We then talked over Cheltenham and our way of life, and then ran into discourse upon Courts and Court life in general. I frankly said I liked them not, and that, if I had the direction of any young person’s destination, I would never risk them into such a mode of living; for, though Vices may be as well avoided there as anywhere ‘and in this Court particularly, there were mischiefs of a smaller kind, extremely pernicious to all nobleness of character, to which this Court, with all its really bright examples, was as liable as any other,—the mischiefs of jealousy, narrowness, and selfishness.
He did not see, he said, when there was a place of settled income and appropriated business why it might not be filled both with integrity and content in a Court as well as elsewhere. Ambition, the desire of rising, those, he said, were the motives that envy which set such little passions in motion. One situation, however, there was, he said, which he looked upon as truly dangerous, and as almost certain to pervert the fairest disposition—it was one in which he would not place any person for whom he had the smallest regard, as he looked upon it to be the greatest hazard a character could run. This was, being maid of honour.
THE VINDICTIVE BARETTI.
Tuesday, July 22-To-day, at noon, I had a surprise with which I was very well pleased. His majesty opened the door of my little parlour, called out, “Come, Come in-,” and was followed by Major Price. He was just arrived from his little farm in Herefordshire, and will stay here some days. It is particularly fortunate just now, when another gentleman was really required to assist in attendance upon the royal party.
Mr. Seward, with a good-humoured note, sent me the magazine with Baretti’s strictures on Mrs. Thrale. Good heaven, how abusive! It can hardly hurt her—it is so palpably meant to do it. I could not have suspected him, with all his violence, of a bitterness of invective so cruel, so ferocious!
I well remember his saying to me, when first I saw him after the discovery of “Evelina”.... “I see what it is you can do, you little witch—it is, that you can hang us all up for laughing-stocks; but hear me this one thing—don’t meddle with me. I see what they are, your powers; but remember, when you provoke an Italian you run a dagger into your own breast!”
I half shuddered at the fearful caution from him, because the dagger was a word of unfortunate recollection:[284] but, good heaven! it could only be a half Shudder when the caution was against an offence I could sooner die than commit, and which, I may truly say, if personal attack was what he meant, never even in sport entered my mind, and was ever, in earnest, a thing I have held in the deepest abhorrence.
I must do, however, the justice to his candour to add, that upon a newer acquaintance with me, which immediately followed, he never repeated his admonition; and when “Cecilia” came out, and he hastened to me with every species of extravagant encomium, he never hinted at any similar idea, and it seemed evident he concluded me, by that time, incapable meriting such a suspicion; though, to judge by his own conduct, a proceeding of this sort may to him appear in a very different light. He thinks, at least, a spirit of revenge may authorize any attack, any insult. How unhappy and how strange! to join to so much real good nature as this man possesses when pleased, a disposition so savagely vindictive when offended.