A Nest of Linnets

by Frank Frankfort Moore

And he did stay; and so did Mrs. Abington.

When she said good-bye to him, in a passion of repentant tears, he took it for granted that she would return to London probably the next day; but somehow, if that was her intention, she fell short of realising it. She appeared every day on the Parade, and every evening either in one of the Assembly Rooms or at a concert, with Tom Linley by her side.

Dick heard of her from day to day, and at first he was surprised to learn that she was still in Bath; and then he became positively annoyed that she should give people an opportunity of smiling as they did when they talked about her and Tom Linley. The young man, who was reported to be a most diligent student, was enlarging his course of study, they said; but they rather thought that he was too ambitious. Was it not usually thought prudent for any one who aspired to a knowledge of Latin, not to begin with Catullus or Lucretius, but with a book chiefly made up of cases and declensions? The most rational progress toward Parnassus was by a gradus, or step, they said. But there was the earnest young student beginning his knowledge of a language, previously unknown to him, with the beautiful Mrs. Abington. Faith, ’twas like setting Sappho before a youth who had not mastered the Greek alphabet; ’twas like offering a porter-house steak to a child before it has cut its teeth, the less refined of the critics declared.

But however wise these criticisms may have been, at the end of a week Mrs. Abington lingered on in Bath and young Mr. Linley lingered by her side; and then the men of the world began to shrug their shoulders and to talk—also in metaphors—of the whims of the actress. Had Mrs. Abington’s teeth become suddenly weak, they inquired, that she was compelled to take to a diet of caudle? She had mastered many a tough steak in her time, and had never been known to complain of toothache. Surely she must find caudle to be very insipid!

The ladies were the hardest on her, of course; for every morning she appeared in a new gown, and every evening in another, and they all differed the one from the other, only as one star differs from another in glory; and it was difficult to say which was the most becoming to her, though this point was most widely discussed among the men who knew nothing whatever about the matter, and showed their ignorance by admiring a simple taffeta made for a hoop, but worn without one, quite as much as that gorgeous brocade about which foaming torrents of lace fell, called by ordinary people flounces.

The ladies sneered, for not one of these gowns could be imitated. They knew that they could not be imitated, for they had tried, worrying the life out of their maids in the fruitless attempt. They sneered. What else could they do, after they had boxed the ears of their maids in accordance with the best manners of the period before the trying days of the French Revolution? They sneered, and the more imaginative ones compared her to a confectioner’s window, which is laid out with infinite pains, though it is only attractive to the immature taste of a child. That young Linley had really not got past the toffee stage, they declared; always admitting, however, that he was a pretty lad, and bemoaning his fate in being compelled to do the bidding of a lady of such experience as Mrs. Abington.

And then they called her a harpy.

But Tom Linley felt very proud to be permitted to walk by the side of so distinguished a lady; and he never seemed prouder of this privilege than when he went with her to one of the Thursday receptions given by Lady Miller at Bath-Easton, for every one of note seemed to be promenading on the lawn, and there was a flowing stream of coaches and chariots and curricles and chairs still on the road, bearing additional visitors to eat the lady’s cakes and to drink her tea, before taking part in the serious business that called for their attention.

Tom had spent half the previous night in an attempt to produce a poem that might have a chance of winning the chaplet, which was the prize for the verses pronounced the best of the day. To be able to lay the trophy at the feet of the lady in praise of whose beauty and virtue he had composed his sonnet, after the fashion of the poet Petrarch, whose works he had studied in Italy, would, he felt, be the greatest happiness he could hope for in life.

The lady whose ingenuity in devising the literary contests at Bath-Easton has caused her name to live when other names far more deserving of immortality have been forgotten, has had ample injustice done to her in every diary, and in most of the letters, of the period. Of course Walpole’s faun-like humour found in Lady Miller and her entertainments a congenial topic. Whenever there was a woman to be lied about, with wit and in polished periods, Walpole was the man to undertake the business. He could make the most respectable of ladies entertaining to his correspondents, and his sneers at the good women of whose hospitality he seemed glad enough to partake, must have formed very amusing reading when they were quite fresh. Even now, though the world has become accustomed to the taste of frozen meat, his wit, when taken out of the refrigerator, does not seem altogether insipid.