“Yes, yes, write on, my good cousin Craiglethorpe,” pursued Lady Geraldine, “and nil the little note-book, which will soon turn to a ponderous quarto. I shall have a copy, bound in morocco, no doubt, from the author, if I behave myself prettily; and I will earn it, by supplying valuable information. You shall see, my friends, how I’ll deserve well of my country, if you’ll only keep my counsel and your own countenances.”
Presently Lord Craiglethorpe entered the room, walking very pompously, and putting his note-book up as he advanced.
“Oh, my dear lord, open the book again; I have a bull for you.”
Lady Geraldine, after putting his lordship in good humour by this propitiatory offering of a bull, continued to supply him, either directly or indirectly, by some of her confederates, with the most absurd anecdotes, incredible facts, stale jests, and blunders, such as were never made by true-born Irishmen; all which my Lord Craiglethorpe took down with an industrious sobriety, at which the spectators could scarcely refrain from laughing. Sometimes he would pause, and exclaim, “A capital anecdote! a curious fact! May I give my authority? may I quote your ladyship?”
“Yes, if you’ll pay me a compliment in the preface,” whispered Lady Geraldine: “and now, dear cousin, do go up stairs and put it all in ink.”
When she had despatched the noble author, her ladyship indulged her laughter. “But now,” cried she, “only imagine a set of sober English readers studying my cousin Craiglethorpe’s New View of Ireland, and swallowing all the nonsense it will contain!”
When Lord Kilrush remonstrated against the cruelty of letting the man publish such stuff, and represented it as a fraud upon the public, Lady Geraldine laughed still more, and exclaimed, “Surely you don’t think I would use the public and my poor cousin so ill. No, I am doing him and the public the greatest possible service. Just when he is going to leave us, when the writing-box is packed, I will step up to him, and tell him the truth. I will show him what a farrago of nonsense he has collected as materials for his quarto; and convince him at once how utterly unfit he is to write a book, at least a book on Irish affairs. Won’t this be deserving well of my country and of my cousin?”
Neither on this occasion, nor on any other, were the remonstrances of my Lord Kilrush of power to stop the course of this lady’s flow of spirits and raillery.
Whilst she was going on in this manner with the real Lord Craiglethorpe, Miss Tracey was taking charming walks in the park with Mr. Gabbitt, and the young lady began to be seriously charmed with her false lord. This was carrying the jest farther, than Lady Geraldine had intended or foreseen; and her good-nature would probably have disposed her immediately to dissolve the enchantment, had she not been provoked by the interference of Lord Kilrush, and the affected sensibility of Miss Clementina Ormsby, who, to give me an exalted opinion of her delicacy, expostulated incessantly in favour of the deluded fair one. “But, my dear Lady Geraldine, I do assure you, it really hurts my feelings. This is going too far—when it comes to the heart. I can’t laugh, I own—the poor girl’s affections will be engaged—she is really falling in love with this odious surveyor.”
“But now, my dear Clementina, I do assure you, it really hurts my feelings to hear you talk so childishly. ‘When it comes to the heart!’ ‘affections engaged!’ You talk of falling in love as if it were a terrible fall: for my part, I should pity a person much more for falling down stairs. Why, my dear, where is the mighty height from which Miss Tracey could fall? She does not live in the clouds, Clementina, as you do. No ladies live there now; for the best of all possible reasons, because there are no men there. So, my love, make haste and come down, before you are out of your teens, or you may chance to be left there till you are an angel or an old maid. Trust me, my dear, I, who have tried, tell you, there is no such thing as falling in love, now-a-days: you may slip, slide, or stumble; but to fall in love, I defy you.”