“If,” cried Colonel Wellbred, afterwards, “I lived always in London, I should be as tired of life as you are: I always sicken of it there, if detained beyond a certain time." They then joined in a general censure of dissipated life, and a general distaste of dissipated characters, which seemed, however, to comprise almost all their acquaintance; and this presently occasioned Mr. Fairly to say,
“It is, however, but fair for you and me to own, Wellbred, that if people in general, are bad, we live chiefly amongst those who are the worst.”
Whether he meant any particular set to which they belong, or whether his reflection went against people in high life, such ‘as constitute their own relations and connexions in general, I cannot say, as he did not explain himself.
Mr. Fairly, besides the attention due to him from all, in consideration of his late loss, merited from me peculiar deference, in return for a mark I received of his disposition to think favourably of me from our first acquaintance: for not more was I surprised than pleased at his opening frankly upon the character of my coadjutrix, and telling me at once, that when first he saw me here, just before the Oxford expedition, he had sincerely felt for and pitied me....
Sunday, Jan. 13.—There is something in Colonel Wellbred so elegant, so equal, and so pleasing, it is impossible not to see him with approbation, and to speak of him with praise. But I found in Mr. Fairly a much greater depth of understanding, and all his sentiments seem formed upon the most perfect basis of religious morality.
During the evening, in talking over plays and players, we all three united warmly in panegyric of Mrs. Siddons; but when Mrs. Jordan was named, Mr. Fairly and myself were left to make the best of her. Observing the silence of Colonel Wellbred, we called upon him to explain it.
“I have seen her,” he answered, quietly, “but in one part.”
“Whatever it was,” cried Mr. Fairly, “it must have been well done.”
“Yes,” answered the colonel, “and so well that it seemed to be her real character: and I disliked her for that very reason, for it was a character that, off the stage or on, is equally distasteful to me—a hoyden.”
I had had a little of this feeling myself when I saw her in “The Romp,"[251] where she gave me, in the early part, a real disgust; but afterwards she displayed such uncommon humour that it brought me to pardon her assumed vulgarity, in favour of a representation of nature, which, In its particular class, seemed to me quite perfect. MR. TURBULENT’S SELF CONDEMNATION.