LETTER CCXVI.220.
To Mrs. Rivers, Bellfield, Rutland.
London, Nov. 18, twelve at night.
Who should I dine and sup with to-day, at a merchant’s in the city, but your old love, Sir George Clayton, as gay and amusing as ever!
What an entertaining companion have you lost, my dear Emily!
He was a little disconcerted at seeing me, and blushed extremely; but soon recovered his amiable, uniform insipidity of countenance, and smiled and simpered as usual.
He never enquired after you, nor even mentioned your name; being asked for a toast, I had the malice to give Rivers; he drank him, without seeming ever to have heard of him before.
The city misses admire him prodigiously, and he them; they are charmed with his beauty, and he with their wit.
His mother, poor woman! could not bring the match she wrote about to bear: the family approved him; but the fair one made a better choice, and gave herself last week, at St. George’s, Hanover-square, to a very agreable fellow of our acquaintance, Mr. Palmer; a man of sense and honor, who deserves her had she been ten times richer: he has a small estate in Lincolnshire, and his house is not above twenty miles from you: I must bring you and Mrs. Palmer acquainted.
I suppose you are now the happiest of beings; Rivers finding a thousand new beauties in his belle paisanne, and you exulting in your charms, or, in other words, glorying in your strength.