though much of the jade, had undoubtedly very strong parts, and was indeed remarkably clever. When Mrs. Hinde (the old lady) would sometimes talk to her about books, she'd cry out, “Prithee, don't talk to me about books; I never read any books but men and cards!” But let anybody read her book, and then tell me if she did not draw characters with as masterly a hand as Sir Joshua Reynolds.—Mr. Crisp to Fanny Burney (April 27.)
THE BYRONS.
Sunday—We had Mrs. Byron and Augusta,[119] and Mrs. Lee, to spend the afternoon. Augusta opened her whole heart to me, as we sat together, and told me all the affairs of her family. Her brother, Captain George Byron, is lately returned from the West Indies, and has brought a wife with him from Barbadoes, though he was there only three weeks, and knew not this girl he has married till ten days before he left it!—a pleasant circumstance for this proud family!
Poor Mrs. Byron seems destined for mortification and humiliation; yet such is her native fire, and so wonderful are her spirits, that she bears up against all calamity, and though half mad one day with sorrow and vexation, is fit the next to entertain an assembly of company;—and so to entertain them as to make the happiest person in the company, by comparison with herself, seem sad.
Augusta is a very amiably ingenuous girl, and I love her the more for her love of her sisters: she talked to me of them all, but chiefly of Sophia, the youngest next to herself, but who, having an independent fortune, has quarrelled with her mother, and lives with one of her sisters, Mrs. Byron, who married a first cousin, And son of Lord Byron.