In due time, consequently, the Turkish dresses were in great forwardness. Lest we should never get to the play, we forbear to relate all the various frettings, jealousies, clashing vanities, and petty quarrels, which occurred between the actresses and their friends, during the getting up of this piece and its rehearsals. We need mention, only that the seeds of irreconcileable dislike were sown at this time, between the Miss Falconers and their dear friends, the Lady Arlingtons: there was some difficulty made by Lady Anne about lending her diamond crescent for Zara’s turban—Miss Georgiana could never forgive this; and Lady Frances, on her part, was provoked, beyond measure, by an order from the duke, her uncle, forbidding her to appear on the stage. She had some reason to suspect that this order came in consequence of a treacherous hint in a letter of Georgiana’s to Lady Trant, which went round, through Lady Jane Granville to the duke, who otherwise, as Lady Frances observed, “in the midst of his politics, might never have heard a word of the matter.”
Mrs. Falconer had need of all her power over the muscles of her face, and all her address, in these delicate and difficult circumstances. Her daughter Arabella, too, was sullen—the young lady was subject to her brother John’s fits of obstinacy. For some time she could not be brought to undertake the part of Selima; and no other Selima was to be had. She did not see why she should condescend to play the confidante for Georgiana’s Zara—why she was to be sacrificed to her sister; and Sir Robert Percy, her admirer, not even to be invited, because the other Percys were to come.
Mrs. Falconer plied her well with flattery, through Colonel Spandrill; and at last Arabella was pacified by a promise that the following week “Love in a Village,” or “The Lord of the Manor,” should be acted, in which she should choose her part, and in which her voice and musical talents would be brought forward—and Sir Robert Percy and his friends should be the principal auditors.
Recovered, or partly recovered, from her fit of the sullens, she was prevailed upon to say she would try what she could do in Selima.
The parts were learnt by heart; the dresses, after innumerable alterations, finished to the satisfaction of the heroes and heroines of the drama.
Their quarrels, and the quarrels of their friends and of their servants, male and female, were at last hushed to temporary repose, and—the great, the important day arrived.
The preceding evening, Mrs. Falconer, as she sat quite exhausted in the green-room, was heard to declare, she was so tired, that she would not go through the same thing again, for one month, to be Queen of England.