We had a grand time of it last night, to celebrate the Prince's entry
into Derby. I did not see one red ribbon. Grandmamma is very much put
out at the forbidding of French cambrics; she says nobody will be able
to have a decent ruffle or a respectable handkerchief now: but what can
you expect of these Hanoverians? And I am sure she looked smart enough
last night. We had dancing--first, the minuet, and then a
round--"Pepper's black," and then "Dull Sir John," and a country dance,
"Smiling Polly." Flora would not dance, and Grandmamma excused her,
because she was a minister's daughter: Grandmamma always says a
clergyman when she tells people: she says minister is a low word only
used by Dissenters, and she does not want people to know that any guest
of hers has any connection with those creatures. "However, thank
Heaven! (says she) the girl is not my grand-daughter!" I don't know
what she would say if I were to turn Dissenter. I suppose she would cut
me off with a shilling. Ephraim said so, and I asked him what it meant.
Shillings are not very sharp, and what was I to be cut off? Ephraim
seemed excessively amused.
"You are too good, Cary," said he. "Did you think the shilling was a
knife to cut you off something? It means she will only leave you a
shilling in her will."
"Well, that will be a shilling more than I expect," said I: and Ephraim
went off laughing.
I asked Miss Newton, as she seemed to know him, who Mr Raymond was.
She says he is the lecturer at Saint Helen's, and might have been a
decent man if that horrid creature Mr Wesley had not got hold of him.
"Oh, do you know anything about Mr Wesley, or Mr Whitefield?" cried I.
"Are they in London now?"
If I could hear them again!
"I am sure I cannot tell you," said Miss Newton, laughing. "I have
heard my father speak of them with some very strong language after it--
that I know. My dear Miss Courtenay, does everything rouse your
enthusiasm? For how you can bring that brilliant light into your eyes
for the Prince, and for Mr Wesley, is quite beyond me. I should have
thought they were the two opposite ends of a pole."
"I don't know anything about Mr Wesley," I said, "and I have only heard
Mr Whitefield preach once in Scotland."
"You have heard him?" she asked.
"Yes, and liked him very much," said I.
Miss Newton shrugged her shoulders in that little French way she has.
"Why, some people think him the worse of the two," she said. "I don't
know anything about them, I can tell you--only that Mr Wesley makes
Dissenters faster than you could make tatting-stitches."
"What does he do to them?" said I.
"I don't know, and I don't want to know," said she. "If he had lived in
former times, I am sure he would have been taken up for witchcraft. He
is a clergyman, or they say so; but I really wonder the Bishops have not
turned him out of the Church long ago."
"A clergyman, and makes people Dissenters!" cried I. "Why, Mr
Whitefield quoted the Articles in his sermon."
"They said so," she replied. "I know nothing about it; I never heard
the man, thank Heaven! but they say he goes about preaching to all sorts
of dreadful creatures--those wild miners down in Cornwall, and
coal-heavers, and any sort of mobs he can get to listen. Only fancy a
clergyman--a gentleman--doing any such thing!"