Memoirs of Miss Sidney Biddulph / Extracted from her own Journal, and now first published

by Frances Chamberlaine Sheridan

Upon my knees I have poured out this prayer to the Almighty, and it is the fervent wish of my soul that he would grant it.

February 26

You will smile, my dear, as I did, in pity of the meanness of poor Lady Sarah; but proud people are always mean. I have been here but four days, yet I find she has already heard of my metamorphosis. Indeed she could hardly do otherwise, so near her as I am. Mr Warner has been very urgent with me to drive out in my new chariot; this I readily complied with, as both the children and I wanted air and exercise, and yesterday we drove to Hyde-Park. I did not however go at the hour when there is most company, but I conclude I was seen either by Lady Sarah herself, or by some one who told her; for this morning, prodigious! she sent her woman to me with a message. I had her called up stairs, and enquired very civilly after my brother and his lady.

She told me that Lady Sarah sent her humble service to me, and was very much surprised that she had not heard from me in so long a time; that she supposed I was gone out of town, but as Sir George seemed uneasy that I never wrote to him, her ladyship had sent her to enquire for me at my old lodgings in the Hay-Market, from whence she had been directed to me here; and that she was ordered to tell me that her lady had talked to my brother about the affair that I knew of, and that Sir George would act agreeably to her request, if I would call or write a line to him.

I found the woman had been instructed to feign an entire ignorance on her lady’s part of the change in my circumstances, but I was resolved to let her see I had detected this paltry artifice. I could observe that the servant, though she endeavoured to avoid it, eyed every thing in my apartment with surprise and curiosity; and I concluded that Lady Sarah had sent her for no other purpose, but to satisfy herself from her maid’s account, whether the report she had heard concerning me was true. Tell your lady, said I, she needed not to have been at the pains of framing such a message to have gratified her curiosity; my house is open to any one who has a mind to look at it, even to Lady Sarah herself. You shall see it all over, and may report to her ladyship what my cousin Warner’s bounty has done for me; and she may then judge whether I stand in need of the assistance she now pretends to offer me. The woman looked abashed, and though she seemed inclined to ask questions, was ashamed to do so. This was that very servant who had so unceremoniously led me up the back stairs when I went to visit her lady; but I appeared in a quite different light to her now; I rang the bell, and ordered a footman to shew her the house. She curtsied in silence, and withdrew.

What a poor creature is Lady Sarah! Mr Warner called upon me before her woman went away. I told him the whole passage. Oh! how he chuckled, and rejoiced, shrugging his shoulders, and rubbing his hands! He wanted to see the servant, but I was afraid he would be too strong in his insults, and turned him from the point.

He told me, he invited himself to dine with me; and accordingly he favoured me with his company, and staid during the greatest part of the evening. He is a man of a strong natural sense, though he is careless of improving it. He has passed his life in business, and in acquiring riches. He does not let me into the particulars of these, though he is in other respects very communicative and entertaining. There is a whimsical vein runs through his conversation. He now, for the first time, desired me to give him the particulars of my life from my childhood, which he had but a partial account of, at different times, from myself. I took up the story at the earliest period of my life, wherein any thing interesting had occurred, and traced every circumstance minutely to the hour he first saw me.

I could easily see that he had a tender sympathizing heart, for he was moved to tears more than once during my relation; nor was he ashamed of them, for he suffered them to run down his cheek, whilst he listened with mute attention to my story. He praised Mr Faulkland highly, said he was a man after his own heart, and deserved the best woman in the world. I wish you had married him, said he, such a princely fellow deserves a princely fortune. He owned my brother had some reason to be nettled at my refusal of such a man. Our sex, said he, have not such chimæra notions as you women have; but still that does not excuse his sordidness.

I took this opportunity of telling Mr Warner that my brother did not really know the very great distress I was in, and that I had reason to believe, from the general tenor of Lady Sarah’s character, that she had either concealed it from him, or made misrepresentations of my case; doubtless she had not informed him to what streights I was reduced immediately upon my mother’s death; and who knows but Sir George, having left me for a while to feel the effects of that resentment, with which he had threatened me in his last letter, still meant to shew himself a brother; for if he were ignorant, as I am willing to believe, of that particular which I have mentioned, he could not suppose that I was driven to absolute want; and from Lady Sarah’s insinuations, perhaps he thought that my mother left a sum of money behind her. He knew not of the illness that my children and I were visited with; and indeed it appears to me, from what he hinted to yourself, that he was quite unacquainted with my situation.

To say the truth, Cecilia, as you know I am of a placable disposition, I should be glad to be on good terms with my brother, the only relation (my kinsman excepted) that I have in the world. I was willing therefore, if possible, a little to reconcile Mr Warner to him; as I durst not, without his permission, seek a reconciliation with Sir George.