Now, the citizens have pretty well left off their annual visitings, and given the great ones leave to begin; so that there is no sleep to be had in the neighbourhood of May-fair, for love or money, after one in the morning.
Now, the dress boxes of the winter houses can occasionally boast a baronet’s lady; this, however, being the extent of their attainments in that way; for how can the great be expected to listen to Shakespear under the same roof with their shop-keepers? There is, in fact, no denying that the said great are marvellously at the mercy of the said little, in the matter of amusement; and there is no saying whether the latter will not, some day or other, make an inroad upon Almack’s itself. Now, however, in spite of the said inroads, the best boxes at the Opera do begin to be worth exploring, since a beautiful Englishwoman of high fashion is “a sight to set before a king.”
Now, the actors (all but the singing ones) in their secret hearts put up periodical prayers for the annual agitation of the Catholic Question; for without some stimulus of this kind, to correct the laxity of our religious morals, there is no knowing how soon they may cease to give thanks for three Sundays in the week during Lent.
Now, (during the said pious period) occasionally an inadvertent apprentice gets leave to go to “the play” on a Wednesday or Friday; and, having taken his seat in the one shilling gallery, wonders during six long hours what can have come to the players, that they do nothing but sit in a row with their hands before them, in front of a pyramid of fiddlers, and break silence now and then by singing a psalm; for a psalm he is sure it must be, though he never heard it at church.
Now, every other day, the four sides of the newspapers offer to the wearied eye one unbroken ocean of long-primer; to the infinite abridgement of the labour of Chapter Coffee House quidnuncs, who find that they have only one sheet to get through instead of ten; and to the entire discomfiture of the conscientious reader, who makes it a point of duty to spell through all that he pays for, avowed advertisements included; for in these latter there is some variety—of which no one can accuse the parliamentary speeches. By the by, it would be but consistent in the Times to bestow their ingenuous prefix of [advertisement] on a few of the last named effusions. And if they were placed under the head of “Want Places,” nobody but the advertiser would see cause to complain of the mistake.
Now, Fashion is on the point of awaking from her periodical sleep, attended by Mesdames Bean, Bell, and Pierrepoint on one side of her couch, and Messieurs Myers, Stultz, and Davison on the other; each individual of each party watching with apparent anxiety to catch the first glance of her opening eye, in order to direct their several movements accordingly; but each having previously determined on those movements as definitively as if their legitimate monarch and directress had nothing to do with matter; for, to say truth, notwithstanding her boasted legitimacy, Fashion has but a very limited control, even in her own court; the real government being an Oligarchy, the members of which are each lords paramount in their own particular departments. Who, in fact, shall dispute an epaulet of Miss Pierrepoint’s? and when Mr. Myers has achieved a collar, who shall call it in question?
Now, Hyde Park is worth walking in at four o’clock of a fine week day, though the trees are still bare; for there, as sure as the sunshine comes, shall be seen sauntering beneath it three distinct classes of fashionables; namely, first, the fair immaculates from the mansions about May Fair, who loll listlessly in their elegant equipages, and occasionally eye, with an air of infinite disdain, the second class, who are peregrinating on the other side the bar,—the fair frailties from the neighbourhood of the New Road; which latter, more magnanimous than their betters, and less envious, are content, for their parts, to appropriate the greater portion of the attentions of the third class—the ineffables and exquisites from Long’s, and Stevens’s. Among these last-named class something particular indeed must have happened if you do not recognise that arbiter elegantiarum of actresses, the marquis of W——; that delighter in dennets and decaying beauties, the honourable L—— S——; and that prince-pretty-man of rake-hells and roués little George W——.