A ROYAL GIFT TO THE MASTER OF THE HORSE.
What will you give me, fair ladies, for a copy of verse, written between the Queen of Great Britain and your most small little journalist?
The morning of the ball the queen sent for me, and said she had a fine pair of old-fashioned gloves, white, with stiff tops and a deep gold fringe, which she meant to send to her new master of the horse, Lord Harcourt, who was to be at the dance. She wished to convey them in a copy of verses, of which she had composed three lines, but could not get on. She told me her ideas, and I had the honour to help her in the metre and now I have the honour to copy them from her own royal hand:—
“TO THE EARL OF HARCOURT.
“Go, happy gloves, bedeck Earl Harcourt’s hand, And let him know they come from fairy-land, Where ancient customs still retain their reign; To modernize them all attempts were vain. Go, cries Queen Mab, some noble owner seek, Who has a proper taste for the antique.”
Now, no criticising, fair ladies!-the assistant was neither allowed a pen nor a moment, but called upon to help finish, as she might have been to hand a fan. The earl, you may suppose, was sufficiently enchanted.
CONFERENCES WITH THE QUEEN.
April.-In the course of this month I had two conferences with my royal mistress upon my resignation, in which I spoke with all possible openness upon its necessity. She condescended to speak very honourably of my dear father to me,—and, in a long discourse upon my altered health with Mrs. de Luc, she still further condescended to speak most graciously of his daughter, saying in particular, these strong words, in answer to something kind uttered by that good friend in my favour. “O, as to character, she is what we call in German ‘true as gold’ and, in point of heart, there is not, all the world over, one better”—and added something further upon sincerity very forcibly. This makes me very happy.