From Southampton, then a fashionable and gay resort, where he was staying with a private tutor, Charles Stanhope likewise wrote to his distant brother.
SOUTHAMPTON, November 5th, 1812.
I dined the other day with the Fitzhughs who live near here, and was much disappointed at not meeting Mrs Siddons who is always with them. She is not liked by the people about here, she is so very graciosissima pomposissima. If she goes to any party she immediately usurps the sofa, monopolising it most infamously with her most corpulent latitude; and to those people who conceive themselves most her intimates, she bows like a Queen, with a slight inclination from her shoulders, never deigning to move from her seat, nor even in the slightest degree to bend her formal body. This, of course, cannot but disgust, tho' Mrs Fitzhugh doats on her. [3] When she acted here Mrs F. waited on her as a maid, and when she came off the stage, after having died most naturally, Mrs F. begged her to go to bed, and was worked up to hystericks wanting repeated assurances that she was not in reality dead. Was there ever anything so absurd or foolish?
I was at Gaunts, Sir Dicky Carr Glyn's. It is a pretty place and a well-arranged house in the inside, but the exterior is completely à la Citoyen. A square, formal house with an inclined, slated roof.
I was amused at Sir D.'s upholding his prerogative. Lady Glyn was for folding doors from the drawing-room to the library. Sir D. was against them. The argument ran high. Sir D. then said, "Well, my dear, you may have your folding doors and your new fashions, but let me have the old. None of your new, flimsy introductions for me, I will still be the old, worthy Alderman & English Gentleman!" Thought I— Bravo Sir Dicky!
Encouraged by his own eloquence, he further insisted on his point, and now, lo! there are big folding doors with a single small door close to them!
It strikes a person unacquainted with the circumstances as though Dicky, with true Aldermanic foresight, intending to enlarge his paunch with Turtle, etc., etc., etc., and conceiving that he would soon be incapable of passing thro' the narrow door, had thus provided for his increase of latitude.
It puts me in mind of an epigram by Jekyll. [4] A canal was cut here at great expense (at the time when everybody was embarking their fortunes in that kind of speculation); it ran parallel with the great river. Everybody contributed to it, and bought shares in it. They did not perceive the folly of the undertaking till the Canal was finished. In short, it was never used, and everybody was bitten. The epigram ran thus:—
Southampton's wise sons thought their river so large
Tho' 'twould carry a ship, 'twould not carry a barge;
So they wisely determined to cut by its side
A stinking canal where small vessels might glide;
Like the man who contriving a hole in his wall,
To admit his two cats, one great and one small,
When a great hole was cut for the first to go through
Would a little hole have for the little cat too! */
I have learnt to take snuff among other fashionable acquirements, a custom which, of course, you have learnt and will be able to keep me in countenance….