"The Ladies": A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty

by L. Adams Beck

(Two months later)

My Dear Madam,--

I know not whether I do well or ill in acquainting you with a matter so delicate, as there is none other but my Lord Hervey to whom I dare confide it, and 'tis but to you and to him I would be obliged for assistance. But friendship, if an illusion, is the last left me, and I won't dismiss it until I am compelled. 'Tis certainly absurd that one human being should depend upon any other for anything, for alone we are born and die, and it may be thought the Great Author of our being intended us to walk the way alone that conducts from the one to the other, else had he made our minds more accessible. For my part, if truth be a merit, I can say I never had an affection, but what I regretted it sooner or later, or made a confidence, but what I wished it recalled. Excepting in one case, which I leave to your discernment. And such is my vexation at this minute that, was I to be born in another incarnation as Pythagoras pretends, I would be a foundling, indebted to none who could exact repayment of the gift of life forced upon an unwilling victim to please the humour of others.

If I write a little bitter I know your kind cpncern will excuse me in view of what I relate. I am extreme annoyed and fluttered, yet would not be a vain lamenter neither. Life is still endurable when met with an easy common sense, and this I call to my aid on this occasion.

I had a mind to return to London about a month since, when word came that my young rake of a son would come hither for a few days, with his friend Carew. I knew not the young man, but remember his father in the Thoresby days, and the old man now being dead, the youth is well to pass in the world in a small way and hath inherited the old Devon grange.

However, I took this as a sign of grace in my prodigal, and desired Anne to see the rooms prepared and that she should not attend me with my tent-stitch after dinner, as wishing to keep flint and steel apart, which your Ladyship will admit was a prudence to be desired. And so went down to receive the young men.

You are not now to learn that Edward, with all his follies, hath a very pleasant humour when he chooses, and a tongue not unworthy of his family; and young Carew being very conversable and well-featured and full of odd stories of the authorities at Oxford and the liberties they allow themselves under the mask of gravity, the evening past extreme agreeably, and it was late when I left them to their bottle.

Pratt and Anne Wentworth attended me to bed, and I desired the last to put my pearl necklace into my dressing-box with the dressing-plate, with which she complied in her obliging manner and took the key as customary. This done, I dismist them and writ a few lines to my Lord Hervey, and so to sleep.

The next day we past on the river in a water party and sillabubs at Richmond and what not; and evening come I asked for my necklace and--Lord bless me!--'twas not to be found. Anne, pale as her smock, was looking in all corners,--and Pratt, also, but with purst lips as who should say, "Your Ladyship now sees what copies of whimsies and foundlings,"--till I was vexed to the blood with them both, and knew not what to say next; the more so, since I had seen Mrs Anne gathering flowers for the bowpots after sunrise, and young Carew staring after her like a zany. I don't doubt but what there had been a thousand sweet nothings before I opened my window. The house was hunted in vain, and all the comfort Edward could give me was the assurance of his father's anger at my folly in taking a stranger into the house; which is most abominably true, Mr Wortley loving to find fault and invent it where not found.

By this time Pratt was weeping like a crocodile, and the Bow Street runners sent for to come and take particulars lest the pearls be sold in Drury Lane. Indeed, my dear Madam, I could not close an eye for vexation, and to complete it could not but remark that young Carew kept casting sheep's eyes at Mrs Anne that looked as lovely as a weeping angel, could such be supposed. How different are tears in one woman and another! Pratt, her nose inflamed, her eyes scarce visible in swelled lids, might have been exposed to the Duke of Wharton and his "Schemers" without an ounce of virtue lost on either side; whereas Anne, with the liquid pearls hung on her lashes as if to replace the lost ones, was a dish for the Gods. 'Tis no manner of use to scold the Fates for what they give or withhold; but I swear 'tis easy known they are women, such favourites do they make without reason.