The Life and Legacy of Harriette Wilson. Harriette Wilson
for music.
"Madame a donc le projet d'aller à Drury-Lane, demain?" said the Count Palmella at last, having been waiting, with his mouth open, ever since Amy mentioned Omeo, for an opportunity of following up the subject.
Amy darted her bright black eyes upon him, as though she had said, "Ah! te voilà! d'où viens tu?" but without answering him or perhaps understanding what he said.
"Si madame me permettera," continued the count, "j'aurai l'honneur de lui engager une loge."
"Oui s'il vous plait, je vous en serai obligé," said Amy, though in somewhat worse French.
The celebrated beau, George Brummell, who had been presented to Amy by Julia in the round room at the opera, now entered and put poor Julia in high spirits. Brummell, as Julia always declared, was, when in the 10th Dragoons, a very handsome young man. However that might have been, nobody could have mistaken him for anything like handsome at the moment she presented him to us. Julia assured me that he had, by some accident, broken the bridge of his nose, and which said broken bridge had lost him a lady and her fortune of twenty thousand pounds. This, from the extreme flatness of it, his nose, I mean, not the fortune, appeared probable.
He was extremely fair, and the expression of his countenance far from disagreeable. His person too was rather good; nor could anybody find fault with the taste of all those who for years had made it a rule to copy the cut of Brummell's coat, the shape of his hat, or the tie of his neckcloth: for all this was in the very best possible style.
"No perfumes," Brummell used to say, "but very fine linen, plenty of it, and country washing."
"If John Bull turns round to look after you, you are not well dressed: but either too stiff, too tight, or too fashionable."
"Do not ride in ladies' gloves; particularly with leather breeches."
In short, his maxims on dress were excellent. Besides this, he was neither uneducated nor deficient. He possessed also a sort of quaint, dry humour, not amounting to anything like wit; indeed, he said nothing which would bear repetition; but his affected manners and little absurdities amused for the moment. Then it became the fashion to court Brummell's society, which was enough to make many seek it who cared not for it; and many more wished to be well with him through fear, for all knew him to be cold, heartless, and satirical.
It appeared plain and evident to me that his attention to Julia was no longer the effect of love. Piqued at the idea of having been refused marriage by a woman with whom Cotton had so easily succeeded, sans cérémonie, he determined in his own mind soon to be even with his late brother officer.
And pray, madam, the reader may ask; how came you to be thus early acquainted with George Brummell's inmost soul?
A mere guess. I will tell you why.
Brummell talked to Julia while he looked at me; and as soon as he could manage it with decency, he contrived to place himself by my side.
"What do you think of Colonel Cotton?" said he, when I mentioned Julia.
"A very fine dark man," I answered, "though not at all to my taste, for I never admire dark men."
"No man in England stinks like Cotton," said Brummell.
"Ah! ah!" thought I, "me voilà au fait!"
"A little Eau de Portugal would do no harm in that quarter, at all events," I remarked laughing, while alluding to his dislike of perfumery.
Amy gave us merely a tray-supper in one corner of the drawing-room, with plenty of champagne and claret. Brummell, in his zeal for cold chicken, soon appeared to forget everybody in the room. A loud discordant laugh from the Honourable John Ward, who was addressing something to Luttrell at the other end of the table, led me to understand that he had just, in his own opinion, said a very good thing; yet I saw his corner of the room full of serious faces.
"Do you keep a valet, sir?" said I.
"I believe I have a rascal of that kind at home," said the learned, ugly scion of nobility, with disgusting affectation.
"Then," I retorted, "do, in God's name, bring him next Saturday to stand behind your chair."
"For what, I pray?"
"Merely to laugh at your jokes," I rejoined. "It is such hard work for you, sir, who have both to cut the jokes and to laugh at them too!"
"Do pray show him up, there's a dear creature, whenever you have an opportunity," whispered Brummell in my ear, with his mouth full of chicken.
"Is he not an odious little monster of ill-nature, take him altogether?" I asked.
"And look at that tie?" said Brummell, shrugging up his shoulders and fixing his eyes on Ward's neck-cloth.
Ward was so frightened at this commencement of hostilities from me, that he immediately began to pay his court to me, and engaged me to take a drive with him the next morning in his curricle.
"Go with him," whispered Brummell in my ear. "Keep on terms with him, on purpose to laugh at him." And then he turned round to Fanny, to ask her who her man of that morning was.
"You allude to the gentleman I was riding with in the park?" answered Fanny.
"I know who he is," said Alvanly. "Fanny is a very nice girl, and I wish she would not encourage such people. Upon my word it is quite shocking."
"Whom did you ride with to-day, Fanny?" I inquired.
"A d——n sugar baker," said Alvanly.
"I rode out to-day," replied Fanny, reddening, "with a very respectable man of large fortune."
"Oh yes!" said Alvanly, "there is a good deal of money to be got in the sugar line."
"Why do not you article yourself then to a baker of it," I observed, "and so pay some of your debts?"
This was followed by a laugh, which Alvanly joined in with great good humour.
"What is his name?" inquired Luttrell.
"Mr. John Mitchel," answered Fanny. "He received his education at a public school, with Lord Alvanly."
"I do not recollect Mitchel," retorted Alvanly; "but I believe there were a good many grocers admitted at that time."
Fanny liked Lord Alvanly of all things, and knew very little of Mr. Mitchel, except that he professed to be her very ardent admirer; yet her defence of the absent was ever made with all the warmth and energy her shyness would permit.
"Now, gentlemen," said Fanny, "have the goodness to listen to the facts as they really are."
Everybody was silent; for everybody delighted to hear Fanny talk.
"That little fat gentleman there," looking at Lord Alvanly, "whom you all suppose a mere idle, lazy man of genius, I am told studies bon mots all night in his bed." (A laugh.) "Further, I have been led to understand, that being much lower down in the class than Mitchel, though of the same age, his lordship in the year eighteen hundred and something or other was chosen, raised, and selected, for his civil behaviour, to the situation of prime and first fag to Mr. Mitchel, in which said department, his lordship distinguished himself much, by the very high polish he put upon Mr. J. Mitchel's boots and shoes."
There was not a word of truth in this story, the mere creation of Fanny's brain; yet still there was a probability about it, as they had been at school together, and which, added to Fanny's very pleasing, odd mode of expression, set the whole room in a roar of laughter. Alvanly was just as much amused as the rest; for Fanny's humour had no real severity in it at any time.
"But, Fanny, you will make a point of cutting this grocer, I hope?" observed Brummell, as soon as the laugh had a little subsided.
"Do pray, Fanny," said I, "cut your Mitchels. I vote for cutting all the grocers and valets who intrude themselves into good society."
"My father was a very superior valet," Brummell quickly observed, "and kept his place all his