MR. FAIRLY IS DISCUSSED BY HIS BROTHER EQUERRIES.
Everybody was full of Mr. Fairly’s appointment, and spoke of it with pleasure. General Budé had seen him in town, where he had remained some days, to take the oaths, I believe, necessary for his place. General Budé has long been intimate with him, and spoke of his character exactly as it has appeared to me; and Colonel Goldsworthy, who was at Westminster with him, declared he believed a better man did not exist. “This, in particular,” cried General Budé, “I must say of Fairly: whatever he thinks right he pursues straightforward and I believe there is not a sacrifice upon earth that he would not make, rather than turn a moment out of the path that he had an opinion it was his duty to keep in.”
They talked a good deal of his late lady; none of them knew her but very slightly, as she was remarkably reserved. “More than reserved,” cried General Budé, “she was quite cold. Yet she loved London and public life, and Fairly never had any taste for them; in that they were very mal assortis, but in all other things very happy.”
“Yes,” cried Colonel Goldsworthy, “and how shall we give praise enough to a man that would be happy himself, and make his wife so too, for all that difference of opinion? for it was all his management, and good address, and good temper. I hardly know such another man.”
General Budé then related many circumstances of his most exemplary conduct during the illness of his poor suffering wife, and after her loss; everybody, indeed, upon the occasion of this new appointment, has broke forth to do justice to his deserving it. Mrs. Ariana Egerton, who came twice to drink tea with me on my being sensa Cerbera, told me that her brother-in-law, Colonel Masters, who had served with him at Gibraltar, protested there was not an officer in the army of a nobler and higher character, both professional and personal.
She asked me a thousand questions of what I thought about Miss Fuzilier? She dislikes her so very much, she cannot bear to think of her becoming Mrs. Fairly. She has met with some marks of contempt from her in their official meetings at St. James’s, that cannot be pardoned. Miss Fuziller, indeed, seemed to me formerly, when I used to meet her in company, to have an uncertainty of disposition that made her like two persons; now haughty, silent, and supercilious—and then gentle, composed, and interesting. She Is, however, very little liked, the worst being always what most spreads abroad.