The Life and Legacy of Harriette Wilson. Harriette Wilson
and that I should require a quiet comfortable room to study in. The word study sounded very well, I thought, as I pronounced it, and, after arranging my books in due order, in the pretty rural room allotted to me by my civil landlady, I sat down to consider which of them I should begin with, in order to become clever and learned at the shortest notice, as that good lady provided people with hot dinners.
"Ponsonby, being forty already," thought I, "will be downright out, while I continue to bloom: therefore, when this idea makes him more timid and humble, I should like to improve my powers of consoling him and charming away all his cares. Let me see! What knowledge will be likely to make me most agreeable to him? Oh! politics. What a pity that he does not like something less dry and more lively! But, no matter!" and I turned over the leaves of my History of England, for George the Second and George the Third, and I began reading the Debates in Parliament. "Let me consider!" continued I, pausing. "I am determined to stick firm to the Opposition side, all my life; because Ponsonby must know best: and yet it goes against the grain of all my late aristocratical prejudices, which, by-the-bye, only furnish a proof how wrong-headed young girls often are."
I began to read a long speech of Lord Ponsonby's late intimate friend, Charles James Fox. "This man," thought I, when I had finished his speech, "appears to have much reason on his side; but then all great orators seem right, till they are contradicted by better reasoners; so, if I read Pitt's answer to this speech, I shall become as aristocratical as ever. I must begin with Pitt, and finish with Fox's answer and objections to Pitt's plan." I tried this method of making a little Whig of myself, pour les beaux yeux de milord Ponsonby. "After all," said I, pausing, "it will be no use, and very mean of me, to think one way and profess to think another; and it still strikes me the better reason and the sounder judgment is with Pitt, who seems to go further and embrace a vaster and more solid plan than Fox. The latter finding all that wit and brilliant exercise of humour necessary, makes his appear to me the worse course; then there is too much method in these Whigs, and their abuse of administration becomes pointless; because it seems as though perpetually ready cut and dried; and so vulgar! and opposition is such a losing game! and then I have a sneaking kindness for my king."
"Quelle dommage! I cannot be a Whig, for the life of me!" said I, throwing away the book, and quietly reclined my head on my hand, in deep thought as to what next I should study, having determined at once, out of respect to Lord Ponsonby to stand neuter in regard to politics, since I could not make a Whig of myself.
My landlady came in to know what I would have for dinner.
"Oh, ma'am," I exclaimed, pushing aside my book, and walking towards the window, "it is impossible for persons to study if they are to be interrupted by such absurd questions."
The woman begged my pardon.
"Listen to me, madam," said I, with the utmost concentration of dignity; "I have come into this retirement for the purpose of hard reading; therefore, instead of asking me what I want for dinner every day, or disturbing my books or papers, I shall thank you to bring up a tray with a fowl, or anything you like, exactly at five, and, placing it upon that little table, you must, if you please, go out of the room again without saying a single word, and when I am hungry I will eat."
Mine hostess looked at me as if she would have laughed if she had dared, and I felt somewhat of a sort of inclination to join her; however, I contrived to preserve my consequence, and asked, while attempting to assume a severe frown, how old she would guess me to be.
"About sixteen or seventeen, Miss."
"I am almost nineteen, madam," said I, elevating my head, with much pride. "You must not laugh!" I added, seeing that her risible muscles again exhibited symptoms of incipient activity, and well they might; for I was the most tom-boy, childish-looking creature who ever sat down by herself in a large room to study the merits of Pitt and Fox; and, what was worse, one of the most perfectly uneducated young women of my age that ever went to school; but then my school was only a French convent, where there really was nothing which excited in me the slightest curiosity after knowledge, and I never learned a single lesson by heart in my life, nor I believe ever could. The abbess was in despair about me. The confessor said, with Fred Bentinck, that I should come to no good; and I played the old nuns so many tricks that they were all frightened to death of me.
Being once more left to myself, I snatched up a volume of Shakespeare, pour me désennuyer un moment, and opened it at this passage, in the tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra:
The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne,
Burn'd on the water: the poop was beaten gold;
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
The winds were love-sick with them; the oars were silver;
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
The water which they beat to follow faster,
As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,
It beggar'd all description: she did lie
In her pavilion (cloth of gold of tissue),
O'erpicturing that Venus where we see
The fancy outwork nature: on each side her
Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,
With divers-colour'd fans, whose wind did seem
To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,
And what they undid, did.
"How beautiful!" said I, throwing down the book, "Can anything be imagined more glowing or more animated than this description! However I came here to study—and Shakespeare is too amusing to be considered study. True I have heard people remark that many passages of Shakespeare's writings are obscure; yet it seems to me that all the beauties are clear and plain, and the little obscurities not worth puzzling about:—therefore I'll study history; one must know something of that. I'll begin with ancient Greece, never mind English history, we can all get credit for that."
The Greeks employed me for two whole days, and the Romans six more: I took down notes of what I thought most striking. I then read Charles the Twelfth, by Voltaire, and liked it less than most people do; and then Rousseau's Confessions; then Racine's Tragedies, and afterwards, Boswell's Life of Johnson. I allowed myself only ten minutes for my dinner. In short, what might I not have read, had not I been barbarously interrupted by the whole family of the Pitchers, who, having once taken a fancy to my society, I had no chance but returning to town as fast as possible after a three weeks' residence at Salt Hill, during which time I had constantly heard from Lord Ponsonby, who was in Ireland; but hoped shortly to join me in town.
I was soon visited by my dear mother. She wished to consult me about what was best to be done to put my young sister out of the way of that most profligate nobleman, Lord Deerhurst, who was, she said, continually watching her in the Park and streets whenever she went out. I could hardly believe that anything wrong could be meant towards a child scarcely thirteen years of age; but my mother assured me that he had been clandestinely writing to her and sending her little paltry presents of gilt chains, such as are sold by Jews in the streets; these said trumpery articles being presented to my sister Sophia, in old jewel-boxes of Love and Wirgman, in order to make it appear to the poor child that they were valuable.
"I see no remedy," said my dear mother, "but sending Sophia to some school at a distance; and I hope to obtain her father's consent for that purpose as soon as possible. No time is to be lost, Sophia being so sly about receiving these things that I only found it out by the greatest accident. The last were delivered to her by a young friend of hers, quite a child, to whom Lord Deerhurst addressed himself, not having been able to meet with Sophia lately."
I was very much disgusted with this account, and quite agreed with my mother that it would be the safest plan to send the child away.
Before she took her leave, she assured me that, if possible, Sophia should depart immediately.
The next day I went to visit Fanny. Colonel Armstrong was with her. I allude to the Duke of York's aide-de-camp. The Earl of Bective was also there.
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